carry the packet trade, the railway as built developed a considerable agricultural business when it emerged that horticultural produce could be got to London markets quickly. In addition, holiday trade developed as Cornwall became a desirable holiday destination, and as numerous resorts served directly by the railway found favour. The area became branded as "the Cornish Riviera", rivalling the French Riviera for the well to do and the middle classes. Many branch lines were built to coastal resorts, nearly all by independent companies or later by the Great Western Railway. The twentieth century In the twentieth century the Great Western Railway encouraged these two traffics by running fast goods trains from the area to London and other population centres, and by heavily marketing the holiday opportunities of Cornwall and providing imaginative train services for the purpose. Mineral traffic developed too. Having been built cheaply, the route was difficult to operate as speeds and traffic density increased, as many sharp curves and very steep gradients militated against efficient operation. On summer Saturdays in later years serious delay due to congestion. Although the Great Western Railway made some improvements in capital schemes in Cornwall, the constructed topography of the main line made large scale improvement prohibitively expensive. From the mid-1960s when holidaymakers began to look abroad for holidays in the sun, the Cornish Riviera inevitably declined, although a significant residual traffic remains. The mineral traffic also continues. Through passenger trains from London continue to operate and the original Cornwall railway route remains the backbone of rail business in the County. Origins At the time of the accession of Victoria to the throne in 1837, Falmouth (with Penryn) was the largest population centre in Cornwall, at 12,000. It had been an important victualling station for merchant shipping during the Napoleonic Wars, but Southampton was increasingly favoured for the continuing packet traffic, due to its more convenient road and coastal shipping connection to London. Although official assurances had been given about the retention of certain traffics, the construction of the London and Southampton Railway, seriously proposed in 1830 and completed in 1840, alarmed interested businessmen in Falmouth, and it was generally agreed that a railway connection to London was urgently needed. (In fact the Government announced the transfer of all but the South American packet traffic to Southampton in 1842.) Early proposals, in 1835 and 1836, for the railway favoured a route broadly following