The Incline presented a considerable civil engineering challenge and the man in charge
of operations was Captain William Scarth Moorsom. Under him were over a thousand
'navvies' - the infamous Victorian construction workers. The contemporary perception
of Victorian railway navvies was that they were hard working, hard drinking rough-necks.
It was usual for them to tramp from working to working with their tools on their
backs and many are known to h a v e worked for years without eve r sleeping in a
bed. Many who left home to become railway navvies were never seen or heard of by
their families again. Perhaps somewhat unkindly, a French observer described railway
names in England at the time as "fit for any- thing, good for nothing"... During
the course of the Incline's construction, a popular watering hole for them was The
Malt Shovel at Vigo. It seems to have been a particularly rough establishment. One
Joshua Hollier, a 22 years old needle sharpener, was murdered after a drinking bout.
On the 17th September 1840, after incalculable sweat and toil by both men and horses,
the work on the incline was completed.
