Mr Hendersons Railway

In the late 19th Century British officers, garrisoned at Gibraltar, enjoyed the campo and travelled as far as Gaucin but the roads were narrow with potholes and craters and the carriages often had to navigate around boulders fallen on the road from the hillsides above. It took many hours, sometimes days, to even reach Gaucin. In 1890 a British engineer, John Morrison, with the backing of his friend, Sir Alexander Henderson, later Lord Faringdon, proposed a single-track rail line between Algeciras and Bobadilla where it would meet the mainline to Madrid. The pair had previously been responsible for building railways through atrocious country in South America so had little difficulty in Spain.