When the people in the town of
Ramsey realised their town was not going to be incorporated into the newly promoted
Isle of Man Railway (IOMR) network in the 1870s it was left to them to promote their own railway as a link with the rest of the island. The rugged geography of the east coast forced the Manx Northern Railway into an indirect route: first westwards to
Kirk Michael and then south to
St John's where a junction could be made with the Isle of Man Railway's
Peel to
Douglas line which opened in 1873. Built to a common
Manx gauge, a
narrow gauge, construction began in 1878 and the railway opened for business without formality on 23 September 1879. It was operated by the Isle of Man Railway until 6 November 1880 when the MNR took over the responsibility. In 1881, passenger services started operating through to Douglas using
running rights over the tracks of the Isle of Man Railway. Some significant engineering works were required on the west coast section of the line, including the bridging of Glen Wyllin (at
Kirk Michael) and the nearby Glen Mooar. An embankment high on the cliffs south of Glen Mooar, the "Donkey Bank", was an unending maintenance problem and a drain upon the line's profitability. To try to stabilise the track, this section was the only part of the Manx railways to have its rails mounted in chairs. The rest of the system had the rails directly spiked to the sleepers. Between Kirk Michael and
Ballaugh, the MNR had a halt purely for the use of the
Bishop of Sodor and Man at Bishop's Court. A simple wooden bench comprised the station's entire facilities. The northern part of the line was flat compared to the western coastal section, and had numerous hand-worked
level crossings. These were so close together in places that the protecting signals for one crossing stood beside the previous crossing up the line. A distinctive lattice girder bridge, the "basket bridge", was built over the Sulby River near Ramsey. It was renewed in 1914. The MNR had the only dockside track on the railway system, allowing direct transfer between the railway and sea-going vessels. This line, at Ramsey, opened in 1883 and closed in 1952. Various schemes to emulate this in Douglas were often proposed but the work was never undertaken.
Post-amalgamation The Manx Northern Railway was not independent for long. In 1905, it became part of the
Isle of Man Railway Company when that company took over the operation of the entire system, nearly of track. A depression in the mining industry resulted in the closure of the
Foxdale Mines in 1911 with the resultant loss of traffic. Services to
Foxdale ceased in 1940 but the odd ballast train continued to collect mine waste up to the early 1960s. The Ramsey route had a brief boom between the wars and after
World War II, but then, in line with the rest of the system, patronage sharply declined. The whole railway system reached a crisis in 1966 when no services operated. After a brief revival when the system was leased by the
Marquess of Ailsa, the rest of the former Manx Northern Railway closed for 1968 along with the original IOMR Douglas-Peel line. One of the last services was the transport of fuel oil from the electricity generating station at Peel to the one at Ramsey, for which a special
siding was laid. The last oil train ran in April 1969. The track was lifted in 1974 and the Glen Wyllin and
Glen Mooar viaducts were dismantled in 1975. The majority of the six-wheeled coaching stock was also lost at this time, having been stored out of use for many years on a siding at St John's station in the open air. ==Stations==