I was actually looking for my great-grandfather in 1861 Stainmore, and came across all these railwaymen quite by chance. It has turned into an interesting piece of research. Stainmore township in the 1850s occupied itself with fell farming and mining. There was no town, as such - the locals went into Brough for their boots and haircuts. Scattered over the high, bleak moorland of Stainmore lived farmers and coalminers, a few leadminers, some landowners, a couple of gamekeepers, a grocer, a farming butcher, a curate with his little chapel, a schoolmistress, and there were a few pubs. As in many other such districts, generations of families just got on with life. Surnames stayed much the same - Dent, Bousfield, Adamthwaite, Holiday, Birkbeck, Alderson, Whelpdale, Allison, Brunskill, all appear throughout the 19thC censuses.
Then the heavy industrialists decided it would be useful and profitable to connect the busy railway lines that ran north-south on either side of the Pennines. Durham coal could be used in Lancashire while Lancashire iron ore could be smelted in the Teesside ironworks. The consequence for Stainmore was dramatic. The normal population of the township was about 500. It increased by 30% when the railwaymen and their families arrived (where did they all sleep?). They came from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Many of them seem to have spent their working lives on the road, acquiring wives and having children as they moved from job to job.
The Photo is of Barras Station and the men who built the station were lodging with my Great Great Grand parents.
Here is a complete transcript of the 1861 census for Stainmore township, and a note of what Stainmore was like in 1871 when the line was finished. CLICK HERE