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@Ludd
That's an interesting, if brief, article on the pneumatic railway.
It doesn't quite tally with the version I've heard, which related to a longer stretch of line along the route of the old Surrey Canal. Apparently, this longer railway was also atmospheric but it was driven overground by a paddle under the carriage that ran along a tube, with air being pumped either way through the tube, and the slot in the top of the tube (through which the stem of the paddle fitted) was kept fairly airtight by a leather flap which was kept supple by the application of tallow so the pressure of the air kept the slot shut but allowed the stem to peep through.
Unfortunately, so the story goes, the soft leather proved to be attractive to rats, and they kept entering the tube to eat the leather. Each morning when the air pumps were started up, someone would stand at the down-wind end of the pipe with a sack to catch the well-fed rats as they were blown out. But I am told that the railway owners eventually conceded that the rats had them beat, and conventional trains took over.