So Inclined Traditional Geocache
Old Joe: I removed the cache when someone reported that it had been muggled.
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Easy path along the old railway line suitable for bikes and buggies
Park at either Hopton Top (limited parking by the road side) or at Middleton Top where there is parking and an information centre.
The cache is on the route of the Cromford and High Peak Railway. The route was needed to transport limestone and other minerals mined in the area.
The railway opened in May 1830. The line rises to over 380 metres above sea level. In nine places trucks had to be pulled up steep slopes either by fixed steam engines or by horses winding around a capstan.
The Hopton Incline to Hopton Top was notoriously difficult for locomotives to climb. In 1903 the gradient was eased to 1:14.
A little piece of family history.. My great grandparents Charles and Martha Young lived in a cottage at Hopton Top for a short time when Charles worked on the railway. Six weeks before Christmas 1905 Charles developed a nagging cough. He was feeling particularly ill on Christmas Eve but insisted on going to work. When he returned in the evening Martha was bathing the children. Charles was coughing badly and complained of feeling hot. Martha tried to cool him with a damp cloth but he started to cough up blood. Desperate, Martha ran up the railway track to another cottage to beg for help. The couple would not come with her. When Martha returned alone Charles was dead. The diagnosis was galloping consumption. This was the old name for tuberculosis.
Martha never celebrated Christmas for the rest of her life. The rest of her life was also as eventful as that of a Catherine Cookson heroine.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Oevqtr raq