BLACKBURN'S town fathers were beginning to realise, in the 1840s, that railways were crucial to the future expansion of the textile industry.

Four key industrialists were chiefly responsible for bringing a line to Blackburn - Henry Hornby, Charles Potter, Eccles Shorrock and James Kay.

And as library volunteer Jeffrey Booth has noted, from W D Tattersall's book The Blackburn Darwen and Bolton Railway for the Cotton Town heritage website, this led to a momentous ceremony on September 27, 1846.

The first sod for the line was cut in a field close to the present-day Darwen Station by William Hornby.

Work progressed steadily until engineers encountered Robert Smalley, of Hey Hold Farm, who attacked them with a spade. While this delayed the project, the lines were eventually laid across his land.

Four thousand or so were engaged on the arduous task, employed from dawn till dusk for a gold sovereign.

Moonshine made in illegal stills fuelled the workforce and it was not long before the copious drinking claimed its first casualty. One railway worker was responsible for the murder of a tailor at Blacksnape.

Another recorded tale describes how extra police had to be drafted in at Turton to quell the rowdy railwaymen.

One the main challenges for the initiative was constructing a tunnel underneath the moors. Five men lost their lives and the ecological impact was immense.

The Roxborough Calico Print Works saw their clear hill waters turned a muddy brown, a change which saw the railway backers have to fork out £5,000 in compensation.

Brandwood Pit was also troubled by flooding as vertical shafts were sunk, varying in depth between 40 and 260 feet.

Tattersall recorded that the line was opened from Blackburn to Sough on August 3, 1847 and from Sough to Bolton on June 12, 1848. At 7am a regular service train made up of eight carriages packed to capacity left Blackburn, drawn by a Hawthorn 0-6-0.

On the opening run to Bolton a band accompanied passengers and the journey was completed, uneventfully, in 38 minutes. The journey by stagecoach would have taken nearly three hours. One notable feature was an iron bridge to carry the line over the canal at Hollinbank.