The Isle of Man Steam Railway Douglas to Peel line started way back in July 1873 and was the first railway line on the Isle of Man. Its history has been well documented over the years and some interesting reading can be found at Isle of Man Railway Supporters Association Isle of Man Railways and Isle of Man Disused Railway Station
In geocaching terms this trail was first planned, set and placed by Happy Humphrey in December 2007 and consisted of 16 traditional and a Mystery Bonus cache (the coordinates for which are in 4 of the traditional caches along the route) covering a distance of 10 miles from Peel to the Quarter Bridge near Douglas. This is a very popular walk for locals and tourists alike and well worth doing by geocachers just for these caches alone, as well as the beautiful scenery and interesting pieces of railway memorabilia along the route.
However, with “Power Trails” becoming very popular with geocachers around the world, two local caching teams (twoofnine and Stillroaming) decided, as a tribute to Happy Humphrey and the Heritage Trail, they would expand the series and place an additional 63 caches along the route as well as keeping the original caches where possible and therefore making this the first official “Power Trail” on the Isle of Man with a possible 90 plus caches en route.
Hopefully local cachers will enjoy the challenge and maybe some of our visiting geo-tourists will be encouraged to have a go at this and all the other great caches on the Isle of Man.
The hides are a mixture of 35mm film containers, 150ml tubes and a few larger caches, which can be used for trading and swapping trackables. If you use the hints then the finds will be very easy, but the real challenge here is how many can you find in a day. There are other caches en route too which may add to your total.
For those who complete the whole series twoofnine have designed a badge for your profile page, details of which can be found in the first and last listing in the series.
Good luck and happy caching.
Originally - Heritage Trail 01: The Train now departed
Extract from original cache page.
Train services from Peel to Douglas started in July 1873, but due to economic conditions and cutbacks the passenger trains ceased in 1968 and the tracks were finally lifted in 1974-76. During the life of the railway the trains were very popular: in 1920 over 1.6 million passenger journeys took place on the Isle of Man Railways.
Once the line had been permanently closed, the Department of Transport bought the trackbed and eventually opened the "Steam Heritage Trail", to be used by walkers, cyclists and horse riders. So the loss of the Peel Line has left a fine route from Peel as far as the Quarterbridge on the edge of Douglas.
Hopefully, this trail of caches will encourage more people to walk (or cycle) the whole ten mile route. Along the way, there are clues (written - not very prominently - at the top of two of the cache log sheets) which will give you the location of the final cache and its treasure. None of the microcaches has room for swaps, but all should be easy to find so they won't cause you to get annoyed and frustrated, and should allow you time to walk from end to end in daylight at any time of the year. The majority of the 16 microcaches are 9 cm long waterproof plastic cylinders, hung on the back of trees or posts - but there are some variations to keep you on your toes! Note that you'll need a sharp pen or pencil, as a the smaller microcaches contain no writing implement, although the majority do.
If you're attempting the whole trail, it's level and mostly sheltered but there are sections that get very muddy. Also, a couple of caches require a short scramble up a steep bank so choose hiking boots for footwear.
This was the first cache in the original series and is still accessed by a short walk along the River Neb from Peel station.
The cache is a plastic cylinder, hidden about 10 feet from the path, under twigs.
WELL DONE TO 'SOUTHERN NOMAD': FIRST TO COMPLETE THE ORIGINAL SERIES (17 caches) IN A DAY (20 JAN 08)