E

East & West Yorkshire Junction Railway

Opened in 1848 between Knaresborough and Poppleton Junction, it was worked by the York, Newcastle & Berwick Railway before being absorbed by the York & North Midland Railway in 1851.

East & West Yorkshire Union Railway

Opened between Stourton Junction, Leeds, and the Lofthouse and Newmarket Colleries in 1891, it remained independent until absorbed by the London & North Eastern Railway in 1923.

East Coast Main Line/ECML

Even before grouping, the railway companies on the East Coast, the Great Northern, North Eastern and North British collaborated as the ‘East Coast Group of Companies’ to provide a through service from Aberdeen, reached over the Caledonian Railway, and Edinburgh to London King’s Cross. Through running to Edinburgh was achieved in 1862, and until 1870, the Scotch Railways Agreement meant that Edinburgh was the preserve of King’s Cross and Glasgow of Euston. Until 1877, trains had to reverse at York, and until 1906, at Newcastle, making high speed through services more difficult. To ensure a uniformly high standard, the three companies commissioned special rolling stock for the through trains between London and Scotland, including elliptical roofed carriages designed by Sir Nigel Gresley in 1905.

After the Forth Bridge opened in 1890, through running between Aberdeen and London was possible, and the line was shorter and more easily graded than the rival West Coast route. Between the two world wars, the Hertford Loop and the line between York and Darlington were quadrupled, but even today, much of the southern and northern section of the line remain double, with fast trains being hampered by suburban and goods services. In 1983, a 13mile diversion opened near Selby to allow coal mining, and in 1991, electrification completed to Leeds and Edinburgh, although somewhat cheaply so that high winds affect reliable running.

The route saw Britain’s first long-distance non-stop train, the Flying Scotsman, and in 1935, the London & North Eastern Railway introduced the first streamlined trains in the British Isles. Post-nationalisation, the line was home to the Deltic diesel-electric locomotives that provided a massive increase in traction power, and then to the Inter-City 125 or High Speed Train. When electrification was completed allowing running of the Inter-City 225 trains capable of 140 mph (225 kmph) in service, and much higher on test, the line became Britain’s fastest until completion of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2007.

East Lincolnshire Railway

Connecting Grimsby to Louth and Boston, the East Lincolnshire was incorporated in 1846, but even before it opened throughout in 1848, it was leased by the Great Northern, and on grouping passed to the London & North Eastern Railway.

Eastern Counties Railway

Authorised in 1836, the line was intended to run from an inconveniently-situated terminus at Bishopsgate in London to Great Yarmouth via Colchester, Ipswich, Diss and Norwich, but stopped at Colchester in 1843. In 1844, it was forced to change its gauge from 5ft to the standard gauge. The rest of the route was built by three separate companies and not completed until 1849. Although through running rights were maintained, relationships were uneasy until the three companies merged in 1862. The ECR was also threatened by the Northern & Eastern and the Norfolk Railway, which built a route from London to Norwich via Cambridge, but eventually an agreement was reached with these rivals. When George Hudson became chairman in 1845, he attempted to use the ECR to beat the Great Northern in building a line to the north. When his empire collapsed, the company survived with difficulty.

The ECR failed to make the most of the traffic potential of its area and its attempts to establish packet steamer services from Harwich failed. In 1862 the various companies feeding into the ECR merged with it to form the Great Eastern, but it took more than a decade for the company’s financial situation to improve.

East Kent Light Railway

Built under Light Railway Orders approved in 1911 and 1912, the East Kent Light Railway initially ran between Canterbury Road in Wingham and Sandwich Road in Shepherdswell and opened in 1912 to freight, with passenger services following in 1916. An extension from Shepherdswell to Richborough was built but not opened. It survived to become part of the Southern Region of British Railways, but was almost immediately closed. Nevertheless, part of the line is being preserved.

East Lancashire Railway

Formed in 1845 on the merger of two smaller companies, it soon acquired others, developing a network that was roughly ‘T’shaped, running northward from Clifton Junction on the Manchester-Bolton line of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway to Bury and Accrington, dividing eastward to Burnley and Colne, and westward to Balckburn, Preston and Liverpool. There were also a number of branches. Overall route mileage was 88 miles. Headquarters and workshops were at Bury.

While the ELR and the LYR shared Tithebarn Street station in Liverpool, and the ELR connected with it as eight points, including running powers from Clifton Junction in to Manchester, the two companies had an uneasy relationship. The situation worsened when the ELR established a through route via Colne and the Midland Railway into Yorkshire, with even a confrontation and the dispute was not resolved until the two companies placed the Clifton Junction-Salford line under joint ownership in 1854. In 1855, the ELR refused to allow services by the LYR-backed Blackburn Railway over its lines unless an exorbitant toll was paid, but again the two companies shared ownership of the Blackburn Railway. The difficult situation was finally resolved by a merger of the ELR and LYR in 1859.

The ELR had many of its lines on the slopes of the Pennines and these were marked by steep gradients. Although one of the first to introduce continuous braking, in 1860 an excursion train composed of former ELR carriages broke in two on the gradient from Bury to Haslingden, and the carriages ran downhill, crashing into another train with the deaths of ten people.

Many of its lines have been closed, although the Bury-Rawtenstall section remains as the preserved East Lancashire Railway, and the Radcliffe-Bury line, electrified by the LYR in 1916, is part of the Manchester Light Rapid Transit system.

East London Railway

The East London Railway was authorised in 1863 to connect all of the lines running into London from the north, east and south. It utilised the Thames Tunnel built by Sir Marc Brunel between 1825 and 1843. Opened between New Cross and Shoreditch, a distance of 5¼ miles, in 1876, it also provided access to Liverpool Street. At its southern end, it connected with the London, Brighton & South Coast, London, Chatham & Dover and South Eastern Railways at New Cross, but failed to provide any substantial link at the northern end. No rolling stock was owned by the ELR, and services were worked by other companies. It was leased in 1882 by a committee of five railways, the LBSCR, LCDR, SER, Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways, with the Great Eastern joining in 1885. It was electrified on the third and fourth rail system in 1913, after which the MR operated the trains, but ownership passed to the Southern Railway in 1925.

The line did not pass to London Transport until nationalisation in 1948. In 1955, it lost a wagon hoist at Spittalfields used by freight traffic, and in 1966 it lost the connection to Liverpool Street. It has since become part of the Transport for London Overground network and is being extended north to Dalston and south to East Dulwich.

Edinburgh

Scotland’s capital was already a tightly built up area by the time the railways arrived, while the topography included high ridges running from east to west. There was substantial passenger traffic to be had from the affluent areas around the city centre, but goods traffic depended on being able to reach the port and industrial area of Leith to the north, and the coal mining areas to the south. The first railway was the horse-drawn Edinburgh & Dalkeith, which was extended to the docks at Leith, but which was effectively a tramroad. When the first steam railway, the Edinburgh & Glasgow reached the city, it stopped in the West End, then under construction, at Haymarket, with strong local opposition to any further advance eastwards, and it was not until the North British Railway arrived in 1846 that a short connecting line was built under the shadow of the Castle to a new joint station at Waverley, situated out of sight in a valley that divided the medieval Old Town from the Georgian New Town. The Edinburgh Leith & Granton Railway, next to be built, had its platforms at right angles to those of the NBY at Waverley and ran in tunnel under the New Town.

History repeated itself in 1848 when the Caledonian Railway reached Edinburgh, having to stop at the bottom of Lothian Road, close to the western end of Princes Street, which it named its terminus. Nevertheless, by 1850, the NBR provided a link to the north of England and eventually this became the East Coast Main Line, and the opening of a branch to Hawick later led the way through the Border Union Railway to Carlisle, giving the NBR a second route over the border and Edinburgh a second route to Carlisle, and south via the Midland Railway. The last major link in the network of railways in and around Edinburgh followed in 1890 with the completion of the Forth Bridge, which meant that the city sat astride the most direct route between Aberdeen and London.

Included in the Edinburgh network were a number of suburban and country branches, with lines opened to Polton and North Berwick in 1850, Peebles in 1855, Dolphinton in 1864, Penicuik in 1876 and Gullane in 1898. There was also a link line to Galashiels, while a light railway was opened to Gifford in 1901. Eventually, a number of routes of varying degrees of directness linked Edinburgh and Glasgow. In 1884, the NBR opened the Edinburgh & District Suburban Railway. The inner suburban railways soon suffered from competition from electric trams, and this was especially so of the EDSR, which was laid out as an oval and so often did not provide the most direct route between two points.

Most of these lines terminated at Waverley, which became every congested and needed rebuilding in 1890, and has been rebuilt again in 2007. A new station at Leith was opened to ease the pressure on Waverley, but Leith Central was not convenient for most of the passenger traffic, and especially not for the first-class traveller looking for an express. Both the NBR and the Caledonian built branches into the docks at Leith.

The NBR had two locomotive sheds in Edinburgh, at Haymarket and St Margaret’s, but after merging with the Edinburgh & Glasgow, it transferred most of its heavy work to Cowlairs at Glasgow.

Edinburgh lost many of its country and suburban branches after nationalisation, starting in the 1950s, although there had been closures as early as the 1930s, including the station at Turnhouse, Edinburgh’s Airport. Barton, Balerno and Leith all lost their branches, followed by the line to Bathgate, while the Beeching cuts resulted in the loss of the Waverley route from Carlisle, as well as the closure of Princes Street Station and the EDSR. Nevertheless, the Bathgate line was re-opened in 1986, and some new services have been opened on existing lines, sometimes for park and ride, but also to serve new developments such as that at South Gyle.

Electrification of the East Coast Main Line reached Edinburgh in 1991, and in 1993 the route from Carstairs to Edinburgh followed.

Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway

Although authorised in 1826, the Edinburgh & Dalkeith did not open until 1831, and was worked by horses except for a short gradient at Edinburgh worked by a stationary engine. Built by Robert Stephenson, the main traffic over the 8½ mile line, with a four mile branch to the docks at Leith, was coal, and customers provided their own wagons and horses. Passengers were carried, but tickets were never issued. It was acquired by the North British in 1845, with steam locomotives introduced the following year. Some claim that it was known as the ‘Innocent Railway’, but this is to confuse it with another railway that ran around Arthur’s Seat.

Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway

After the failure of earlier plans for a railway between Scotland’s two largest cities, the Edinburgh & Glasgow was approved in 1838 and opened in 1842. Designed by Grainger and Miller, it was designed for high speed running with gentle curves and easy gradients, which required extensive viaducts, cuttings and three long tunnels. At first, there was the possibility that it would have a 5ft 6in gauge, but it was eventually completed to standard gauge, while at Glasgow, a stationary engine hauled trains up to the terminus at Queen Street. Initially the railway competed with the Union Canal, but this was bought in 1847.

Such an important line soon attracted the attentions of other railway companies that saw it as providing a key link in their network, but it was not until 1865 that the North British succeeded in acquiring it. Meanwhile, the company took over the working of the Glasgow, Dumbarton & Helensburgh Railway in 1857, and constructed branches off its own line to Falkirk, Larbert and Lennoxtown. It connected with the Monklands Railways along its route, and acquired these the day before it passed into North British ownership.

Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway

Originally formed as the Edinburgh & Northern Railway, opened in stages between Burntisland, on the Forth coast of Fife, to Tayport, across the Tay from Dundee, between 1847 and 1850. Despite the title, it depended on train ferries to connect with Edinburgh at one end and Dundee at the other. It built some magnificent stations, including the southern terminus at Burntisland, but the line itself suffered from tight curves, although there were no severe gradients. On the southern bank of the Firth of Forth, the Edinburgh, Leith & Granton Railway, acquired by the ENR in 1847, provided a link between the North British Railway at Waverley, running through a steeply graded tunnel using cable-working to arrive at right angles to the NBR platforms. When the tunnel closed in 1868, traffic to and from Granton for the train ferries then used a route via Piershill Junction.

Isolation ended when a line was opened in 1848 from Ladybank to connect with the Scottish Central Railway at Hilton Junction, south of Perth. The following year, the name changed to the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway, but it was not merged into the North British Railway until 1862, and the train ferries survived until the bridges over the Tay and Forth were completed in 1878 and 1890 respectively. It was not until the Forth was bridged that trains could use the most direct route from Edinburgh and England to Aberdeen, which then gave the East Coast Group of Companies (see East Coast Main Line) a clear advantage.

Edmondson, Thomas, 1792-1851

Trained as a cabinet-maker, Edmondson’s Carlisle business failed and he joined the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway in 1836. He became station master at Milton (since renamed Brampton), where he soon realised that there was little revenue control with the existing fare collection systems. He prepared card tickets, all numbered and initially hand-written, until he could produce a simple ticket printing frame which was used with a wooden press to date the tickets using an inked ribbon. This elementary system was improved with the help of John Blaylock, a local clockmaker, producing an improved dating press in iron and a ticket printing machine with automatic feed.

In 1839, Edmondson moved to the Manchester & Leeds Railway, where he again introduced his fare collection system, before leaving to work with his son in Manchester in 1841 to set up his independent ticket production business. The business used the name of his son, John B Edmondson, and from the 1840s the system gradually spread over the whole British railway network. Companies paid a fixed annual royalty of 10s (50p) for every route mile. It did not disappear until British Rail switched to a new system in early 1990.

Electrification

While a full-sized battery-powered railway engine, Galvani, was demonstrated in London by Robert Davidson from Aberdeen in 1837, electrification in railway terms means trains powered by current picked up from either special rails or from overhead wires. Davidson’s Galvani was also demonstrated on the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway. A definite step towards the concept of electrification came in 1879, when Werner von Siemens demonstrated a locomotive drawing power from a third rail at the Berlin Exhibition of that year, and then brought his invention to London to demonstrate at the Crystal Palace in 1881 82. This was followed by three electric railways being built in the United Kingdom between 1883 and 1885: the Giant’s Causeway, Portrush & Bushmills and the Bessbrook & Newry Tramway in Ulster (now Northern Ireland), and the Volk’s Railway at Brighton, of which only the last survives.

Between 1890 and 1900, there were four more electric railways opened in Great Britain; the City & South London; Central London Railway; Waterloo & City; and the Liverpool Overhead Railway. Initially, these all used third rail electrification at 550-550 V dc. A significant advance was the invention in the United States by Frank Sprague of a system for controlling locomotives or self-propelled units, ‘multiple units’ in railway terms, operating in tandem or ‘multi ple’, in 1898. This meant that two or more units could be coupled together and still need just one driver. The first trials of this system in Britain was on the Central London Railway in 1901, while the first to order electric multiple unit trains was the Great Northern & City Railway that same year, although by 1903, the CLR was first to actually put such trains into service. It was soon followed by the Metropolitan District and by the Metropolitan Railway, although the latter electrified only its underground or sub-surface sections, with trains steam hauled once in the open and electric engines used instead of multiple units. It was from this time that the London Underground railways began using a central insulated negative rail for return current to avoid leakage from the return rails that could cause electrolytic corrosion of tunnel linings. It became the practice for the ‘live’ rail to be position outside the running rails.

Competition from electric street tramways was beginning to make inroads into the traffic for suburban steam railways, and electrification was seen as an effective counter-measure. The first such conversion from steam to electricity was the Mersey Railway in 1903, and the following year the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway electrified the first sections of its Liverpool-Southport line and the North Eastern Railway did the same with its North Tyneside system, which included the first electric goods trains on a British mainline.

The next stage was to consider using higher voltages, necessary if main line electrification was to be contemplated. The Midland Railway on its Lancaster-Morecambe-Heysham electrification in 1908, and from 1909 the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, both favoured 6,600/6,700 V ac overhead electrification, but the latter’s suburban plans were not completed until after the First World War. Meanwhile, the NER next used 1,500 dc overhead wiring for its heavy mineral trains in the North East.

There were distinct advantages and disadvantages to the different systems. Third rail direct current required less infrastructure work as bridges and tunnels could remain unchanged, but needed many more additional sub-stations. Overhead alternating current required fewer sub-stations, but overbridges and tunnels needed higher headroom while the trains themselves lost space to transformers.

Grouping enabled rationalisation of the extensive electrification plans for the three operators in the south of England, and with the London & South Western Railway the dominant company with a third-rail inner suburban network, it was this system that was adopted, even though the LBSCR overhead continued to be installed until completed in 1925. By 1923, there were 363 miles of electrified surface railway. Between the two world wars, the Southern Railway completed its suburban electrification and by 1939 towns from Portsmouth to Hastings, reached via Eastbourne, enjoyed main line electrified railways. Only the Great Western did not electrify any of its track mileage between the wars, but the London, Midland & Scottish and London & North Eastern systems were minor compared to those of the SR.

Up to this time, the railway companies had usually electrified using their own power stations, but a Committee on Main Line Railway Electrification, the Weir Committee, advocated using power from the newly created Central Electricity Board’s national grid. Nevertheless, the Weir Committee was lukewarm over electrification. It may have been influenced by the LMS and LNER, who felt that steam traction had still to exploit its full potential, and indeed, the electric trains of the day offered considerable improvement in running times on stopping and even on semi-fast services, but very little if any on fast non-stop services.

After nationalisation, electrification did not return to the agenda for some years as the railways struggled to overcome wartime arrears of maintenance. When it did, overhead electrification was decided upon, but because of the vast existing third-rail electrified network and the engineering costs, the new British Railways was happy to stick with third-rail for first the Kent Coast electrification schemes and then that to Bournemouth and, ultimately, Weymouth, as well as for some in-fill work such as the direct line to Hastings. The Modernisation Plan saw first electrification of the Eastern Region suburban services followed by the West Coast lines and the Glasgow suburban services, after which the longer-distance lines into Suffolk and Norfolk and the East Coast Main Line followed. All of this was completed by 1997, after which only a few isolated electrification schemes have been completed, of which the most important was that of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, although the Heathrow Express route also bought the overhead wires to Paddington.

Environmental concerns and fears over the availability and cost of fossil fuels have prompted renewed pressure for electrification in the UK, but another matter of concern has to be the high proportion of diesel trains, mainly freight but including some passenger trains, that continue to run ‘under the wires’.

Elliot, Sir John, 1898-1988

Elliot started life as a journalist, becoming assistant editor of the London Evening Standard after the First World War. Elliot was wooed away from journalism in 1925 to join the Southern Railway as public relations assistant to Sir Herbert Walker. In complete contrast to the career paths of modern PR people, he became assistant traffic manager in 1930 and in 1938 assistant general manager to Gilbert Szlumper. Post-war, he became acting general manager when Sir Eustace Missenden was appointed to the Railway Executive, and after nationalisation he became chief regional officer of the new British Railways Southern Region. He took over from Missenden in 1951 as chairman of the Railway Executive, and when that body was abolished, filled a number of other roles in the nationalised transport industries.

Ellis, Cuthbert Hamilton, 1909-1987

Famous both as a writer on railways, especially their history, and as a railway artist, C Hamilton Ellis, as he was usually known, was educated at Westminster before going to Oxford, although he did not complete his studies. He travelled extensively and wrote around thirty-six books, of which his best has been regarded as Railway Carriages in the British Isles, 1830-1914, published in 1965. His British Railway History, published as two volumes in 1954 and 1959, has been criticised for some errors and for his failure to tackle an immense subject as a satisfactory narrative, but remains a rare attempt at the overall subject.

He has been criticised for the lack of references in his work, which makes validation difficult.

Ellis, John, 1789-1862

Originally a Leicestershire farmer and corn merchant, he was one of the supporters of a plan for a railway linking the collieries of northern Leicestershire with the city of Leicester itself. With George Stephenson as engineer, the Leicester & Swannington Railway opened between 1832 and 1833. Ellis later became a director of the Midland Counties Railway, and when the Midland Railway was formed in 1844, he became deputy chairman under George Hudson. He managed to avoid involvement in Hudson’s financial manipulations, and took the lead in the acquisition of the Bristol & Gloucester in 1846. In 1849, on Hudson’s resignation, he became chairman of the Midland and was instrumental in rebuilding its fortunes and by building an extension to Hitchin in 1857, ensured that the company was able to reach London. He also found time to become Leicester’s MP between 1848 and 1852.

Euston

London’s first main line railway terminus, as with so many it was a joint effort between an engineer and an architect, in this case Robert Stephenson and Philip Hardwick. The station was built for what was then the London & Birmingham Railway, predecessor of the London & North Western Railway, and opened to the public on 20 July 1837. The station was built on the grand scale, unlike many other of London’s termini, distinguished by Hardwick’s famous Doric portico, while his son Philip Charles designed the Great Hall.

Originally, it had been intended that the terminus would have been at Islington, stopping close to the Regent’s Canal, to allow easy trans-shipment of freight to the London docks. Stephenson proposed a site further west, close to Marble Arch, but this was regarded as unsuitable for freight. The third suggestions, a site near Maiden Lane, close to King’s Cross, was rejected by the House of Lords. When the LBR board asked for economies to be made, Stephenson proposed a stop at Camden Town, again close to the Regent’s Canal. This received Parliamentary approval in 1833, but in 1834, the LBR decided to go closer to London and sought approval for a 1¼ mile extension to Euston Grove. This was clearly the right idea, but after crossing the Canal, the new site for the terminus could only be reached by a severe gradient that varied between 1 in 68 and 1 in 77. This meant that at first trains were intended to be hauled up by stationary engines, but in fact until the stationary engines were completed, locomotives had to move trains up the gradient with one locomotive at the head of the train and another as a ‘banker’ pushing from behind.

As was usual at the time, tickets were collected before the train reached the terminus, and in the case of LBR trains, this was at Camden Town, after which the trains were attached to the cable and descended the bank to Euston controlled by ‘bankriders’. Cable working only lasted until 1844, and the stationary locomotives were then exported to Russia. Afterwards, steam locomotives often needed assistance in the climb out of Euston, but for some years a pilot locomotive was used and this was disconnected near the bridge over the Canal until the LNWR returned to having a banking engine at the rear of the train.

From the start, the line into Euston was quadrupled, with the two eastern lines used for trains working to and from the terminus, and only these were fitted with the cable. The most westerly of the four tracks was used for locomotive workings, while the remaining line was effectively a carriage siding. The station itself had four roads, but only two of these had platforms, known as the ‘arrival stage’ and the ‘departure stage’. Railway offices were built on the eastern end of the large site that had been bought, for the western end was reserved for the Great Western Railway’s London terminus, as the main line from Bristol was planned to meet the LBR at Kensal Green. The seemingly inevitable arguments between the two companies over tenancy at Euston were compounded by the GWR’s insistence on the broad gauge, and it was as well that the GWR changed its mind and built its own terminus at Paddington. Although distinctly out of balance at first, the business at Euston eventually required all of the land to be used by the LNWR so having the GWR as a tenant, no matter how amicable, would have led to problems.

Another big ‘first’ for Euston was the first railway hotel, or indeed hotels, as two were built and opened in September 1839. Both four-storey buildings were designed by Hardwick; they were placed on either side of the portico and some way ahead of it. On the west, there was the Victoria Hotel, a ‘dormitory and coffee room’, unlicensed and cheerless. To the east, there was the more comfortable and up-market Euston Hotel, aimed at first-class passengers. In 1881, these were linked by a French-style hotel by another architect, which completely obscured the view of the portico, but compensated for the visual damage by earning itself a good reputation with travellers. Damaged by enemy action during the Second World War, the hotel was demolished in 1963 to enable work to start on reconstruction of the terminus.

The land that had been reserved for the GWR was soon taken over, in 1846, when growing traffic led the company to use it for trains to and from Yorkshire, leaving Lancashire trains with the original station. The change only lasted until the Great Northern Railway provided a more direct route to Yorkshire from 1850.

The enlarged hotel was not the only development in 1881, when further offices were found to be necessary, and so the steady development of Euston as a dark and dreary terminus with the architect’s original vision increasingly dominated by mundane extensions began.

The LNWR was growing into one of Britain’s leading railways, and Euston also had to expand further, even beyond the site that had been reserved for the GWR. Between 1887 and 1892, the station expanded westwards so that Cardington Street had to be diverted over a cemetery. Once completed, the enlarged Euston had fifteen platforms and two booking offices reached from different entrances, effectively having a station within a station, which caused considerable confusion and even caused comparison with the old Waterloo. Eventually, a cab yard extension and a new booking office put matters right.

Fifteen platforms was the maximum extent of the old Euston. Main line arrivals used 1 to 3; suburban trains, 4, 5 and 7; 6 handled arrivals and departures, as well as Royal trains; while 8 to 10 were used for parcels and peak period local trains; 11 was used for parcels, fish and milk; 12 to 15 were used for main line departures. Inserted between platforms 5 and 6 was a road known as the ‘horse box’ line. Behind the Great Hall were reception sidings, known as ‘the field’, and at the outer end of 10 and 11 was a carriage dock and a locomotive siding. There were also sidings between 10 and 11, 13 and 14, and alongside 15; while an engine turntable was at the outer end of 15.

Eventually, the LNWR decided that this altogether unworthy mess should be rebuilt and obtained parliamentary approval in 1900, but the Boer War had unsettled financial markets and so Euston continued to develop piecemeal. Nevertheless, between 1901 and 1906, the cutting between Camden and Euston was widened to allow an additional down line, and carriage sheds were built, eliminating the 5½ mile trip to Willesden depot. This meant that there were two up and two down lines in and out of the terminus. Before the outbreak of the First World War, the LNWR built a new booking concourse south of the Great Hall and the old booking offices converted to refreshment rooms.

Earlier quadrupling of the line north of Camden enabled Euston to start its first suburban service in 1879, running to Watford. The station was, and remains, predominantly a main line terminus. The connection with the London Underground that commuters find so convenient did not come until May 1907, when the City & South London tube was extended from the Angel, and a little over a month later the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway also provided a link. Earlier plans to extend the surface railway from Charing Cross to Euston had never come to fruition, but the tube was a workable substitute. The Metropolitan Railway responded in 1909 by renaming its nearest station Euston Square, even though it was at the northern end of Gower Street, but this was, and remains, some distance away, a good five minutes brisk walk without heavy luggage!

Meanwhile, the LNWR clearly decided that there was value in suburban traffic. In 1906, it announced plans to build a new electrified line alongside the existing lines between Euston and Watford. In 1909, the LNWR assumed the management of the North London Railway, and agreed with the Underground companies that the new outer suburban line would include LNWR electric trains to Euston and Broad Street, and Bakerloo tube trains running from Watford to the West End and Waterloo through a new tube connection from Queen’s Park to Paddington. Plans for the LNWR electric trains to use an underground loop at Euston to reverse were dropped, and instead these would run into the existing station where platforms 4, 5 and 7 were electrified on the third and fourth rail dc system. To avoid interference with main line traffic, the new electric lines would run in twin tubes at Primrose Hill and through borrowing junctions at Chalk Farm. A new single track tunnel would also be provided for a new line for empty carriage workings. The First World War delayed completion of these plans until 1922, the eve of grouping.

The LNWR was absorbed into the London, Midland & Scottish Railway in 1923. On 26 April the following year, a serious accident occurred when, at 7.53 am, a six-car electric train ran into the back of a Cup Final excursion train from Coventry, waiting at the up slow home signal. Five passengers in the excursion train were killed, and the motorman of the electric train was trapped in his cab for five hours. The inspecting officer found that the signalman had intended giving train out of section for an up Glasgow express standing on the fast line next to the excursion train, but had instead used his up slow instrument, so that the electric train was cleared to enter the section. The hapless motorman on the electric train did not see the waiting excursion train until he was within sixteen yards of it because smoke and steam under Park Street Bridge had obscured his view.

No major changes or improvements were made to the terminus by the new company until 1935, when it proposed to demolish the entire station and build a new one using low-cost government loans. It was to take another three decades with another war and nationalisation before this dream was realised. Some limited installation of colour light signalling was introduced, but overall, signalling, as with so much else at Euston, remained inadequate for such a great terminus.

The Second World War left Euston comparatively unscathed compared to other major London termini. In 1940 at the height of the Blitz, a bomb damaged the roof of the Great Hall, while another bomb landed between platforms 2 and 3 and wrecked offices and damaged part of the hotel.

Nationalisation saw no immediate change in the muddle that was Euston. British Railways spent a substantial sum on make do and mend, patching up as necessary, but lacking the means to completely rebuild the station. A large train arrival bureau was provided at the London end of platforms 1 to 3 in June 1951, with seats for 92 people to watch train information back-projected onto a 12-panel screen. The Great Hall and the shareholders’ meeting room were restored to Hardwick’s original designs between 1951 and 1953. Of more practical use, changes to the approaches were made in 1952 so that long trains in the arrival platforms did not obstruct the approaches to the other platforms. The track layout was simplified and the number of diamond crossings reduced from eighteen to five. Platforms 1 to 3, 6, 7 and 15 were lengthened by between 40ft and 190ft. In 1954 and 1955, platforms 12 to 15 were repositioned and widened.

The late 1950s saw changes to the booking offices, which were modernised with new suburban and main line booking offices, barely necessary with reconstruction looming, and London’s first fully-mechanised ticket-issuing machines. A ‘Continental Refreshment Terrace’ was opened on the concourse at the southern end of the departure platforms in 1958 – a feature that could only have appealed to the most determined enthusiasts as there was little appealing about the noise coupled with the aromatic blend of smoke, steam and diesel fumes.

On 6 August 1949, the new owners were reminded of Euston’s deficiencies by another accident. That morning, empty stock was being pushed into platform 12 when it was misdirected into platform 13, occupied by the carriages for the 8.37 am express to Manchester, running into it at around 5mph. The absence of track circuits meant that signalmen had nothing to show them which platforms were occupied, other than a slate in No2 box on which they were supposed to chalk up details of trains on platforms. It was not until 1952 that new signalling came, and this all had to be replaced when the new Euston was built, after just fifteen years.

When reconstruction came, it was for a new all-electric railway, with the initial electrification planned for Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool services, with those to Carlisle and Glasgow in the distant future. It marked the end of the old Euston, hardly loved by the passenger, but it also meant the end of the Great Hall which could not be accommodated in the new terminus, and of the portico, although the demolition contractor had the foresight to carefully number the stones. The cost of preserving the portico and re-erecting was considered too high, and the lack of a suitable site for its reconstruction was another factor, despite widespread public protest.

During rebuilding, services continued to run. The work moved across the station from east to west. Temporary structures were built, including ticket offices and the amenities expected by passengers. Some services were diverted to other stations at times, but Euston never completely closed. The new station accommodated no less than twenty platforms, of which fifteen were for passengers, while platforms 8 to 10 had both conductor rails and overhead ac wires. No longer were there arrival and departure platforms for main line trains, all, except the overnight sleepers from Scotland were turned around in the same platform, adopting a practice that almost all other termini had adopted many years before. The first main line electric trains started operating in November 1965, and the full electric service began early the following January. It was not until late 1968 that the new passenger areas were completed.

Exeter

If Bristol was the gateway to the West Country, Exeter was the gateway to the South-West, and as such was to be served by both the Great Western Railway from Paddington and Bristol, and by the London & South Western Railway from Waterloo and Salisbury. The broad gauge Bristol & Exeter Railway reached the city in 1844, and the GWR reached the city over its tracks and then continued through the city’s main station at St David’s, on a riverside location on the outskirts, to Plymouth using the lines of the South Devon Railway. From Exeter, the South Devon lines also reached Kingswear, across the river from Dartmouth, while the rival L&SWR headed north to North Devon, although it also built and operated the branch to Exmouth, which rapidly became what almost amounted to a suburban line.

By 1862, St David’s had become an important junction and, for the next thirty years, interchange point between broad and standard gauge, which did little to expedite traffic through the city, although it was spared the worst of the problems that afflicted Gloucester, possibly because there was less interchange traffic given the overlap of the LSWR and GWR networks in the area.

While the LSWR station at Queen Street, later renamed Exeter Central, was in the centre of the city, it entailed a steep descent to St David’s, and in the opposite direction a steep climb away from the GWR station. The opening of a competing LSWR line inland via Okehampton to Plymouth in 1876 produced the oddity of London-Plymouth trains through St David’s travelling in opposite directions, with the GWR insisting on a compulsory stop for its rival’s services.

St David’s was rebuilt twice, once in 1864 and again between 1911 and 1914. The LSWR attempted to build a line by-passing the station in 1905, but was successfully opposed by the GWR, but the Southern Railway did obtain Parliamentary approval for a new route in 1935, but the Second World War and then nationalisation prevented this being built.

Express trains

The term ‘express’ pre-dates the railways and applied to a fast messenger or message being sent urgently. It was first adopted by the railways for a train chartered for the ‘express’ use of an individual or party. It was not until 1844 that the current meaning of the word first applied, when used by the London & Brighton Railway, predecessor of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway for public services by fast trains between Victoria and Brighton. The Great Western was next, with Paddington to Exeter trains running at an average speed of 43mph from May 1845.

The higher speeds of express trains raised objections that they were more expensive to operate than ordinary trains and, given the state of technology at the time, more dangerous. They certainly clashed with ordinary trains given primitive signal technology and the paucity of multiple lines on the early railways. The GWR expresses ran without speed-related accidents throughout the late 1840s and 1850s, while the Great Northern, which introduced them in 1852, was less successful. While the concept faded and speeds were reduced, a resurgence of competition ensured that expresses returned to Britain’s railways, and supplements were charged in return for the convenience of shorter journey times and to meet the higher costs of operation. The Midland Railway led the way by abolishing supplements in 1859, and by 1870, all of the companies north of London had followed suit. In Europe, supplements continued to be charged, often at quite high rates, well into the twentieth century. The British definition of an express was set initially as a train running at an average speed of 40mph or higher, while that for Europe was set at 29mph or higher, until in the early 1900s the concept gained acceptance in France with a number of trains running at 50mph plus.

Between the wars, the GWR’s Cheltenham Spa express, popularly known as the ‘Cheltenham Flyer’, set a record for a daily service of 66.2mph between Swindon and Paddington in 1929, but increasingly the fastest expresses were to be found in the United States and Germany, with the latter having the diesel ‘Flying Hamburger’ running between Berlin and Hamburg. Both the London, Midland Scottish and the London & North Eastern produced fast streamlined luxury expresses on their main routes and especially those to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Elsewhere, express goods trains became widespread, especially for perishable traffic. Not all British expresses ran to and from London, with one of the most famous cross-country expresses being the ‘Pines Express’ between Bournemouth and Manchester, running partly over the Somerset & Dorset.

Under nationalisation, the concept of Inter-City largely took over the express network, while with standardised clock face departures, individual named trains have also become a rarity. The concept has also been overtaken by such services as the French TGV, for example, and in the UK, by Eurostar, running at speeds far higher than those on Britain’s historic network.