It's a traffic-free trail suitable for walkers, cyclists and horse riders passing through some of Derbyshire’s finest countryside.

Class 2F 0-6-0T locomotive (LMS Nos 7527 & 25527, BR No. 58860) ascending Hopton incline, 4 May 1934. At the end of the half-day session, you’ll end up with a wonderful hand-made object that you can take away with you! Repairing the roof at High Peak Junction workshops The locomotive is an unidentified Class J94, 0-6-0ST. This class was introduced in 1943 and they were bought from the Ministry of Supply in 1946. Toodles is a grotesque combination of grit and grease, and might have been carved out of a column of coal and then roughly oiled and toned down; while his ‘mate’ the driver, an older man, is suggestive of an impossible partnership between a butcher and a chimney sweep, wearing – as he does – the blue blouse of the one, and the mosaic of soot of the other.of this line, to induce the proprietors to employ steam instead of animal power. Great and important were the difficulties to be overcome in the adoption of such power

The hook is coupled to the wagons. Off we glide. The cable swings and clangs ominously as it strikes the steel rollers, which seem to say “Caution!” in a metallic voice that keeps repeating itself all the way down. A locomotive met us at the summit of the incline, and working tender first, is taking on our train of some twenty wagons: a cargo that is a curious all a podrida of grains, barrels of beer, bags of beans, coal, cans of paint, boxes of tea, and agricultural implements. To get here there was formerly a third incline, but the gradient has been rendered workable by locomotive. A change of guard, and transfer to a third engine, with driver and fireman who can hold their own it grease and grit with their ebony colleagues. There is no water supply at this depot, and to assuage the Iron Horse’s thirst, water is brought in large tanks from Ladmanlow. The later (1899) Asbourne Line between Buxton and Ashbourne left the Cromford and High Peak Railway at Parsley Hay and the southern section now forms part of the National Cycle Network and is known as the Tissington Trail.Denis moved to Rowsley in 1960 and, three years on, Middleton Incline disappeared from the map. Hubert was soon enticed away by the bright lights of Leicester and the thrill of driving on the main line. When the High Peak finally succumbed in April 1967, just one train a week was plodding across from Buxton, bringing the men’s wages. Before and after: the engine house at the top of Middleton incline is now a designated Ancient Monument. The stationary steam engine at Middleton Top once wound wagons up the incline and still performs on Sundays and Bank Holidays during the summer, albeit running on compressed air. The first part of the line from the wharf at High Peak Junction, on the Cromford Canal, to Hurdlow opened in 1830. From the canal it climbed over one thousand feet (305m) in five miles (8km), through three inclines ranging from 1 in 14 (7.1%) to 1 in 8 (12.5%): Sheep Pasture incline near Cromford and Middleton and Hopton inclines above Wirksworth. The line then proceeded up the relatively gentle Hurdlow incline at 1 in 16 (6.25%). The second half from Hurdlow to Whaley Bridge opened in 1832 descending through four more inclines, the steepest being 1 in 7 (14.3%). The highest part of the line was at Ladmanlow, a height of 1,266 feet (386m). For comparison, the present-day highest summit in England is Ais Gill at 1,169 feet (356m) on the Settle–Carlisle line, although the remaining, freight-only, stub of the CHPR at Dowlow Lime Works reaches a height of 1,250 feet (381m).