The Snaefell Mountain Railway reveals the Isle of Man's forgotten tourism boom – and serves as a gateway to the seven mythological kingdoms.

Our train was crawling slowly up a steeply pitched valley that felt hidden from the rest of the world. To the right of the tracks, the Laxey River dropped suddenly, turning south to vanish into the Irish Sea. Here and there, sheep grazed and the soft scent of gorse wafted into the carriage. I gazed out as the vegetation disappeared and we rattled higher – higher – as the train spiralled around the mountain's bald summit.

A howling wind greeted our arrival at the top station, and I looked out to a sea that had turned to thrashing waves. The view stretched even further. According to folklorists, the summit is where one can glimpse seven kingdoms, including those that aren’t acknowledged by any map. I could see England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man, but up there you can also see that of Manannán mac Lir, son of the sea and king of the otherworld in Gaelic mythology, and the kingdom of heaven. For believers, the journey is an imagined pilgrimage.

Snaefell, or "Snow Mountain", is no ordinary peak and the Snaefell Mountain Railway is no ordinary train. I was on the Isle of Man, atop the island's highest peak, having ridden the only electric mountain railway in the British Isles. The tradition to ride to the top is a profound one, but, equally, to learn about the train is to build a vivid portrait of the Isle of Man. For the railway's story is one of unemployment and migration, engineering milestones and the rise of Victorian-era tourism, and it still looms large in the legend of the island, revealing the independent character at the very heart of Manx life.

The day had begun at the Manx Museum, the Isle of Man's national museum in Douglas. The former hospital building is a nostalgic place by nature, with galleries dedicated to Viking silver hoards, Celtic crosses and Tynwald (the oldest continuous parliament in the world) helping distil the island's 10,000-year history into bite-sized nuggets. Chiefly, I was interested in the railway's timeline, which led me to the social history galleries and an encounter with Katie King, the museum's curator of art and social history.

"In the mid-19th Century, the Isle of Man was in a mess," she said, as we symbolically slipped back in time. "There was low population growth, no employment, exponential immigration and the island's coal industry was collapsing. The [Isle of] Man government was alarmed by all of this."

At the time, this was a familiar lament across many communities in the British Isles. But the Isle of Man, a UK Crown Dependency, had a secret weapon: its influential lieutenant governor, Sir Henry Brougham Loch, 1st Baron Loch. In office from 1863 to 1882, Loch realised the island's potential as a destination for spa tourism. Seaside holidays were booming in Queen Victoria's era and the Isle of Man, with sandy beaches and bracing waters, was primed to reap the rewards.

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