Column by historian Roger Bingham of Ackenthwaite:

IN 1851, 12 years after the Lancaster to Carlisle line was opened, the railway carried its most august passenger, Queen Victoria.

Because her journey had been announced, loyal subjects gathered all along the line.

At Crooklands, the congregation rushed from a service at Preston Patrick Church to cheer the Royal entourage as it halted, momentarily, at Milnthorpe Station. But only a few gawpers were rewarded with a regal nod.

At Oxenholme, special trains had brought spectators from Lancaster and Windermere, while ‘great numbers of walkers resorted to the station hours before the Royal train arrived'. Yet, although the locomotive slowed down, the ‘view afforded to the spectators was imperfect’.

Later, the Royal family ‘came through’ at night. Nevertheless, all the Oxenholme staff were deployed and the stationmaster donned his top hat.

Actually, ‘The Royal’ did stop once, for an hour in 1891, when an over- heated axle was being repaired during what, a courtier recalled, ‘was one of the heaviest rainstorms we have experienced in our night journeys’.

Thankfully, owing to muffling by the storm and a marathon of whispering by the repairers, ‘Her Majesty was not awakened’ .