G

Galbraith, William Robert, 1829-1914

Apprenticed to John Errington at 17, he worked on the Aberdeen and Scottish Central Railways, before becoming resident engineer on the London & South Western Railway’s Yeovil-Exeter extension between 1856 and 1860. He became the LSWR’s new works engineer in 1862, and was responsible for the lines from Yeoford Junction to Bude, on which he built one of the first concrete railway viaducts in England, Padstow and Plymouth as well as the Barnstaple-Ilfracombe line. He returned to Scotland to become a consultant, and with R F Church worked on the northern approach to the Forth Bridge and the rebuilding of Edinburgh’s Waverley Station, as well as working on the Bakerloo and Hampstead tubes, and worked with J H Greathead on the Waterloo & City Line.

Galt, William, 1809-1874

A solicitor, Galt was the first recorded advocate of nationalisation of the British railway system, arguing his case and the organisation of the resulting business in a book Railway Reform, of which there were four editions in 1843-1844, the year of Gladstone’s Act, which it may well have influenced. The book was re-published, updated and enlarged, in 1865, the year that Galt gave evidence to the Royal Commission on the Railways. There was no political force behind Galt’s advocacy of nationalisation, but instead he desired the best solution for the country, in effect seeing the railway as a new form of public highway. Many of the early arguments in favour of nationalisation saw the railways being similar in structure and operation to the Post Office.

Geddes, Sir Eric Campbell, 1875-1937

Indian-born Eric Geddes joined the North Eastern Railway in 1904, specialising in management techniques and by 1914 was general manager. He became a civil servant during the First World War; he had a succession of posts including munitions production, transport organisation and naval supply, eventually becoming the first Minister of Transport post-war. The concept of grouping was his idea, and he had similar plans for the electricity supply industry. As Minister, he pushed the Railways Act 1921 through Parliament, but before it could take effect, he left politics and joined Dunlop, the tyre and rubber manufacturer, becoming chairman. His final task in politics was to push through dramatic cuts in national expenditure, known to this day as the ‘Geddes Axe’. In 1924, he was made part-time chairman of the new state-sponsored airline, Imperial Airways, whilst retaining his position at Dunlop. His final service to the state was to organise the delivery of essential supplies during the 1926 General Strike.

Giant’s Causeway, Portrush & Bush Valley Railway & Tramway

Opened between 1883 and 1887, this was the first railway to use hydro-electric power, but closed in 1949.

Gladstone, William Ewart, 1809-1898

Gladstone became an MP in 1832, but more significant, and, apart from Eric Geddes, he was one of the better informed members as far as railways were concerned, since his father, Sir John, had been an enthusiastic promoter of the early railways in Scotland, and by 1843 had accumulated £170,000 (£9.4 million today) of railway investments. The only real question had to be just how impartial did this make his son who, early in 1844, chaired a House of Commons Committee on Railways? On the one hand, it could account for the watering down of the early provisions of the Railway Bill that resulted from the committee’s deliberations, but on the other, shortly after the measure was enacted, Gladstone resigned, largely because he was aware of the conflict of interest between his own family’s involvement in railways and his powers as their parliamentary overlord. He maintained this distance between himself and railway regulation for the remainder of his life, attending only two sessions of Cardwell’s Committee on Railways which sat in 1852-53, even though he was nominally a member, and avoiding service altogether on the 1865 Royal Commission on Railways.

On the other hand, in later life Gladstone did not maintain a physical distance between himself and the railway, as the only prominent British politician to use the railways during electioneering, often addressing crowds at railway stations and even from carriage windows, a style more usually associated with the United States than the United Kingdom, and probably possible because at the time it was still a practical proposition for an individual to hire a train.

Gladstone’s Act, 1844

The Railway Regulation Act 1844 has become more commonly known as ‘Gladstone’s Act’. It was significant as much as for what it didn’t do as for what it did, as no attempt was made to enforce gauge standardisation, which would have been a practical measure. The most significant provisions were for cheap railway travel, a predecessor of the later ‘Cheap Trains Act’, while telegraph companies were enabled to compel railway companies to allow their wires to be carried alongside their lines and, for the first time, the possibility of the nationalisation of the railways was enshrined in British law. Gladstone himself felt that the Act had been an opportunity missed, and that the powers contained within the Act were far too weak, largely due to the power of the railway companies who had many members of both Houses of Parliament amongst their shareholders and directors.

The importance of the Act should not be underestimated as it authorised the purchase of railway companies by a British government in the future, although it applied only to those companies established after 1 January 1845, and the powers could not be exercised before 1866. The price to the government of a railway company was to be the profits for a 25 year period, averaged out over the preceding three years. As we shall see, by the mid-1860s, many railway companies were passing through a bleak period and no doubt the cost of acquisition at the time would have been low, but the railway system was still incomplete. One cannot help speculate that, had nationalisation occurred at this early stage, would the total mileage have ever reached its ultimate grand total of more than 20,000 miles? Given post-nationalisation experience of the attitude of the Treasury to investment in the railways, one may be excused for doubting it.

Glasgow

Variously known as the ‘Workshop of the British Empire’, Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland with twice Edinburgh’s population, was one of the world’s leading industrial cities during the nineteenth-century, with a substantial proportion of the world’s merchant shipping built on the Clyde. This was not a one industry city, however, and its engineering activities included several major railway locomotive works, some of which were independent, and later commercial vehicles were also built, while lighter engineering included the Singer sewing machine factory and there were also cotton mills and breweries. These industries and the surrounding coal mines were served by a rudimentary network of tramroads developed during the eighteenth century.

Glasgow’s first railway was the Glasgow & Garnkirk, opened in 1831, which soon built an extension to a temporary wooden terminus at Buchanan Street, which was taken over by the Caledonian Railway, initially for its services to Aberdeen, but it later also became the terminus for services to London Euston. The city soon became a focal point for a growing number of railways, with the next being the Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock & Ayr, which shared a terminus at Bridge Street, south of the Clyde, with the Glasgow, Paisley & Greenock. North of the river was the Edinburgh & Glasgow’s Queen Street Station, initially reached by a cable-working from Cowlairs.

Initially, the Clyde proved to be a major barrier with the north and the south of the city kept separate, partly because of Admiralty objections to a fixed bridge. The river was not bridged until 1876 when the Glasgow & South Western sent its line into St Enoch, also the terminus for Midland Railway services from London St Pancras. In 1879, the CR opened Glasgow Central Station. The North British Railway was able to use land vacated by the University as it sought more suitable premises, and also had the support of the City council in demolishing some particularly bad slums, in building its sidings and sheds, while it used Queen Street, acquired with the EGR. Between 1885 and 1910, the rival companies each built their own competing lines into the docks and many industrial areas. Suburban and even urban routes proliferated, and included the Glasgow Subway, a circular route initially worked by cable.

Glasgow was the only city outside London to have a Royal Commission on its railways, but unlike that in London, which imposed an inner limit on construction of new surface lines and termini, that in Glasgow had no effect. The city’s industry contributed much, and the CR in particular was predominantly a freight railway, but even so passenger numbers at Central Station rose from 4.75 million in 1880 to reach 15.75 million in 1897. The termini included hotels, such as the St Enoch Hotel, which when opened was the largest hotel in Scotland. Suburban lines developed on a scale second only to London, including the famous ‘Cathcart Circle’, albeit never a true circle, which operated out of Glasgow Central. The expansion of Central between 1901 and 1905 took it over Argyll Street, which famously became a meeting place for exiled Highlanders, known as the Highlandman’s Umbrella, or Hielanman’s Umbrella.

As with other major cities, passenger numbers began to fall as the urban and inner suburban networks soon proved vulnerable to competition first from the electric tram, and then after the First World War, from the motor bus. Cathcart Circle or not, traffic at Central began to decline from 1905 onwards. Glasgow also began to lose its competitive edge, with heavy industry beginning a slow decline, while the 1926 miners’ strike hit demand for coal particularly hard. To counter this, new stations were opened close to new residential or industrial developments. The Glasgow Subway was taken over by the City and electrified between the wars.

Grouping had little impact on the pattern of railway services. There was some rationalisation of the networks to the southwest, mainly favouring the former GSWR lines than those of the rival CR, but plans to rationalise the four termini, Buchanan Street, which would have been enlarged, Central, Queen Street and St Enoch, into two failed, for regardless of the economies that could have been achieved and the greater convenience of passengers, the money was simply not available. Another plan never implemented was to expand the Glasgow Subway.

Nationalisation could also not stem the decline, and after the Second World War freight traffic went into serious decline, despite a Freightliner terminal being opened at Gushetfaulds, but even this closed in 1993, with termini outside the city, including Eurocentral at Mossend, taking over the traffic. The one big achievement was the electrification of much of the suburban network, initially with the famous ‘Blue Trains’, named after their livery, which operated to destinations along the Clyde and as far south-west as Ayr. A number of services were cut back, and finally some rationalisation occurred, with services from Buchanan Street and St Enoch diverted to Central and Queen Street.

The formation of Passenger Transport Authorities and local government reform saw the new Strathclyde Region take over responsibility for buses and suburban trains, which soon appeared in orange and black. When further local government reform reversed much of this, Strathclyde continued as a transport authority, with trains painted in carmine and cream, not dissimilar to the original British Railways ‘strawberry and cream’ or ‘blood and custard’. The other difference is that instead of the trains being operated under contract to Strathclyde by British Rail, they were operated by Scotrail, now a train operating company and passenger franchise.

Glasgow & South Western Railway

Formed in 1850 when the Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock & Ayr Railway, authorised in 1837, acquired the Glasgow Dumfries & Carlisle Railway. The line to Ayr had been completed in 1840, and was followed in 1843 by a branch from Dalry to Kilmarnock, but this eventually became the main line to Carlisle via Dumfries. It had less severe gradients than the rival Caledonian line to Carlisle via Beattock, but was eighteen miles longer. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, the company acquired other lines in its area, including Scotland’s first railway, the Kilmarnock & Troon, dating from 1811. It built the first railway hotel for golfers at Turnberry in 1906. The main works were at Kilmarnock, completed in 1856, but a new workshop at Barassie, near Troon, was completed in 1901.

The main business of the railway was the movement of coal, and tourist and commuter traffic to the resorts on the Ayrshire coast, while it also handled a substantial volume of traffic to Ireland. It was forced to operate the ‘Port Road’, the lines from Dumfries to Portpatrick, and later Stranraer when that became the main Scottish port for Ireland, in partnership with the Caledonian, London & North Western and Midland Railways. Financial and operational difficulties delayed completion of the Glasgow-Stranraer route until 1877 and it was not fully incorporated into the GSWR until 1892. The problems were caused partly by competition for Irish traffic by ports in Ayrshire, and the fact that at the time it was also possible to sail directly from Glasgow to Belfast and other Irish ports.

In Glasgow, through running to the North British became possible when the City Union railway was completed in 1870, and through running to the Midland Railway’s Settle and Carlisle started once this route was completed. Parliament rejected plans for a merger with the Midland, but the two companies collaborated on express services from St Pancras to St Enoch, completed in 1876. Strong competition developed with the Caledonian in Ayrshire, and joint operation of a new direct Glasgow-Kilmarnock line was forced on the companies when it opened in 1873. A bid for the GSWR by the CR was rejected by Parliament in 1890. Quadrupling of the thirty miles from Glasgow to Kilwinning was largely completed by 1914.

The company was merged into the London, Midland, Scottish Railway in 1923, and while Caledonian management policies and rationalisation of the GSWR’s locomotives followed, it was often the GSWR routes that survived when duplication was tackled. Since nationalisation, the ‘Port Road’ has closed, but the Glasgow-Stranraer route survives, as does that via Dumfries to Carlisle.

Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock & Ayr Railway – see Glasgow & South Western Railway

Glasgow Subway

Alone outside of London, Glasgow has a deep level tube railway, originally authorised as the Glasgow District Subway in 1889. A circular line in twin tubes with an unusual 4ft gauge, it serves districts on both sides of the River Clyde. Initially it was worked by continuous cable haulage powered by stationary steam engines based in Scotland Street. The company was badly affected by tramway electrification and from 1919 onwards it lost money, but was bought by the City Corporation in 1922. The line was electrified between 1932 and 1935, and officially renamed Glasgow Underground, but the name ‘Subway’ has stuck, although at one period in its history, when the carriages were all painted orange, it was known as the ‘Clockwork Orange’. Under municipal ownership, plans existed during the 1930s to expand the system, but these were never implemented. It was modernised during the 1970s and the carriages had a complete rebuild, reopening in 1978. Two of the line’s original cars can be seen in Glasgow Transport Museum.

Gloucester

Although not a major centre, Gloucester achieved considerable importance to the Great Western as its first uninterrupted route into Wales and as a vital objective in its progress from Bristol to Birmingham, until foiled by the intervention of the Midland Railway. It became notorious in railway circles for the problems of transhipment between broad gauge and standard gauge. The city’s significance in railway terms fell considerably after the opening of the Severn Tunnel and the conversion of the broad gauge to standard gauge, both of which meant that trains could run directly, with by-passing Gloucester altogether.

Glyn, George Carr/Lord Wolverton, 1797-1873

A partner in Glyn Mills & Co, bankers and a predecessor company of the Royal Bank of Scotland, he was one of the first directors of the London & Birmingham Railway, eventually becoming its last chairman and first chairman of the London & North Western Railway until 1852. He recognised the need for cooperation between railway companies and was a founder-member of the Railway Clearing House in 1842, doubtless because of his banking experience, and was its first chairman until his death. Known for being an effective chairman and capable of differentiating between the responsibilities of the directors and the company officers, he also recognised that Mark Huish, despite, or because of, his talents, did not work well with his colleagues and had difficulty in establishing sound relationships with other companies, and was instrumental in his departure.

He was Liberal MP for Kendal for more than twenty years until 1868, and was created Lord Wolverton the following year.

Glyn Valley Tramway

Built to the unusual gauge of 2ft 4½ inches, the Glyn Valley Tramway was a roadside line running for 8¼ miles from Chirk in Denbighshire to Glyn Ceirog and Pandy. Its main traffic was slate, granite and silica from local quarries and instead of running to a harbour, its destination was the Welsh section of the Shropshire Union Canal. Authorised in 1870, the line used a combination of horse traction and gravity working when it opened in 1873. Powers were obtained in 1885 to withdraw services from the Pontfaen-Chirk section in favour of a new line from Pontfaen to the Great Western station at Chirk, while powers were also taken to extend the line from Glyn to Pandy and use steam locomotives. The line remained independent until its closure in 1935, while passenger services had been withdrawn in 1933.

Golden Valley Railway

This nineteen mile long railway was completed between 1881 and 1889 and ran through sparsely populated farmland between Hay-on-Wye and Pontrilas. It failed to cover its cost, carrying around just 125 passengers each weekday, and was subsidised by local landowners until closed in 1898. It was sold to the Great Western Railway which reopened it in 1901, but passenger services were withdrawn in 1941.

Gooch, Sir Daniel, 1816-1889

The middle Gooch brother, after training and working in ironworks and mechanical engineering, he was appointed as the Great Western Railway’s first locomotive superintendent in 1837, under Isambard Brunel, whose early locomotives were generally disappointing except for the Stephensondesigned Star-class. The Stars were the basis of the first Gooch locomotives which appeared from 1840 onwards.

Swindon works was completed in 1841, and from 1846, started to build locomotives to Gooch’s own designs. His most significant design as the Great Western, an immediate success on expresses between Paddington and Exeter, and which provided the basis for his Iron Duke-class. Gooch’s 44-0 saddle-tank locomotives performed well on the steep gradients of the GWR lines in Devon and Cornwall.

Disillusioned with internal disagreements at the GWR, Gooch left in 1864, and was largely responsible for the laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable, for which he was knighted. He returned to the GWR as chairman in 1865, and provided a steady hand until his death. He found the GWR in a poor financial condition, and kept the company alive through strict and sometimes over-zealous economy, which eventually had an adverse effect on the company’s reputation. One exception to the policy of economy was the Severn Tunnel, completed in 1886. He was also Conservative MP for Cricklade for twenty years until 1885.

Gooch found time for other interests, including coalmining, but also assisted the management of a number of smaller railways.

Gooch, Thomas Longridge, 1816-1889

Apprenticed to George Stephenson at Newcastle when 15, he became a draughts-man and surveyor, working with Joseph Locke on the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway, then returned to Stephenson as secretary in 1826, working on the Liverpool & Manchester, until he succeeded Locke in 1830 as resident engineer on the Liverpool end of the line. He then moved to the Manchester & Leeds Railway, which established his reputation firmly. He worked on the London & Birmingham before returning to re-survey the MLR and, after helping to obtain parliamentary approval for it, supervised its construction from 1837 to 1844, working under Stephenson: he was responsible for the Summit Tunnel at Littleborough.

Gooch left the MLR in 1844 to work on the Trent Valley Railway between Rugby and Stafford, which opened in 1847. He retired in 1851, exhausted by constant work, but remained a friend of Stephenson’s son Robert and many other of the leading engineers of the day.

He was an elder brother of Daniel Gooch, while a third brother, John Gooch, 1812-1900, was locomotive superintendent of the London & South Western and Eastern Counties railways.

Graham, George, 1822-1899

Apprenticed to the marine engineer, Robert Napier, under whom he worked on the steam engines for the first Cunard steamship, Britannia, after a spell of ill health he moved to work for Joseph Locke on the survey for the Caledonian Railway and was then involved in its construction. In 1853, he was appointed engineer-in-chief and remained with the company until he died, seeing the company’s route mileage rise from 195 to 1,116. He wrote a history of the CR which was published privately in 1888.

Grand Junction Railway

Europe’s first trunk railway, the Grand Junction was authorised in 1833 and completed in 1837, providing an important link between the London & Birmingham Railway’s terminus at Curzon Street, Birmingham, and the Liverpool & Manchester Railway at Newton (later renamed Earlestown) in Lancashire. In 1834, it absorbed the Warrington & Newton Railway, which had opened in 1831, and incorporated its lines into its last 4½ miles of route, giving a route mileage of 82½ miles. Once opened, the GJR provided a continuous route from London to Liverpool and Manchester via Birmingham. In 1840, the Chester & Crewe railway was acquired, and the GJR’s works were moved from Edge Hill to Crewe.

Engineered by George Stephenson and Joseph Locke, who is credited with most of the work, especially after 1834. Unusually, it was completed on time and within budget. Throughout its history, it was consistently profitable, with dividends of 10 per cent or more.

The pivotal position enjoyed by the GJR encouraged it to support the North Union Railway, designed to extend the West Coast trunk route as far north as Preston, and it also invested in both the Lancaster & Carlisle and Caledonian railways. In 1845, the GJR and LMR merged and acquired two branch lines around Bolton before they joined the Manchester & Leeds Railway in acquiring the NUR in 1846.

Meanwhile, rivalry between the Liverpool and London financial interests involved with the GJR and the LBR resulted in an uneasy relationship between the two companies, especially after the Manchester & Birmingham Railway proposed a shorter route to the LBR running through the Potteries, but was persuaded by the GJR to run to Crewe instead, before the GJR reneged on the agreement. The MBR then sided with the LBR. When the GJR discovered that the LBR was planning to acquire the MBR, it tried an alliance with the Great Western, but this alarmed the LBR sufficiently for the three companies to develop a new Trent Valley line in 1846, before all three combined to form the London & North Western Railway. The GJR’s general manager, Mark Huish, became the LNWR’s first gm.

Great Central Railway

The last mainline railway to reach London, the Great Central Railway was the new name coined for the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway to celebrate its transition from a trans-Pennine railway when it opened its new line to London in 1899 with a new terminus at Marylebone. The company had its origins in the Sheffield Ashton-under-Lyne & Manchester Railway, opened in 1845 and which had required construction of the Woodhead tunnel, three miles long and at the time the longest in the UK, through the Pennines. The SAMR acquired three railway companies and the Grimsby Docks Company in 1847 to form the Manchester Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway. The company continued to prosper, and in 1863 it entered the south Yorkshire coalfield through the acquisition of the South Yorkshire Railway. Expansion westward lay in the creation of the Cheshire Lines Committee with the Great Northern Railway and the Midland Railway. This gave the MSLR access to North Wales and to the port of Liverpool. Earlier alliances involved the London & North Western, Lancashire & Yorkshire and East Lancashire, as well as the Midland, in what was known as the Euston Square Confederacy, but this was dissolved in 1857 and replaced with a fifty year agreement with the Great Northern Railway, hitherto viewed as a rival.

In 1864, a new chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, was appointed. This was just one of his railway chairmanships and he was an early advocate of a Channel Tunnel. His other ambitions included taking the MSLR to London, and the company embarked on a period of expansion at the cost of its profitability, with no ordinary dividends paid after 1889. The London expansion was widely regarded as wasteful, with centres such as Nottingham, Leicester and Rugby already having good links to London, and was achieved by building a new line from Annesley in Nottinghamshire to Quainton in Buckinghamshire, and then running over a joint line with another Watkin company, the Metropolitan Railway, and from that a short line to the new terminus at Marylebone, to which the headquarters was moved from Manchester in 1905.

A new chairman in 1899, Alexander Henderson (later Lord Faringdon) appointed Sir Sam Fay as general manager in 1902, and he was joined that year by John G Robinson, who had trained at Swindon. Robinson started to equip the GCR with powerful new locomotives, built at the company’s Gorton, Manchester, works, as well as comfortable new carriages. It was amongst the first railways to use bogie goods vehicles, and in 1907, one of the first hump marshalling yards at Wath-upon-Dearne in the South Yorkshire coalfield proved capable of sorting 5,000 goods wagons in 24 hours. A new port was built at Immingham, which allowed expansion of the company’s Humber shipping ser ices, and when opened by King George V in 1912, Fay was publicly knighted. Power signalling was also introduced. Under Fay, the company expanded its through passenger services. There were also trials of steam and petrol-electric railcars, while a second route to London via High Wycombe was built jointly with the GWR. Nevertheless, despite the work on passenger services, 67 per cent of its turnover came from goods traffic and just 22 per cent from passengers.

The First World War ended expansion, and while three ships were seized in continental ports by the Germans, the rest were requisitioned for the Royal Navy. Robinson saw his 2-8-0 heavy goods locomotive adopted as the standard for War Office use overseas, while Fay became director of movements at the War Office from 1916 until the end of the war.

On grouping, the company was merged into the London & North Eastern Railway.

Great Eastern Railway

Formed in 1862 on the amalgamation of the Eastern Counties Railway with the East Anglian, Eastern Union, East Suffolk and the Norfolk railways, which had been worked by the ECR. The arrangement was long overdue, and gave East Anglia a single unified railway network east of Cambridge, but even so, relations between the companies were such that it took four years before the finances could be rationalised, and by that time, 1866, during the banking and railway finance crisis, the new company was forced briefly into liquidation. Nevertheless, the company had already purchased land in the City of London for a new terminus to replace the inconveniently sited Bishopsgate.

Lord Cranbourne, who later became Marquess of Salisbury, became chairman in 1868, and the GER began to move forward. The new Liverpool Street station opened during 1874-75, the last terminus to open in the City and only permitted because it was approached in tunnel. By this time the GER also had a dense network of suburban lines in the north-eastern suburbs.

The GER inherited a broad spread of business, with extensive commuter traffic, albeit working class and less prosperous than that of the lines to the south; goods and passenger traffic to five ports, Felixstowe, Harwich, King’s Lynn, Lowestoft and Yarmouth, with the last two providing heavy fish traffic for London and the Midlands; holiday traffic, especially Clacton, Lowestoft, Southend and Yarmouth; race traffic to and from Newmarket; and agricultural traffic, although this declined during the 1870s and 1880s with a crisis in Britain’s arable farming. Later, it develop coal traffic from Yorkshire to East Anglia when a line was opened in 1882 jointly with the Great Northern from south of Doncaster through Lincoln and Spalding to March. Although mishandled at first, from 1883 onwards the GER also operated steam packet services, mainly to the Netherlands.

Despite the race and continental traffic, the company suffered from a mass of low fare business, and because of this, in 1872 it followed the Midland Railway by providing third-class accommodation on all passenger trains. In 1891, it was the first to provide restaurant car accommodation for third-class passengers. The company gained a reputation for punctuality and efficiency, although it struggled to cope with its peak period commuter traffic. The pressure on peak traffic declined sharply from 1901 after electric trams appeared in the East End of London, and the cost of electrification meant that it was rejected. For goods traffic, in 1899, its goods yard at Spitalfields, London, was the first in the UK to have electro-pneumatic power operation. Mainline services were recast in 1914 by a new general manager, the American Henry Thornton, and after the First World War he did the same for the suburban services. The company was amongst the first to use distinctive stripes to identify classes, with first having yellow lines and second blue, which earned them the title of the ‘Jazz Trains’.

In the meantime, a number of independent branch lines had been built in GER territory, while west of King’s Lynn a number of lines had been built with the support of the Great Northern and the Midland, which then continued across Norfolk to Cromer, Norwich and Yarmouth before being merged to form the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway in 1893. Competition ensued for the goods traffic, especially fish, from the Norfolk ports to the Midlands, and for holiday traffic from the Midlands. Nevertheless, the continental traffic grew unabated and in 1883 a massive extension to Harwich was opened at Parkeston Quay, named after the then chairman. A complementary development at the Hook of Holland that opened in 1893 encouraged further growth in traffic across the North Sea. During the First World War, Harwich became an important naval base.

While a number of its locomotive engineers were with the company for a short time, others lasted far longer, notably James Holden, who was amongst the first to experiment with oil-fired steam locomotives, with considerable success. The GER’s locomotives from 1878 onwards were mainly built at its Stratford, East London, works.

The early problems meant that the dividend was low before 1882, but by the turn of the century, it was an attractive 6 per cent, before the marked decline in its London suburban traffic depressed revenue so that by 1913, a good year for many of Britain’s railways, it was just 2 per cent.

Great North of England Railway

An ambitious plan to provide a link from York and Leeds to Newcastle and create a trunk route from London, the line as completed only ran for the forty-three miles between York and Darlington, with the former terminus shared with the York & North Midland Railway. It was almost level throughout with just one short and gentle incline. The original engineer, Thomas Storey, was replaced by Robert Stephenson after difficulty with a number of smaller structures, while the two main viaducts were designed by other engineers.

The GNER was leased by George Hudson in 1845 and some of its statutory authority was transferred to the Newcastle & Darlington Junction Railway, authorised in 1842. The plan was to use these railways and the YNMR for a line from London to Edinburgh via Rugby and Derby and spoil plans for a direct line from London to York. In 1846, the NDJR acquired the GNER, and the combined company became the York & Newcastle, before changing again in 1847 to the York, Newcastle & Berwick.

Great North of Scotland Railway

Sometimes described as ‘neither Great nor North of Scotland’, this opened in stages between Aberdeen and Keith between 1853 and 1856, along the alignment of the Aberdeenshire Canal as far as Inverurie, the Great North of Scotland Railway was built to link with the Inverness & Aberdeen Junction Railway, completed two years later, as well as extend services that reached Aberdeen over the Aberdeen Railway, forerunner of the Caledonian Railway. There were disagreements with the IAJR, including payment for a bridge over the River Spey, and these continued even after the IAJR changed its name to the Highland Railway in 1865, when the HR tried to block running powers to Inverness, while the GNSR was refused approval for a rival line to Inverness. Relationships between the two companies improved considerably during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, with pooling of receipts and through running, while in 1905, an amalgamation was proposed. An alternative, amalgamation with the Caledonian was rejected.

Despite the logic of through connections with the Caledonian at Aberdeen, the GNSR maintained its own station and did little to ensure connections for passengers arriving from the south. It even delayed becoming a member of the Railway Clearing House. Nevertheless, a new joint station opened in Aberdeen in 1867. The main line was doubled between 1861 and 1900 and lines opened to Elgin via Duftown and a new coast route opened, all incorporating lines that had started as local projects. Significant branches were opened to Peterhead in 1862, Fraserburgh in 1865, Ballater, for Balmoral, in 1866, Macduff in 1872, Boddam in 1897 and St Combs in 1903, as well as a number of minor branches. A suburban line was developed between Aberdeen and Dyce in 1887, and extended to Culter in 1894. Much of the goods traffic was provided by the fishing ports which thrived following the arrival of the railway, as did the distilleries on Speyside, while another major traffic was cattle. Resorts on the Moray Firth were promoted as the Scottish Riviera. A hotel was built at Cruden Bay, with an electric tramway to the local railway station.

The main locomotive depot was at Kittybrewster, Aberdeen, but moved to Inverurie in 1903. Despite its small size, the GNSR experimented with single line tablet exchange, equipment for dropping and collecting mail bags while the train was moving, and also was amongst the first to provide electric lighting at its stations.

In 1923, it became part of the London & North Eastern Railway.

Great Northern & City Railway

Originally supported in 1892 by the Great Northern Railway which needed relief from the congestion at King’s Cross, the line was left in limbo by the GNR switching its support to the Piccadilly Line, although even without a connection to the surface railways, its tunnels were built to a 16ft diameter, suitable for mainline rolling stock. The contractor, Pearson & Sons, nevertheless persevered with the project and the GNCR opened in 1904. Despite an awkward interchange at Finsbury Park, the line was carrying 16 million passengers by 1907, but with bus and electric tram competition, it fell to 12.8 million by 1912, before being bought by the Metropolitan Railway the following year, intending to extend it northwards to connect with the GNR and also southwards as well. The Metropolitan’s ambitions came to nothing, except that it closed the GNCR’s generating system and introduced the only first-class accommodation on a deep level tube.

The line passed to the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, which introduced standard tube rolling stock, scrapped first-class, and proposed extending the line to High Barnett, Edgware and Alexandra Palace over the lines of the London & North Eastern Railway, but in the event, these destinations were reached by the Northern Line. Part of the line was taken over by the Victoria Line in 1968, and it was decided to hand the remainder to British Railways to provide a city terminus for its Great Northern electric services. Before this could happen, on 28 February 1975, the London Underground’s worst train accident occurred, with a train running through Moorgate at full speed to crash into the tunnel headwall with the loss of forty-three lives and more than seventy injured. The true cause of the accident remains a mystery.

LT stopped using the line in October 1975, and BR services commenced the following year.

Great Northern & Western Railway

Opened between 1860 and 1866, this line like Athlone and Westport, and a branch to Ballina from Manulla was opened in 1873. In 1890, the line was acquired by the Midland Great Western Railway.

Great Northern Railway

Originating as the London & York Railway, authorised in 1846 in the face of heavy opposition, the GNR title was adopted by the following year. The first services used a leased section of line between Louth and Grimsby from 1848, but the main line opened between a temporary station at Maiden Lane, London, and Peterborough, and between Doncaster and York, in 1850, by which time it was also able to serve all of the important centres in the West Riding. It was in 1852 that the through line between London and Doncaster was completed along with King’s Cross. Other smaller companies were acquired or running powers taken so that the GNR served Bradford, Cambridge, Halifax, Leeds and Nottingham, and with an agreement with the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway (see Great Central), express services from London to Manchester started in 1857. The following year, the Midland Railway ran over the GNR line south of Hitchin to London, helping to undermine the ‘Euston Square Confederacy’ sponsored by the London & North Western Railway.

The revenue from the Yorkshire coal traffic attracted the jealous attention of the Great Eastern and the Lancashire & Yorkshire, who twice attempted unsuccessfully to promote a bill through Parliament for a trunk line from Doncaster through Lincolnshire. In the meantime, the GNR improved its position by joining the MSLR in buying the West Riding & Grimsby Railway, linking Doncaster with Wakefield. In 1865, with the MSLR, both companies promoted a Manchester-Liverpool line, and expanded into Lancashire and Cheshire through the Cheshire Lines Committee with the Midland. In 1879, it joined the GER in the Great Northern & Great Eastern Joint lines between Huntingdon and Doncaster, a route that required some new construction.

GNR main line services were reliable and punctual, especially after Henry Oakley became general manager in 1870. It was soon running more expresses than either the LNWR or MR, including some of the world’s fastest, hauled by Patrick Stirling’s famous single driving-wheel locomotives. The intensity of service required block signalling and interlocking, while stations and goods sidings had to be enlarged and working improved. By 1873, it had reached a peak of profitability, but for the rest of the decade, investment grew more quickly than revenue and especially in the extension of the Cheshire Lines network, the company risked over-extending itself. In the East Midlands, it constructed new lines jointly with the LNWR, to some extent spurred by an earlier rates war with the Midland, but, in 1889, with the MR, it acquired the Eastern & Midlands railway, creating the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway.

Earlier, the creation of the East Coast main line was helped in 1860 when the East Coast Joint Stock, a common pool of passenger vehicles, was created by the GNR, North Eastern and North British. In 1862, the first through services from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley started, with the 10am departure in each direction being named the Flying Scotsman from the 1870s. The first regular restaurant cars appeared in 1879 and continuous vacuum braking from 1881. The company later introduced the first fully-fitted goods trains. As traffic and the weight of trains increased, the entire route had to be relaid with heavier rails from the mid-1890s, with widening at the southern end of the route, while heavier trains were worked by H A Ivatt’s new locomotives, while from 1905, Nigel Gresley designed new carriages, including some using articulation to improve the ride and reduce weight.

The company also expanded its London suburban traffic, using Broad Street as a City terminus in conjunction with the North London Railway.

On grouping in 1923, the GNR became part of the London & North Eastern Railway.

Great Northern Railway of Ireland

Usually referred to as the GNR (I), it was incorporated in 1876 as the Great Northern of Ireland Railway, but more usually known as the Great Northern Railway (Ireland). It began operations in 1877. The company consisted of a merger of the Dublin & Drogheda Railway, opened 1844, with the Dublin & Belfast Junction, the Irish North-Western and the Ulster Railway, opened 1839 and which had a 6ft 2in gauge, as well as a number of branch lines. It operated from both Dublin and Belfast to Londonderry, the latter in competition with the Belfast & Northern Counties, as well as to Bundoran and Enniskillen and a branch to Newcastle, Co, Down, eventually creating some 616 route miles built, and rebuilt, to the Irish broad gauge of 5ft 3in. It became one of Britain’s first international railways with the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, and customs posts were established at Dundalk and Goraghwood, while a police presence was maintained at many stations close to the frontier. During the Second World War, locomotive crews working from Northern Ireland would often pass coal to their Dublin-based counterparts to help the steaming of their locomotives forced to burn peat, because of the shortage of coal in Eire. The main line was 112½ miles between Dublin Amiens Street and Belfast Victoria Great Victoria Street, although the secondary main line from Dublin to Londonderry Foyle Road was slightly longer at 121½ miles.

The international nature of the operation ensured that it avoided nationalisation in 1948, but this followed the bankruptcy of the company in 1953, when was initially managed in liquidation by the Great Northern Railway Board before its rolling stock and route mileage was divided between the Ulster Transport Authority and Coras Iompair Eireann, the Irish transport authority, in 1958. Its main line between Belfast and Dublin remains in use today, but the lines to Londonderry and Newcastle have been long closed.

Great Southern & Western Railway (Ireland)

Incorporated in 1844 seeking authorisation for a line from Dublin to Cashel and later extended to Cork, reaching Penrose Quay at Cork in 1855. It absorbed a number of smaller lines until its route mileage reached 1,030 miles by 1914, making it Ireland’s largest railway. Most of its track mileage was south of Dublin, and apart from the narrow coastal strip reached by the Dublin & South Eastern Railway, it was the predominant railway south of a line from Dublin to Galway. The main line linked Dublin and Cork, but there were other important lines to Limerick, Valentia Harbour in the extreme west, and to Tralee, while a solitary northward line ran through sparsely-populated country from Limerick to Ennis and Athenry to terminate at Sligo, on Donegal Bay.

Despite the sparse population served by the company, it was generally regarded as efficient and it was profitable, paying good dividends. On the grouping of the Irish Railways, it was the main company in the Great Southern Railways. With the Great Western Railway, it collaborated on Anglo-Irish packet services from Cork to Fishguard.

Great Southern Railways

Formed on the grouping of the then Irish Free State’s railways in 1925 from the merger of the Great Southern & Western Railway, the largest constituent company and completed in 1855; the Cork, Blackrock & Passage Railway, opened in 1850; the Cork, Brandon & South Coast Railway, first opened in 1851 as the Cork & Brandon Railway; the Midland Great Western Railway, opened in 1847; and the Dublin & South Eastern Railway, first opened in 1854, as well as a number of smaller railways, giving it a total route mileage of 2,187 miles. Almost half of the route mileage came from the GSWR.

Most of the route mileage was Irish standard gauge of 5ft 3in, but an important exception was that of the CB&PR, which had been built to standard gauge but converted to 3ft gauge between 1900 and 1904, when it was also extended to Crosshaven. The latter was closed early, in 1932, as the break in gauge meant that through running was not possible with the rest of the system and bus operation was more economical and even, at times, faster.

On nationalisation of railways in what later became the Irish Republic, the GSR became the major constituent company of the new Coras Iompair Eireann, CIE.

The Great Southern Railways Preservation Society maintains a line between Tralee and Fenit on the former GS&WR branch to Fenit.

Great Western Railway (1): 1837-1922

A number of proposals for a railway between London and Bristol were promoted from 1824 onwards. The first of these to succeed was the Great Western Railway, authorised in 1835 after an early refusal. The GWR was able to raise capital of £2.5 million, equal to about £140 million today, and a further £0.83 million (£45 million today) in loans. The new company had as its engineer the young Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who convinced the directors of the merits of his scheme for a 7ft gauge railway, which he judged, rightly, to offer the prospect of higher speeds. To the objection that this would result in difficulties in through operation with other companies, he suggested that in areas where company boundaries met, the issue could be resolved through laying mixed gauge track, something that did not work easily or effectively in practice.

The GWR and Brunel wasted little time, and in 1838, operations began between the London terminus at Paddington and a station near Maidenhead, Berks. Locomotives became the responsibility of the first locomotive superintendent, Daniel Gooch. The entire 116 mile line from London to Bristol via Bath was opened in 1841, but costs had risen from a projected £3.3 million to more than £6 million. Many shareholders blamed Brunel for the slow completion and the high price, regarding his broad gauge as a mistake, and had even tried to get rid of him in 1839.

From its trunk route, the GWR expanded with branches to Basingstoke, Gloucester, Hungerford, Oxford and Windsor opened by 1849, while other companies supported by the GWR had also extended the line from Bristol to Plymouth using the broad gauge. When Gloucester was reached, the worst nightmares of the sceptics came true as the GWR met the standard gauge Birmingham & Gloucester Railway. The confusion only became worse when the Midland Railway leased the broad gauge Bristol & Gloucester intending to link it into the standard gauge, so that in 1854, standard gauge trains were able to reach Bristol using mixed gauge track.

Meanwhile, the GWR was racing ahead of its competitors, almost literally, with the introduction of express trains between London and Exeter in 1845 that covered the 194 miles of the route via Bristol at 43mph, including three stops, the world’s fastest expresses at the time. Expansion included the opening of a mixed gauge line from London to Birmingham in 1852, bringing the GWR into direct competition with the London & North Western Railway. Two years later, the GWR purchased the Shrewsbury & Birmingham and Shrewsbury & Chester companies, and with running powers to Birkenhead found itself with a route network that extended as far north as Merseyside. When the Cornwall Railway opened in 1859, this proved to be a satellite of the GWR and its allies, who had subscribed a fifth of its capital, and by 1867, through trains were running from London to Penzance.

Not content with the west, the Great Western had already ventured into Wales well before this time. In 1845, the GWR’s satellite South Wales Railway obtained parliamentary approval for a broad gauge line from the GWR near Gloucester through to the coast at Fishguard. It opened to Carmarthen in 1852, but never reached Fishguard, being diverted instead to Milford Haven, which it reached in 1856, and from which steamers plied across to Waterford in Ireland. The broad gauge of the SWR meant that through trains could run from South Wales to London and the Midlands, but all of the valley lines were built to standard gauge, requiring costly transhipment of coal and iron ore, making the GWR unpopular in South Wales. The SWR and the West Midland Railway were both absorbed into the Great Western in 1865, giving it a total route mileage of 1,105 miles. By this time, the mixed gauge had been extended from Oxford to London, the work being carried out between 1856 and 1861. It took strong pressure from industrialists and mine owners to persuade the GWR to convert the SWR to standard gauge, but once the argument was won and the decision taken, the entire 300 miles was switched with completion taking just one weekend in 1872. By 1876, the only substantial remaining broad gauge operation was that from Penzance to London.

The railway insolvency crisis of 1866 had forced considerable economy on the company, by this time under the chairmanship of Gooch. Nevertheless, investors had considerable confidence in the GWR, even though the average dividend between 1841 and 1879 amounted to just 3.8 per cent. There were also heavy investments, of which the most significant by far was the Severn Tunnel, built between 1873 and 1886, at the time the longest underwater tunnel in the world. The need for economy and the demands of the Severn Tunnel may have been behind the lack of further significant route extensions during the years up to 1900, although the system grew by the absorption of other companies to reach 2,526 route miles, the longest of any of Britain’s pre-grouping railways. Financial difficulty certainly lay behind the limitations on investment in rolling stock, although innovation was not completely lacking, with the first refrigerated vans for frozen meat being introduced during the 1870s. To its credit, the company also operated safely, having just one fatal accident between 1874 and 1936.

Gooch died in office in 1889 at the age of 73 years, being given the credit for saving the company, but blamed for economies that were excessive and counter-productive. His successors returned to developing the company, re-shaping the passenger services, while first William Dean and then later, after 1902, George Churchward, started to produce a line of worthy locomotives.

Abolition of the broad gauge was completed in 1892, so that through carriages could be offered between Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds to the fast growing resort of Torquay. Restaurant cars were introduced in 1896, ending the compulsory refreshment stop at Swindon in 1895 by paying the refreshment rooms £100,000 (around £9m at today’s prices) in compensation. By 1899, there were quadruple tracks over the entire 53 miles between London and Didcot.

The early years of the twentieth century saw a renewed vigour in the GWR. Much traffic had passed to competitors offering more direct services, so much so that many wags described the GWR as the ‘Great Way Round’ so ‘cut off’ routes were built between 1903 and 1910, with the most significant the new direct route from London to Cardiff, by-passing Bath and Bristol, and at a distance of 145 miles saving 10 miles over the route via Bath and 35 miles compared with that by Gloucester. London to Exeter received a new direct route of 174 miles, instead of the previous 194 miles that had compared so badly with the London & South Western’s 172 miles. Jointly with the Great Central, a more direct route was opened between London and Birmingham, cutting the distance from 129 miles to 111 miles, making it more competitive with the London & North Western’s 113 miles. These routes required considerable new construction.

The new routes were accompanied by new carriages hauled by Churchward’s excellent new locomotives, so that journey times started to fall considerably, while from 1906 onwards the company became the pioneer of automatic train protection. That same year, the company built a large new harbour at Fishguard and introduced three turbine-powered packet steamers for the Irish market, while between 1909 and 1914, it provided boat trains for passengers off Cunard transatlantic liners, taking them to London from Fishguard (261 miles) in 4½ hours. With the Great Southern & Western Railway, it collaborated on Anglo-Irish packet services from Fishguard to Cork.

The quest for economy did not end at the turn of the century. Up to the 1860s, carriages had been chocolate brown and only then were cream upper panels introduced. In 1908, all-over chocolate was reintroduced as an economy measure, but dark red was introduced for passenger carriages in 1912, while goods wagons were either dark red or grey.

The GWR had a relatively quiet First World War, and afterwards tried first to fight off the proposed grouping, and then fought to have the six other constituent companies regarded as subsidiary companies so as not to have to provide a seat for a representative of each on the parent board, but was unsuccessful.

Great Western Railway (2): 1923-1947

The 1921 Act created a ‘Western Group’ of railway companies, and the Great Western was just one of those companies, but in fact Paddington predominated. As we have already seen, the new company might have been different, but it was the only substantial company amongst those grouped, the only one with access to London, and while companies such as the Cambrian had a substantial network, it had neither the balance sheet nor the reputation to influence events. The Great Western was spared the in-fighting that did so much damage to the London, Midland & Scottish, and unlike the Southern, which sometimes seemed to pretend that grouping hadn’t happened, there was no doubt that this was an integrated railway with a management structure that could easily absorb the other companies.

The Great Western Railway had as its constituent companies the original GWR itself, plus the Barry Railway; Cambrian Railway; the Rhymney Railway; the Taff Vale Railway and the Alexandra (Newport and South Wales) Docks & Railway; with, as subsidiary companies, the Brecon & Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway; Burry Port & Gwendraeth Valley Railway; Cleobury Mortimer & Ditton Priors Light Railway; Didcot, Newbury & Southampton Railway; Exeter Railway; Forest of Dean Central Railway; Gwendraeth Valleys Railway; Lampeter, Aberayron & New Quay Light Railway; Liskeard & Looe Railway; Llanelly & Mynydd Mawr Railway; Mawddwy Railway; Midland & South Western Junction Railway; Neath & Brecon Railway; Penarth Extension Railway; Penarth Harbour Dock & Railway; Port Talbot Railway & Docks; Princetown Railway; Rhondda & Swansea Bay Railway; Ross & Monmouth Railway; South Wales Mineral Railway; Teign Valley; Van Railway; Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway; West Somerset Railway, and the Wrexham & Ellesmere Railway.

There was a sense of triumph emanating from the GWR that may well have irritated many of those from the smaller railways. The GWR had started its own employee publication, The Great Western Railway Magazine, as early as 1888, and the issue for January 1923 showed a cartoon, titled ‘A Survival of Title’, of an explosion, with ‘amalgamation’ and ‘upheaval’ at its heart and railwaymen being thrown around, except for a man in GWR uniform saying: ‘Hoorey! Never even blew me cap off!’

The ‘new’ GWR emphasised its identity by reverting to the ‘old’ GWR livery. Chocolate brown with cream upper panels were reintroduced in 1923, with white roofs. The company’s coat of arms, a simple device showing simply the arms of London and of Bristol, did not reflect any of the companies taken over, just as it had never reflected the GWR’s own expansion. The sole change was that the original coat of arms was encircled by a garter, and this was dropped during the 1930s.

The GWR of 1923 took everything in its stride, with most of the real work carried out during 1922 when the new management team led by Felix Pole settled down in anticipation of the formal transfer on 1 January 1923. Yet, for the Great Western its inheritance was a mixed blessing. It had some of the best railway lines in the country and linked London with Birmingham and Bristol, and these two cities together. But, the start of the South Wales coal industry’s decline coincided with grouping, with output declining steadily from 1923 onwards, aided by recession and a miners’ strike. The small companies that had fed coal to the South Wales ports from the valleys were to be a liability rather than an asset, and it is likely that had these companies with their short haul and hugely local business not been absorbed, some might not have survived. As it was, the GWR had to withdraw passenger services from some 25 miles of railway.

A highly profitable railway before the grouping, the GWR was to remain profitable overall between the wars, the most profitable of the four grouped companies and the third largest. Route mileage grew from 3,005 miles to 3,712 miles, while staff had grown from 87,000 to 108,000, and shareholders from 95,000 to 120,000. The GWR was always concerned about the quality of service on its branch lines, and was also the line least dependent on a heavy London commuter traffic. When the London Passenger Transport Board was established in 1933, the receipts of all the suburban railway services within the area, less operational costs, were pooled with those of London Transport, that had taken over most of the underground system, the GWR’s share of the pool was just over 1 per cent.

It was the only one of the major railway companies to continue the old tradition of allowing the chief mechanical engineer to retain control of locomotive operation, so that engine crews were on his payroll.

Concern about rising costs meant that economy once more became important, with engine firemen reminded that keeping full steam up after a locomotive had finished its work and was ready to be taken to the yard was wasteful, as the fires would have to be doused and coal thrown out. There was government pressure to cut charges, with passenger fares reduced from 75 per cent to 50 per cent above pre-war levels, while goods rates were to be cut from 112 per cent to 75 per cent above. Nevertheless, traffic receipts started to decline alarmingly in 1924, although those for passengers recovered during the summer months. Part of the problem was simply the uncertain state of the economy, but this was compounded by increasing competition from road transport. While the Railway Rates Tribunal kept a strict control over what the railways could charge, one of the first acts of the Great Western’s management on grouping was to bring the season ticket rates on the many lines in South Wales into line with its own charges. For most of the commuters affected, this actually meant a reduction in the cost of their tickets.

On 3 May 1926, many GWR personnel joined the General Strike in support of the mineworkers, and volunteers were sought, many of them from the general public, to help run the railway, but the dispute had cost the company £1.8 million. Even after the return to work, the industrial situation remained uncertain, with losses as the mines remained closed.

In 1929, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, finally abolished the Railway Passenger Duty, a tax that had replaced that on stage coaches and yielded the Treasury £400 million annually, about £25 billion by today’s prices, and dated from 1832. Churchill was not so much concerned about the railway companies or the traveller, but wanted to help ease unemployment. It was a condition of the abolition of the duty that the railways spent the money thus saved on modernisation. The GWR decided on a programme of improvements to its stations and goods yards, while also doubling single track stretches and quadrupling double track stretches to ease points of congestion. It was already engaged in replacing many old wooden viaducts, and this extended not only to work on the main lines, but also to branches as well, including that to Falmouth in Cornwall. New goods wagons were introduced.

Sir Felix Pole was replaced by Sir James Milne in 1928. At this time the company started major investment in road transport, acquiring bus companies such as the Bristol Omnibus Company and Western National, as well as taking a substantial stake in others, sometimes with other railway companies, and the ‘Big Four’ moved into road haulage jointly rather than independently. The GWR was one of the pioneers of internal air services, with one of the first routes being form Cardiff to Plymouth, a lengthy journey by rail or road, and became a member of Railway Air Services, although most of its efforts went into Southern & Western Air Services, operated with the Southern Railway.

During the 1930s, the struggle to attract passengers saw the bargain rates, of return fares just a third above the single fare, offered to third-class passengers extended to those in first-class, who paid 60 per cent more than the third-class fare. In each case, the minimum fare for the attractive new return rates to take effect was 2s 6d third-class, 4s first-class. Meanwhile, to enhance earnings from freight traffic, on those routes where there was competition with the LMS or the LNER, freight receipts were pooled. It was not until just before the outbreak of the Second World War that the company commissioned consultants to look more closely at electrification. Meanwhile, it had considerable success with diesel rail cars, used both for local services and for some cross-country expresses, such as between Birmingham and Cardiff.

On the outbreak of the Second World War, negotiations took place with the government over the compensation for its virtual take-over of the system. There were also the other uncertainties, a pay rise had been agreed and there were still further claims forthcoming as prices began to rise under wartime pressures. From the operational point of view, 1940 got off to a bad start, with what was described as the ‘worst winter on record’ with heavy snow in January and February. Early in 1943, an attempt to cope with the growing demand for freight wagons, saw the ‘Q’ campaign started earlier in the war to turn wagons around more quickly followed by ‘up-plating’ of wagons, so that they could carry a heavier load, although everyone was assured that the rolling stock and track engineers had examined the issue and found the increased weights to be safe. For the Great Western’s locomotives, there was a two year backlog for repairs and renewals, but passenger traffic in 1944 was 64 per cent up on 1938, and even 28 per cent up on 1923, which had been the busiest year for passenger traffic between the wars. All of this was carried on trains that travelled 23 per cent fewer miles than in 1938. Freight traffic in 1944 was double that of 1938.

Greathead, James Henry, 1844-1896

South African-born James Greathead was apprenticed to Peter Barlow and his assistant on the Midland Railway extension from Bedford to London in 1867. He also became involved in a number of unsuccessful projects before working with Douglas Fox on the Liverpool Overhead Railway between 1888 and 1893.

His most significant contribution to railway civil engineering was the invention of the Greathead shield which made construction of tunnels easier in clay and wet soils, for which he also advocated the use of compressed air during construction. His invention, which improved the original shield first devised by Sir Marc Brunel, father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was first used on construction of the Tower Subway in London in 1870.

Gresley, Herbert Nigel, later Sir, 1876-1941

Initially apprenticed at Crewe on the London & North Western Railway, he moved to the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway. In 1905, he became carriage and wagon superintendent on the Great Northern Railway, where he succeeded Henry Ivatt as chief mechanical engineer in 1922. On grouping, he became CME of the London & North Eastern Railway. He was knighted in 1936, the same year that he was elected president of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.

Gresley was initially best known for his introduction of elliptical roofed carriages on the GNR, which was also adopted for the East Coast Joint Stock in 1905. He gave the GNR a modern 2-6-0 locomotive in 1912, and followed this with 2-8-0s, initially with two cylinders but later with three. His first A1-class Pacific was the Great Northern, which appeared in 1922. His Pacific locomotives saw steady improvement from 1926, with long-lap valves and higher pressure boilers, and included the famous A3 Flying Scotsman. The peak of his locomotive design and performance was the streamlined A4-class, first introduced in 1935 and used for high speed trains such as the ‘Silver Jubilee’ and ‘Coronation’. One of the class, Mallard, set a speed record of 126 mph in July 1938, which has never been beaten for steam locomotives. At the other end of the scale, his V2 2-6-2 mixed traffic locomotives were in volume production from 1936 and many were taken up for use by the War Office during the Second World War.

Gresley design teak-panelled carriages for the GNR, and these were adopted by the LNER. He was famous for his advocacy of articulation as a means of improving the riding of passenger rolling stock and also of increasing the number of seats within a given train length, as well as saving cost and weight. He applied the concept to improve the riding of six-wheel carriages inherited on grouping from the Great Eastern, but earlier, in 1921, he introduced the first articulated five-car dining set, also the first to use electric cooking, followed by an articulated sleeping twin-car set in 1922, and four and five-car suburban sets between 1923 and 1930. He applied pressure ventilation and even air conditioning to his prestige passenger carriages during the 1930s. He introduced welded underframes in 1934, and used aluminum and plywood for body panels.

Grouping (Great Britain) 1923

One of the major events in the history of Britain’s railways was the grouping that took effect on 1 January 1923, authorised by the Railways Act 1921. The changes required in merging more than a hundred railway companies, many of them substantial, required a whole year of negotiation and appointments. Many mergers that had failed to reached fruition were in fact completed during 1922, most notably that of the Lancashire & Yorkshire with the London & North Western. Elsewhere, the Great Western took over operation of the Taff Vale’s passenger services. The legislation could be seen as a means of side-stepping the issue of nationalisation, which had resurfaced again prior to the outbreak of the First World War. The original scheme foresaw seven large companies rather than four, which could have made better sense. In attempting to reduce competition, the grouping ignored the continuation of direct competition on a number of busy routes, such as London to Southend, London to Birmingham and London to Exeter, while there were still three trunk routes to Scotland.

The railways were under state control from the outbreak of the First World War until just before grouping. Little freedom was accorded the railways before or after the grouping, with charges and fares controlled. The grouping foresaw a target revenue for each railway company, but this was never achieved and added to the years of recession and the crippling miners’ strike, which saw many export markets for British coal lost forever, the railway companies struggled through the inter-war years. The heavier their reliance on freight traffic, the more they suffered. It was a matter of considerable duty and, for the shareholders, sacrifice that so much money and effort was paid to keeping the system in good working order despite the poor revenues.

The legislation did not specify the names of the railway companies after the grouping, but simply specified that there should be ‘Southern’, ‘Western’, North Western, Midland and West Scottish’ and ‘North Eastern, Eastern and East Scottish’ Groups. These resulted in the Southern Railway, Great Western Railway, London Midland & Scottish Railway and London & North Eastern Railway. The pre-grouping companies were classified either as ‘constituent companies’, in which case they were entitled to board representation on the post-grouping company, or ‘subsidiary companies’, which were simply absorbed. The constituent and subsidiary companies of each of the group companies, usually known as the ‘Big Four’, are given early in their entries. The company least affected by the grouping was the Great Western, which so dominated its group that it retained its title and policies intact. All of the others brought together a number of large companies, and on the Southern, the dominance of the London & South Western Railway over the other major companies within its area was the least marked, but the South Eastern & Chatham Railway was impoverished by years of excessive competition between its two member railways, while the London, Brighton & South Coast was basically operating just one main line.

Grouping (Irish Free State) 1925

The counterpart of the grouping of the railways in the mainland of Great Britain was that in the then Irish Free State, as the south of Ireland became known after partition in 1922. The grouping was incomplete as no action was taken on those companies that ran across the border into Northern Ireland, and this included the Great Northern Railway of Ireland, the County Donegal Railways Joint Committee and the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway, the last two being 3ft gauge lines. There was no similar grouping north of the border.

The most significant company to emerge from the grouping was the Great Southern Railways, which included the former Great Southern & Western Railway; the Cork, Blackrock & Passage Railway; the Cork, Brandon & South Coast Railway; the Midland Great Western Railway; and the Dublin & South Eastern Railway.

Guernsey Railways & Tramways

Early proposals for a railway in Guernsey had come to nothing, although ideas were mooted as early as 1845 for a line from L’Ancresse to St Peter Port, the island’s capital, via St Sampson’s, and continuing to Perelle. Later attempts to start a street tramway were rejected because of fears over Sunday operation. The States of Guernsey (the island’s Parliament) authorised the construction of a tramway in 1877, and the following year the Guernsey Steam Tramway was registered in London after some difficulty in raising funds locally. Steam locomotives fitted with the necessary guards to protect pedestrians and animals pulled one or two single deck carriages, although a double deck trailer was added in 1881. Technical difficulties with locomotives coupled with competition from horse bus services and licensed hackney carriages meant that after an initial good start, traffic gradually fell away and the company went bankrupt in 1883.

The Guernsey Railway Company was formed in 1888, registered in Guernsey and acquiring the assets of the GST from the liquidators. The tramway operations resumed in 1889, and approval sought from the States to convert the system to electric operation, which was granted in 1891. Guernsey became the first operator of electric trams in the British Isles, using an unusual side-mounted overhead current collection trolley. The electric service started in 1892 and plans were made to convert the larger and more modern of the steam trailers to electric operation, but the equipment was unreliable and the steam trams were back within three days. Nevertheless, a change of contractor and duplication of generating equipment meant that services were soon resumed, and in 1895, the original electric cars had their onboard equipment up-dated.

The trams soldiered on until 1934, when they were withdrawn and the GRC became one of the island’s two main bus operators. It never operated a railway service, and the main route, St Peter Port to St Samson’s, being just two miles long, would hardly have been viable as a railway. Plans were laid for freight-only branches to the north of the island, but passengers from the trams, and had it been built from the trains as well, had to change at St Samson’s onto buses.