Of all the tales - tragic, humorous, ghostly or tall - that have grown up around the legendary Settle-Carlisle Railway, the most remarkable is the story of how it was built and how it has survived against the odds.

According to their logbooks, the skills and ingenuity of Victorian engineers constructing this direct link to Scotland, through the bleakly beautiful, rugged and inhospitable wilderness of the Yorkshire dales, were stretched to their limits. Between 1869 and 1875 they battled against everything the grim elements could throw at them, including bitterly cold gales and more than 100 inches a year of rain and snow. They tackled the geological obstacles of high hills, deep valleys and gorges, great rock scars, peat bogs, potholes and a “porridge” called “boulder clay”. And 72 miles of double track, 20 major viaducts and 14 tunnels later the railway was in business.

Yet a bitter feud between the Midland and North Western Railway Companies over access rights to the line all but scuppered the venture and in recent times only a public outcry saved it from both the threat of closure and an attempt by the Government to sell it in 1986. Having survived all this - a fairly frequent service now runs along it and popular steam engines at weekends - it now faces the unknown quantity of privatisation.

To stimulate economic development in the railway “corridor,” a public and private sector initiative, The Settle-Carlisle Railway Development Company has been set up. One of its projects, funded by North Yorkshire County Council, has been to work with local teachers on a pack about the railway. Aimed at key stage 2-3 pupils (key stage 4 material is in preparation), the pack draws on a range of documentation and contains How They Built the Settle-Carlisle Railway by local historian, W R Mitchell; games and ideas for the development of data-based software; a list of related resources such as a video, books, and audio tapes of porters and drivers who worked on the line. It also outlines two environmental trails.

Trail one begins at Settle station, where one of the participating teachers, John Lassey, head of Hellifield Primary School, tells pupils about the line’s construction and the 1910 Hawes Junction disaster, when gas lights in a passenger train burst into flames as it collided with another train. Nine people died.

Then it’s full steam ahead to the splendid isolation of Ribblehead Viaduct amid barren moorland. Gazing up in awe at its 24 soaring arches on a still and sunny November day, you can imagine how, if an embankment had been built instead, westerly gales would have forced trains off the line.

Close by is the site of a shanty town, Batty Green, once notorious for its appalling conditions. Around 2,000 imported “navvies,” miners and their families occupied its wooden huts, and drinking and fighting were rife, with sometimes fatal consequences: “Some men staggering from the beer houses . . . rested their heads on a rail (and) were decapitated by the first train the following day” (W R Mitchell).

We beat a path through the Three Peaks - Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough - to the infamous Blea Moor tunnel 500 feet below the surface of the moor. The tunnel took five years to excavate. Quite the opposite problem faced the engineers when they came to Dandry Mire bog, which sucked in 250,0003m of “quarry bottoms” in two years, making it impossible to build an embankment. They finally admitted defeat and built a viaduct.

Trail two begins with a poem at the tombstone of John Griffith Owen in the graveyard at Settle church. By Victorian poet Twistleton, it records the 19-year-old Owen’s tragic death in 1873 by the “fell blow” of a crane. A plaque in the church entrance, partly paid for by fellow workmen, commemorates the 200 navvies “who lost their lives in constructing the railway works”.

Next stop is the enormous circular Hoffman kiln on the outskirts of the town, from which lime was transported by rail. Here Mr Lassey explains the principles of limestone burning and of the coal hoist mechanism which used water as a counterweight. For Tom Sample, a former Hellifield pupil, the kiln and its predecessors, “three big bell kilns in the ground,” were “brilliant” - although this opinion may have been reinforced by the fact that “Mr Lassey nearly chucked us in and told us they were the last giants’ toilets in the country”.

The stories, many of them on tape, captured the imaginations of Mr Lassey’s pupils to such an extent that they still have vivid memories of the project several months later. Laura Phillip recounts the tales of former porter, Derek Soames, with particular relish. The railway opened up a vast market locally for livestock and he had to cope with “a goat which was bleating badly so he milked it,” a “lion which swiped out and nearly took his nose off,” and a circus which requested the return of an electrocuted elephant’s feet to make umbrella stands. She was also intrigued by the ghost story of George Horner, former signalman at the remote Blea Moor box, who once followed a man “who didn’t leave a single footprint” in fresh snow.

The children agreed that “the walks and doing plays afterwards were the best,” Tom having been “the man that got my leg chopped off in the Blea Moor Tunnel” (when a horse-drawn truck ran over it). In addition, they rewrote stories, produced illustrated graph work about the heights and lengths of viaducts, tunnels and arches, and did paintings and cross-stitch designs.

Since the line passes through the Ribble watershed, ascends the fells to England’s highest mainline station at Dent, then descends from Ais Gill under the towering cliff of Wild Boar Fell to the river Eden and Carlisle, field trips can be organised to study development and change in human and natural landscapes.

There is also plenty for the geology student, ranging from the limestone pavement at Ribblehead to red sandstone cuttings in the fertile Eden Valley.

To introduce teachers to the pack, “How to Settle” courses will be run in Settle on March 15 and 16, fee Pounds 40. Participants will go on the trails and can purchase the wider range of resources available to build on the mini-pack, which has been sent free to schools in Cumbria and North Yorkshire. It costs Pounds 15 to other schools from: SCRD, Watershed Mill, Langcliffe Road, Settle, North Yorkshire BD24 9LR. Tel: 0729 822007.

o Further information from John Lassey on 0729 850215