would be loaded directly. In fact, only a short section was built, from the pier to an area on the sea front called The Bankers where stone blocks were prepared for transit. Horse traction only was used. A second jetty, forming a fork, was added to the pier in 1896, to cater for the growing pleasure steamer passenger business, and the truncated tramway was re-gauged in about 1900 to the track gauge of 2 ft 6 in (750 mm). It was used for bunkering the pleasure steamers, but it fell into disuse at the end of the 1920s. Connecting to the main line A scheme for a branch line was successful: the Swanage Railway obtained an authorising Act of Parliament on 18 July 1881, with share capital of £90,000 and permitted debenture borrowings of £30,000. It was built under the supervision of consulting civil engineer W. R. Galbraith. The line was opened on 20 May 1885 and was operated from the start by the LSWR. The branch diverged from the main line at Worgret Junction, over west of Wareham station; the branch was in length and single track. An extension from Swanage station to the pier tramway had been authorised by the Act, and would be built "if required by the LSWR", but the larger company did not activate this requirement and the pier line was not proceeded with. The branch intersected the pre-existing Furzebrook Railway, a narrow gauge industrial tramway concerned with conveying ball clay to a river wharf, and the Middlebere Plateway which conveyed the mineral to Poole Harbour; however the proprietors of those lines were slow to arrange interchange facilities with the Swanage Railway. There was one intermediate station, at Corfe Castle. Gradients were undulating, with a ruling gradient of 1 in 76 or 1 in 80, falling for from Worgret Junction and then rising to a summit at Furzebrook; falling again to Corfe Castle and rising to a summit about halfway to Swanage, and then falling. The first train service consisted of five passenger trains each way and a daily goods train; the latter was amalgamated with the passenger service by the operation of mixed trains from 1 August 1885. The Swanage Railway was amalgamated with the LSWR by Act of Parliament of 25 June 1886. This merely formalised the de facto position, as the LSWR had taken over Swanage Railway liabilities of £2,914 in 1881