Two goals from veteran striker Bob Taylor helped to ease Cheltenham Town's concerns regarding their league position but consigned bottom of the table Carlisle to their tenth consecutive defeat.
New Cheltenham manager John Ward - who had a spell as a coach at Carlisle earlier in the season - will hope that this result will signal the start of better fortunes for his team.
His counterpart Paul Simpson looks set for a long hard winter as despite a determined performance from his team, they still prop up the Division Three table with only five points.
It looked a lot more rosy for Carlisle when they grabbed the lead in the 19th minute when a poor clearance from Northern Ireland international Grant McCann landed at the feet of Chris Billy.
His shot rebounded off Richard Forsyth and fell to the Cumbrians player-manager Simpson, who smashed a shot from 20 yards in off the crossbar.
Simpson went off to celebrate with the 250 Carlisle fans, who had made the long journey south to cheer on their team in spite of everything.
The visitors were indebted to on-loan Everton midfielder Steven Schumacher in the 28th minute, who cleared shots from first Taylor then John Brough off the line after McCann had struck the post with a well-taken free-kick.
The equaliser did arrive five minutes later when a long ball from Brough was headed by Mark Yates into the path of Forsyth. His well-directed throughball found Taylor, who made no mistake with an angled drive from 15 yards.
Taylor scored his second five minutes into the second half when he met a cross from Martin Devaney at the near post, and McCann almost made it three straight away when he forced Matthew Glennon to make a flying save from a 25-yard free-kick.
Carlisle battled hard in the closing stages without finding a way to threaten the Cheltenham goal and it was another long journey home for those loyal Carlisle fans.
"I've been telling my team since last Tuesday that this is a hard-working Carlisle team and when we went 1-0 down it was a major call on my team to get back," said Ward after the match.
"But they deserve plenty of credit for this result and this performance. In the second half we looked a very thorough, positive, forward thinking team." Carlisle boss Simpson said: "We had a good first half but conceded a soft goal just before the break. Then we let Cheltenham get on top of us for the first ten minutes of the second half.
"We should have had a penalty for a clear handball near the end."