Category:Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway

Magnus Volk, the Volks Electric Railway, and the Daddy-Long-Legs (Meccano Magazine, 1937) [image info]

The Museum lobby has a model of the "Daddy Long-legs" carriage on display in Arch One, along with a framed poster for the railway.

The "Daddy Long-legs" was the world's first (and probably only) underwater electric railway, drawing electrical power from overhead electrical cables, and returning the electric current through its metal tracks, and, to a lesser extent, through the surrounding seawater.

Swimming alongside the Daddy Long-Legs was said to be a "stimulating" experience.

The Railway

The Brighton to Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway (known locally as the Daddy Long-legs) was an unusual sea-going railway that resembled a cross between an electric train and a mobile pier. Its engineer was R. St.George Moore, who went on to design the Palace Pier

The railway was built by Magnus Volk, in order to extend the reach of the existing Volk's Electric Railway Eastward.

The railway got around the problem of a lack of available seafront land by having its two sets of parallel rails set some distance from land, and by setting its passenger compartment on top of four large stilts connected to four shrouded, weighted pugs that ran long the underwater track.

History

Construction started in June 1894, and the railway was opened in late November 1896.

The storm in early December 1896 that destroyed the Chain Pier (which was due to be disassembled anyway) also wrecked the Daddy Longlegs’ landing stage and overturned the car. Volks managed to get the line rebuilt and it reopened in July 1897.

In January 1901, work began on extending the set of groynes that provided the Brighton region's coastline with some protection from erosion, and these new barriers extending out to sea necessarily intersected the railway track. That was the end of the railway, and the railway's single car, Pioneer, was eventually sold for scrap in 1910.