was referred to as the Dandy. It met all the trains on the main line at Milton between 8 am and 7 pm on weekdays giving a connection to Brampton. W. B. Thompson described the working: The present line falls with a very severe gradient towards the town of Brampton, and the practice used to be to allow the wagons full of coal to run down by gravity, and then, when the load had been discharged, to draw them back empty by horses. There was not a sufficient number of horses employed to deal with the whole of the traffic, so that a gradual accumulation of wagons at the Brampton terminus took place, and when the sidings were full a locomotive was sent down to clear the empties all away. It is perhaps worth adding that in spite of the absence of signals, continuous brakes, interlocking, and all other precautions dear to the Board of Trade, the passenger traffic was carried on all those years practically without an accident of any kind, the only case in which I can recall a passenger having received injury being one in which the injury was entirely attributable to his own negligence. Leased to Thompson Early in 1837 James Thompson leased the collieries, limeworks and waggonway from the Earl of Carlisle, and the latter took no further managerial interest in them; Thompson formed the firm of Thompson and Sons of Kirkhouse. In April 1837 Thompson acquired the Rocket, the famous locomotive of the Rainhill Trials that had been designed by Robert Stephenson. He paid the Liverpool and Manchester Railway £300 for it. Rocket was acquired to operate mineral trains, but was too light for the purpose and was laid aside in 1840. Thompson's firm built locomotives from 1839 at Kirkhouse; the first was Belted Will; later Mosstrooper was built there, but this machine had inside cylinders which fouled the rollers on the inclined plane, which was located above Forest Head. Locomotives were required to traverse the incline to reach the upper level, and this unforeseen limitation was serious; a special carriage had to be built to convey the locomotive over the incline. Thompson improved and extended the existing mine workings, driving drifts and a drainage tunnel over several years, considerably expanding and improving the collieries. However he died in 1851. His widow Maria Thompson took over the firm. Alston branch In 1851, the Newcastle