Qualla: Babbacombe Cliff Railway

Babbacombe Cliff Railway: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. A bell rings inside the small upper station at Babbacombe Downs, fifteen minutes before closing time, the way it has rung since the line opened on 1 April 1926. Out the window, the cliff drops away to a curve of red sand far below. The two cars of the Babbacombe Cliff Railway are connected by a single hoisting cable and balance each other on a 720-foot inclined track between Babbacombe Downs and Oddicombe Beach. Walk to the lower station and the sea is right there, the air heavy with salt and chip-shop vinegar. The cliff is too steep, in most places, for a footpath of any dignity. So for ninety-nine years the funicular has done the work. It is the kind of small Victorian-era public infrastructure that became more cherished, not less, as the century turned over and the world hurried elsewhere.

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Babbacombe Cliff Railway: Thirty-Six Years of Trying

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robin Lucas, CC BY-SA 2.0. The idea was older than the railway. In April 1890, Charles Richardson of Cary Castle in St Marychurch proposed building a cliff lift at Babbacombe along the same lines as the one at Lynton, which had opened the year before. George Newnes, the publisher and Liberal MP who had bac...

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Image: Robin Lucas | CC BY-SA 2.0

Babbacombe Cliff Railway: Closed for the War

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SolomanMcKenzie / SolomanMcKenzie at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Torquay Tramway Company worked the line for nine years, until 13 March 1935, when ownership passed to Torquay Borough Council. The railway then ran another six years before the war shut it down. In 1941, under wartime security restrictions that quietly affected hundreds of sm...

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Image: SolomanMcKenzie / SolomanMcKenzie at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Babbacombe Cliff Railway: How It Works

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The railway is a counterbalanced funicular of traditional design. Two cars, each capable of holding forty standing passengers, are connected by a hoisting rope so that when one car descends, the other rises. A compensating rope balances the load on the track regardless of where t...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Babbacombe Cliff Railway: Tragedy and the Long Reopening

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 4 September 2022, an engineer working on the railway was killed in what the company described as an industrial incident. The line closed. The investigation that followed, and the work needed to make sure something like it would not happen again, kept the cars idle for almost a...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0