The Cawood, Wistow and Selby Light Railway (CW&SLR) was a short light railway in a rural part of Yorkshire, England. The company was sometimes referred to as the Cawood, Wistow and Selby Railway. Precursor line An Act of Parliament in 1879 allowed the construction of the Church Fenton, Cawood and Wistow Railway from a junction at Church Fenton through Cawood to Wistow. Further Acts were passed authorising an extension to Selby and a junction line to the Hull and Barnsley Railway (HBR) at Drax. In the event, the necessary capital could not be raised, so neither the extensions nor the original line were built. History In the 1890s the Cawood, Wistow and Selby Light Railway Company (CW&SLR) was formed at the initiative of light railway entrepreneur Sebastian Meyer, acting with a group of men of influence in the region. The North Eastern Railway (NER) gave "generous assistance", which appears to have amounted to moral support, advice and lack of opposition, but no cash. The company applied to Parliament for permission to build a light railway along similar lines to the earlier Act, but terminating to the north at Cawood. The act was passed, unopposed, in 1896. Construction began on 11 July 1896, following the ceremonial cutting of the first sod at Cawood, performed by Mrs Liversidge, the Chairman's wife. A rail connection near Selby was built in September of the same year to allow construction materials to be brought. The four and a half mile single track line opened on 16 February 1898 with the company's sole locomotive Cawood hauling their two coaches plus five from the NER from Brayton Gates to Cawood then back to Wistow where lunch was served in the schoolroom. The NER did not allow through passenger running onto their metals, so the CW&SLR built a single platform halt next to Brayton Gates junction, about a mile from the main station. This was satisfactory for people visiting Selby town centre, but inconvenienced through travellers. In 1899 the company's Board decided to pursue building an extension west from Cawood to Church Fenton. No clear junction with the railway there was specified, but the effect, deliberate or otherwise, was to unnerve the NER, who saw a potential threat should the Cawood line revive a venture along the lines of the 1879 scheme, which would allow the HBR to penetrate the NER's fiefdoms of York and Harrogate. The NER