The Great Eastern Railway (GER) promoted the idea of a tramway between Wisbech and Upwell, and permission to construct the line was obtained by W L Ollard in 1873, but he failed to raise the finance to build it. The GER were still in favour of the line, and authorisation to construct it was enshrined in the Great Eastern Railway Act 1881. As well as carrying passengers, it was always intended as a freight line as well, and to this end it was built to standard gauge, with bull-head rails, rather than the tramway rails favoured by many British tramways. This allowed standard goods wagons to run along it, without the need to tranship goods into wagons suitable for operating on tramway rails. In order to reduce the costs of construction, it was built under the provisions of the Tramway Act, with the support of the Board of Trade, to demonstrate that such construction could bring railways to rural areas which could not otherwise benefit from the new mode of transport. The process of buying land began in February 1882, and building the tramway across the flat terrain proceeded rapidly. The section from Wisbech to Outwell Basin was opened on 20 August 1883, with the extension onwards from Outwell to Upwell Depot opening on 8 September 1884. The initial success of the line was one of the factors that resulted in the passing of the Light Railways Act 1896, under which many more rural lines were built.