This unforgettable name appears again and again on the CRS website, because of the splendid setting for photography. Readers may like to know a little more about this site and its relationship to the railway.
Hallenbeagle was a copper mine and the engine house familiar to us all housed the pumping engine for Read’s (sometimes written Reed’s) shaft. The mine reached its peak of production during the copper ‘boom’ years of the 1840s, but closed after the slump of 1866-7.
Though abandoned, the shaft remained dry because it is drained by the County Adit (this is a network of tunnels originated by Williams of Scorrier in the eighteenth century to drain mines in the Gwennap area into the Carnon river; it still functions to this day, debauching up to half a million gallons daily). Read’s shaft was reopened for a period during world war 2 for the extraction of tungsten, but otherwise has been derelict since 1867.
The Hallenbeagle sett was located in Kenwyn parish: across the tracks was Wheal Rose, which had rather a longer life and survived into the era of tin after copper declined.
The single track West Cornwall Railway was opened through the site in 1852. A short dead-end siding, facing for up trains was there in 1866, but in view of Hallenbeagle’s decline, it was most probably used for general freight traffic for Scorrier and perhaps coal for Wheal Rose. There were no sidings at Scorrier station at this time, with the single line (mixed gauge from 1866) on a high embankment.
The railway from Chacewater to Scorrier was doubled in 1900 and two signal boxes opened at Scorrier: Wheal Busy Siding (at the Hallenbeagle site) and Scorrier Station. Scorrier box issued the train staffs for the single line to Redruth.
Wheal Busy Siding in 1900 was a simple loop, connected to the up main at the Truro end and the down main at the Redruth end. There was a level crossing. The line between Scorrier and Drump Lane was finally doubled in 1930 and this resulted in changes at Wheal Busy: Scorrier box closed and its down refuge siding (stretching back to Wheal Busy) was connected to Wheal Busy box to form a down goods loop. A new, larger lever frame was installed to control the new layout.
Wheal Busy officially closed to public freight traffic in 1963, though nothing had arrived or departed for some years before that: BR was simply closing the books. Two of the three siding connections to the main line were lifted in 1962 and Wheal Busy box, by now a ‘morning turn only’ box, finally closed a week after the ‘Cornubian’ passed by –the end of two eras.
Many thanks to Roy Hart for this very detailed information.