Queensland is a state in northeastern Australia. Its state capital is Brisbane. It was originally part of the British Colony of New South Wales, but it became a separate colony, named in honour of Queen Victoria, in 1859.

 The 1865 completion of a northern line from Cockermouth (Wordsworth's birthplace) to Penrith (where the young Dorothy lived for a time after the death of their mother) stimulated speculation about, and efforts to, extend rails across the central Lake District.  These included speculation about an extension to Ambleside in 1875 (opposed by Ruskin) and the effort to connect the northern line to Buttermere in 1883 (opposed by Rawnsley).

When a station opened here in 1865 on the Cockermouth-Penrith line, a parliamentary bill--opposed by Rawnsley--arose for connecting Braithwaite and Buttermere in order to connect quarries important to mining.

The proposed 1844 railway extension from Kendal, protested by Wordsworth, ended here in 1847. The goal had originally been Ambleside, and this would be entertained again later in the century.  Protested by Somervell and Ruskin, this scheme never went forward.

The 1844 proposed railway would have gone this far, but for reasons of cost the line terminated at Windermere when opened in 1847.  Yet expansions of other lines around the Lake District led to speculation in 1875 about extending the line from Windermere to Ambleside, with an eye on further expansion.  Robert Somervell, a local shoe manufacturer, raised a protest and soon gained the pen of Ruskin for his cause.  Ruskin wrote letters to the papers , and in 1876 wrote a preface--which you have read--for Somervell's A Protest Against the Extension of the Railways i

Link from the proposed  Carlile-Ambleside railway to Kendal.

The town that the proposed 1844 railway extension sought to connect to the Carlile and Lancaster line via Oxenholme; a line was also proposed from Kendal to Ambleside.