Introduction
Crichton Porteous is the nom de plume of Leslie Creighton Porteous who was born at Leeds, Yorkshire, on the 22 May 1901 (June Quarter 1901, Leeds, 9b 584). It is believed that he grew up somewhere in the Manchester area and that some of his school holidays were spent in the Peak District of Derbyshire. It was in the Peak District that his love of the countryside developed and while still a youth he began writing articles about outdoor life for boys' magazines.

On completion of his education he became a farm worker and after a few years of this he joined Hulton newspapers where he became a sub-editor. He then worked for several more papers before eventually becoming the assistant editor of the northern edition of the Daily Mail, which was printed in Manchester.

Following his marriage, he moved to the hamlet of Combs, near Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, and simultaneously he resigned from his position at the Daily Mail to become a freelance writer. His first book, Farmer's Creed, was published in 1937 but only after he had rewritten it five times. Over the next three decades he wrote about one book a year as well as numerous short stories and articles.

In 1944 he moved to a cottage at Two Dales near Matlock, Derbyshire, and among the books that he wrote there were two, Toad Hole and Broken River, that were set in the Derwent Valley. By the mid-1960s he decided that his career as a writer was drawing to a close. At length, he retired in 1971 but he remained at Two Dales until his death in January 1991, his death being registered at Chesterfield under the name Leslie Crichton Porteous

One of his books is a biography, published in 1955, about a character nicknamed Chuckling Joe who lived all his life around Chapel-en-le-Frith. Chuckling Joe was Joseph Marchington who was born at Chapel-en-le Frith in about November 1871 and he died in circa 1949. He married, Alice Capper, in about November 1899 and the couple lived on Manchester Road, Chapel-en-le-Frith, where he was employed as a Drayman at the railway station. One of the chapters in this biography is entitled 'The Tramroad' and it describes the operation of the Peak Forest Tramway, particularly the inclined plane at Chapel-en-le-Frith. However, although the description is interesting for the details it provides, it is curious in that it only describes the transport of goods up the tramway from Bugsworth Canal Basin towards Chapel-en-le-Frith and the inclined plane. No mention whatsoever is made of the tramway's main purpose, which was the transport of limestone and burnt lime from the quarries around Dove Holes down to the Peak Forest Canal at Bugsworth.

Crichton Porteous, Chuckling Joe, Phoenix Press, 1955. Country Book Club Edition, 1955. Now out of print.

The chapter about the operation of the Peak Forest Tramway is reproduced below but with notes to explain in greater detail some of the interesting issues raised.

The Tramroad

An unusual feature in Joe's younger days was a tramroad (Note 1), as he called it. Before the railway arrived, the inhabitants had been dependent for most heavy goods on a canal (Note 2) that came into the hills by a winding way, and with many locks - sixteen in a row up one rise -  (Note 3) and ended at a village a little way to the west (Note 4). From this canal someone (Note 5), before Joe was born, had conceived the idea of running a line through to another village much higher up (Note 6), and to certain limestone quarries. This line passed under the main street (Note 7) fifty yards beyond the last houses of Townend (Note 8), not very far from Warmbrook Farm.

Naturally this tramroad fascinated young Joe, and continued to do so as he grew up, for the chief motive-power was horses (Note 9). There were a warehouse, a big yard, and a row of stables just below the main street (Note 10), for it was an important unloading place for local supplies and also for several villages in a long dale to the east, which had only roads in and out (Note 11). Here, too, the more or less level line (Note 12) from the canal 'port' (Note 13) took a sharp climb, so steep that horses could not face it (Note 14).

But perhaps this line is worth describing in more detail, as a record of the primitive transport (Note 15) with which for 120 years Joe's, and a number of other villages, had to manage. At the 'port' (Note 16) , goods were shifted by hand cranes out of barges (Note 17) into the tramroad trucks. Each truck weighed sixteen hundredweight and would carry up to two tons (Note 18). As many as forty trucks (Note 19) were sometimes run together (in a 'gang'), the total weight being normally about 120 to 150 tons (Note 20).

From the wharf (Note 21) the gang set off for the village (Note 22) hauled by five horses in line attended by a man and youth (Note 23), who took them the two miles to a half-way trough (Note 24), where the horses were unhooked and rested. Here there would usually be a down gang waiting, brought there of their own weight (Note 25), a man in charge as a brakeman (Note 26); or if no gang had arrived one soon would, and after it would come a boy from the village (Note 27) with another five horses. Now the man who had come up from the wharf (Note 28) took over the down gang as brakeman (Note 29), and left the lad who had gone with him to return with the horses, while the man and youth from the village (Note 30) hooked up their five horses and took the gang 'forrard' on the remaining two miles (Note 31) . When the tramroad was in its heyday three gangs were taken down each day in this way and three were brought up.

At the village junction shunting took place (Note 32) , those trucks for the farther villages being made up into fresh gangs, an old, wise horse being retained for this work. When a gang was ready, this horse towed it to the foot of the climb, known as 'the incline', where the trucks were hooked on a wire hawser (Note 33) . At the top was another marshalling area, another warehouse, and another row of stables - for eight horses. This was the Top o' th' Plain (sic) (Note 34). The outstanding building was the control cabin, of wood, on tall stilts, like an early lighthouse (Note 35). The man on duty there (Note 36) had a clear view of the slope, and all over the marshalling area just below him. Between the stilts was an iron wheel, ten feet in diameter, with a grooved edge, and set on a perpendicular axle (Note 37). Around the groove ran the steel hawser. When the bottom gang was ready a huge white board (Note 38) on long pole was turned broadside as a signal, then the control man gave a sign to his mate, who removed the chocks holding back a loaded gang at the top, and over it went, its weight hauling up the gang on the other line (Note 39) . In fog a big bell jangled as signal. If the big wheel was spinning too fast, then the man in the cabin could screw a brake down on the rim and delay the wheel somewhat by friction (Note 40).

Each gang was taken on from the Top o' th' Plain (sic) by a four-horse team in-line for a mile or so to another half-way point, the highest of all (Note 41), the gang rolling two farther miles after that by gravity. All the horses used - twenty-five to thirty regularly in the seven miles - were retired from ordinary railway delivery duties through city streets, their feet knocked up by the rough setts in those days (Note 42). When hauling a gang, they trod on earth between the narrow lines (Note 43) , there being no sleepers, each rail being spiked on to squared blocks of gritstone (Note 44) set firmly in the ground at twelve to eighteen-inch intervals (Note 45). I have thought that it must have been rather nice for old horses jaded by city labour, this life along the line, for it passed three-quarters of its length through valley fields, and the remainder along the lip of a tree-deep gorge, as attractive as any in the Peakland (Note 46). Certainly the men who worked the line liked their employment, for Joe says they very seldom left, and there was much disappointment when the line shut down (Note 47).

There were perils, of course. Joe often rode up to Top o' th' Plain (sic) sitting on the edge of a waggon in a gang and says he never thought anything about it then; but he has often wondered since at the risk, for he remembered the hawser snapping on several occasions, both gangs crashing down to the bridge over the main road (Note 48). Under this bridge there was only a single line, the gangs being hooked up and unhooked on a short level on top side. Immediately the old horse that did the assembling was released, it departed into its stable, a cave cut out of rock at the side, like an air-raid shelter (Note 49) . There was a similar cave (Note 50) for the two men who worked at the bottom (Note 51) , so that neither ever got struck down when waggons ran away.

Other men, however, seem to have risked greater danger every day, on the lengths where the gangs ran by gravity. Fully laden, they could get up great speed. The brakeman (Note 52) rode standing on the end of a waggon chassis, holding on to a waggon edge. By each pair of wheels hung a short chain with an iron pin on the end (Note 53). When a gang was beginning to speed too much, the man had to bend down, and thrust this pin (Note 54) between the iron spokes, the wheels thus being locked (Note 55). Think how adroit the man had to be. Think if he slipped or lost balance, or failed to time his thrust (Note 56) rightly, or the chain snapped! Also it was seldom enough to brake one pair of wheels or one waggon, and he had to move along the rocking gang to the next ···· perhaps perform the same operation on five or six waggons. Moreover, a wheel might be left skidding very long or it would get red hot and wear badly (Note 57), so that the man had to make his way hand over hand, jerk the pin and peg (Note 58) through spokes, or trip another wheel. To release the peg (Note 59) he had a short iron bar he used as a lever, but obviously there must have been considerable risk in this operation, too. Yet Joe did not recall any employee being killed, and only remembered one accident, a brakeman getting an arm broken. "It were great ta watch them, they could do it like snuff."

Towards the end, the Board of Trade obliged the Company to provide iron platforms on each waggon with a guard rail for the brakeman (Note 60), but the actual wheel-locking remained as perilous as ever (Note 61).

Another friend, not Joe, remembered a boy, a mischief with several pals setting some waggons going and trying to peg a wheel (Note 62). Overbalancing or being hit, he fell on the track and was cut in two (Note 63).

The extension of the railway line seriously lessened the amount of freight carried on the tramroad, and eventually made it uneconomic (Note 64). When first I got to know Joe the line remained intact but dead. There was grass between and over the rails, and it was pleasant to stroll in peace where once all that traffic had run. Then eventually most of the buildings were taken down, the stone used elsewhere, the rails were removed, and only the gritstone blocks were left (Note 65). After more years the land was even offered for sale, and was bought in short lengths by many different persons, so that now in many places crops grow where once trundling gangs passed half-a-dozen times each day.

In October 1941 I was out with Joe when he pointed to a man going laboriously on two sticks and said, "'e were th' last man as worked on th' old tramroad, 'e were there till th' lines were took up." I believe Joe added that the man had been one of the horse-drivers, though I am not sure.

The last man to work the control cabin (Note 66) -- he did the job for thirty years -- died about the beginning of the Second World War. Even in that war a part anyway of the tramway served a useful purpose. In the seven miles there was one tunnel, 150 yards long, with a single track penetrating a high bluff half-a-mile north of the village (Note 67). The length which included this tunnel was bought by a big industrial concern (Note 68) and the tunnel used for storage of valuable papers from air attack, the ends being strongly sealed. Open again after the war, the tunnel has since been used for safe-keeping of highly inflammable chemicals (Note 69). But the most lasting relic of the tramway is likely to be in the village (Note 70) some distance from the defunct line. It is a strongly built, double-fronted house on a corner very nearly opposite Joe's boyhood home (Note 71).

"It were built wi' sixpences," said Joe one day as we passed; and I learned that the builder had for many years been the carter at the village junction (Note 72) when the tramroad was in its most prosperous period. "Th' sixpences were th' tips 'e get fer deliverin. 'e built it when 'e retired."