The Wisbech and Upwell Tramway was a rural standard gauge tramway in East Anglia. It was built by the Great Eastern Railway between Wisbech, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire and Upwell, now in Norfolk to carry agricultural produce. Although called a tramway, in many ways it more closely resembled a conventional railway line, and paved the way for the passing of the Light Railways Act 1896. History The Great Eastern Railway (GER) promoted the idea of a tramway between Wisbech and Upwell, and permission to construct the line was obtained by W. L. Ollard in 1873, but he failed to raise the finance to build it. The GER were still in favour of the line, and authorisation to construct it was enshrined in the Great Eastern Railway Act 1881. As well as carrying passengers, it was always intended as a freight line as well, and to this end it was built to standard gauge, with bull-head rails, rather than the tramway rails favoured by many British tramways. This allowed standard goods wagons to run along it, without the need to tranship goods into wagons suitable for operating on tramway rails. In order to reduce the costs of construction, it was built under the provisions of the Tramways Act 1870, with the support of the Board of Trade, to demonstrate that such construction could bring railways to rural areas which could not otherwise benefit from the new mode of transport. The process of buying land began in February 1882, and building the tramway across the flat terrain proceeded rapidly. The section from Wisbech to Outwell Basin was opened on 20 August 1883, with the extension onwards from Outwell to Upwell Depot opening on 8 September 1884. The initial success of the line was one of the factors that resulted in the passing of the Light Railways Act 1896, under which many more rural lines were built. Rolling stock consisted initially of four coaches originally built for the Millwall Extension Railway, two dating from 1871 and two from 1872. These were supplemented by four more coaches built by the Great Eastern Railway in 1884. They had lower floors, and were of two types; coaches 5 and 6 had four wheels, while coaches 7 and 8 were bogie vehicles, and were considerably longer. All four vehicles had ornate end balconies. The company also built a new baggage van at the same time, and allocated