If I felt capable of so doing, Id set up a poll on this subject: but my computer skills are decidedly poor, and do not without wearisomely bothering people for help extend to poll-mounting.
Out of Englands few one-time narrow-gauge public lines of the classic kind all, in their real-and-true form, long abandoned if just one could still be running in complete or near-entirety, at the present day (thus essentially, having been able to hang on until the take-off of the preservation movement): which would be posters preference, as the lucky one?
I am taking it that the old Ravenglass & Eskdale was basically a loser: had it not been taken up for conversion to a 15in. gauge miniature line, it would have fully vanished and ceased to be, quite early in the 20th century. The other five all lasted throughout the 1920s, all but -- most, for longer the Ashover in fact came into being a fair way into the 1920s.
For me: would evict Ashover, and Rye & Camber (charming as they were in their respective ways), seeing them as slightly grotesque outliers. I think, though, that I would be completely and undecidably split three ways between Southwold; Leek & Manifold Valley; and Lynton & Barnstaple.
Out of Englands few one-time narrow-gauge public lines of the classic kind all, in their real-and-true form, long abandoned if just one could still be running in complete or near-entirety, at the present day (thus essentially, having been able to hang on until the take-off of the preservation movement): which would be posters preference, as the lucky one?
I am taking it that the old Ravenglass & Eskdale was basically a loser: had it not been taken up for conversion to a 15in. gauge miniature line, it would have fully vanished and ceased to be, quite early in the 20th century. The other five all lasted throughout the 1920s, all but -- most, for longer the Ashover in fact came into being a fair way into the 1920s.
For me: would evict Ashover, and Rye & Camber (charming as they were in their respective ways), seeing them as slightly grotesque outliers. I think, though, that I would be completely and undecidably split three ways between Southwold; Leek & Manifold Valley; and Lynton & Barnstaple.