L

Laing, Samuel, 1812-1897

Having trained as a lawyer, initially he worked as a law clerk in the Railway Department of the Board of Trade from 1840, becoming law secretary in 1844, in which role he worked on Gladstone’s Act and was a member of Dalhousie’s Railway Board in 1844-45, after which he left the civil service. He had the distinction of twice being chairman of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, between 1848 and 1855 and again between 1867 and 1894: in both cases he was appointed at a time of poor financial performance and boardroom quarrelling. He was a member of parliament between 1852 and 1885, although he did not hold his seat continuously, and during one spell out of office, 1860-65, he was finance member of the government of India.

Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway

The Manchester-based Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway played a pivotal role in the British railway network, with its 600 route miles, which made it 11th largest amongst mainland railways, belying its importance – far more impressive and reflective of its status was the locomotive fleet, which made it the fourth largest, while its fleet of thirty ships was the largest of any pre-grouping railway.

Much of its infrastructure was built by Sir John Hawkshaw, and the trans-Pennine routes featured steep gradients, tall viaducts and tunnels, while on the western side, much of the route mileage was relatively flat. The company emerged in 1847 on the renaming of the Manchester & Leeds Railway as it acquired the Wakefield Pontefract & Goole, which opened the following year. Later, it joined the London & North Western in acquiring the North Union and Preston & Wyre, as well as the docks at Preston and Fleetwood, and also gained access to Blackpool and Lytham St Annes. Further lines were added to the system on both sides of the Pennines, before absorbing the East Lancashire Railway in 1859, and the West Lancashire, which had opened a line between Preston and Southport in 1882, followed in 1897. Nevertheless, the main LCR system was complete by 1880.

Despite its strategic importance and the wealth of the major cities on its network, as well as the tourist and commuter potential of many destinations, the LYR was for many years notorious for trains that were dirty, slow and unpunctual. This began to change in 1883 when John Parsons replaced Thomas Barnes as chairman, and when he died in 1887, his work was continued by George Armytage, who remained in office for more than thirty years. A new locomotive works at Horwich, near Manchester, replaced the two old and cramped sites at Miles Platting and Bury. A new locomotive superintendent took over in 1886, J A F Aspinall, and he began a major programme of producing modern steam locomotives to replace the aging fleet, with many elderly engines having been kept in service to meet rapidly growing traffic. The most significant of the new locomotives were 2-4-2 tank engines, which took over all passenger services other than the main line expresses, with 332 built between 1889 and 1911. Aspinall became general manager in 1899, with similar success in his new role. Many of the LCR’s routes were lengthier than those of the rival London & North Western, but in 1888-89, new lines by-passed Bolton and Wigan, allowing many services to be accelerated. Early in the new century, the best expresses took just 65 minutes for the run from Manchester to Blackpool, on which the famous club trains were introduced, while through workings with other companies saw trains run from Colne to Euston and from both Liverpool and Manchester to Scotland, and from major cities in Yorkshire to the South Coast. Prominent in through running was the Midland Railway, which used running powers to reach the Seattle & Carlisle Line, and from 1888 provided Scottish services from the LCR.

The main passenger and goods stations were also developed during this period, with new marshalling yards, while the busiest parts of the main-line were quadrupled, as were many lines around Manchester and near Liverpool. Freight traffic included coal, cotton, wool, finished manufactured goods, timber, grain and fish. Jointly with the LNWR, shipping services were operated to Belfast, while the company had its own service from Liverpool to Drogheda. In the east, the company was the major railway at Goole, and ran packet and cargo ships to Denmark, Germany, the Low Countries and France.

Nevertheless, these developments were not without cost, and as a result of the heavy capital investment, and the earlier neglect of the system and the customers, dividends during the early years of the twentieth century were around 3-4 per cent.

In 1903, the LYR introduced Britain’s first electro-pneumatic signalling, initially at Bolton, and then on lines near Manchester and Stockport. The signalling school at Manchester Victoria used a model layout for training. Electrification was introduced by Aspinall for the growing suburban traffic around Liverpool and Southport, using third-rail 600 volts dc power and electric multiple units, with the first sections operational in March 1904. The network was extended to Liverpool-Aintree in 1906. Instead of sticking with the original system, experiments followed with overhead electrification on a branch line running from Bury to Holcombe Brook in 1913, and in 1916 with 1,200 volts dc third-rail between Manchester, Whitefield and Bury, which must have pleased as the Holcombe Brook branch was converted to this system in 1917.

With grouping looming, the LYR merged with the LNWR in 1922, with both companies passing into the London, Midland & Scottish the following year. Several LYR senior officers were given senior posts with the LNWR and then with the LMS.

Lancashire, Derby & East Coast Railway – see Great Central Railway

Lancaster & Carlisle Railway

Supported by the four companies involved in plans for a West Coast route to Scotland, the route for the Lancaster & Carlisle was the most easterly of three considered, although amended to pass close to Kendal and avoid the need for a tunnel. Joseph Locke was the engineer and Thomas Brassey his contractor, for the 69 mile route, which was built through difficult terrain in just 30 months, despite fighting between English and Irish navvies at Penrith in 1846. When finished, the LCR was worked by the London & North Western, which by this time owned the entire line south from Lancaster to London. The LCR itself had also tried to acquire the Lancaster & Preston Junction Railway, believing that its lease to the Lancaster Canal in 1842 had been defective, and a serious situation then arose when both companies tried running trains over this line, which resulted in a collision. The LCR took over management of the LPJR in 1849.

The LCR acquired its own rolling stock in 1857, intending to become independent of the LNWR, but in 1859 leased itself to the LNWR, and in 1879 the LNWR bought it. In its turn, the LCR was an investor in the South Durham & Lancashire Union Railway, which reached Tebay in 1861 and carried Durham coke to the Furness peninsula.

Lauder Light Railway

Authorised by a Light Railway order in 1898, the Lauder Light railway opened between Fountainhall and Lauder in 1901, and was known to the locals as ‘Auld La’der Licht’. It was worked by the North British Railway, with through trains from Edinburgh Waverley, and became part of the London & North Eastern Railway in 1923. It closed to passengers in 1932, and complete closure followed in 1958.

Leeds

A centre both of industry and, from the days of the canals, transport, Leeds had its first railway as early as 1758, when the first parliamentary authority for a railway was obtained by Charles Brandling, for a double track 4ft 1in gauge wooden wagonway from his colliery at Middleton to Leeds Bridge. Worked by horses, the line opened that year and for a while gave Brandling a monopoly over the coal supply to industry in Leeds. The Middleton Railway later became the first on which a steam locomotive ran commercially on rails, but this was in 1812.

The railway age can truly be said to have reached Leeds as early as 1834 when the Leeds & Selby Railway opened linking the city from its station at Marsh Lane with the Rivers Ouse and Humber, where passengers could catch a steam packet to Hull. The LSR was soon followed by two more significant railways, the North Midland Railway linking the city with Derby to the south, opened in 1840, and the following year it provided access to Leeds for the Manchester & Leeds Railway, giving a strategic link through the Pennines. None of these railways managed to get closer than a mile from the town centre, until, in 1846, the Leeds & Bradford Railway ran into the Central Station. This was originally intended to be an imposing structure that could be used by all of the city’s railways, but in the end, the only other users were the Great Northern and the Lancashire & Yorkshire. Meanwhile, the NMR had become part of the Midland Railway and its Wellington terminus was becoming congested as it was also used by the London & North Western and North Eastern Railways. The solution was to build the New Station, a collection of dark arches that straddled the River Aire and the canal, but unlike many city centre stations lacked a frontage. All three railways used New Station, and the NER built a connection through the LSR’s terminus at Marsh Lane providing a through route from Leeds to York and Hull.

The improved communications provided by this network of railways benefited industry in Leeds, which rapidly became the major centre of the textile trade, while several steam locomotive builders, amongst whom were Hunslet and Manning Wardle, also based themselves in the city. It was not until 1938 that the scheme for a single station was realised, when Wellington and New connected to provide Leeds City, but even this was a makeshift solution and it was not until 1967 that a new Leeds City was completed and Central Station could close. The line from King’s Cross was electrified in 1990, and electrification was continued to Bradford in 1995.

Leeds & Selby Railway

A seventeen mile line authorised in 1830 to link Leeds with Selby, a transhipment point for the river craft that used the Ouse to get to the port of Hull, through which the Leeds textile industry imported much of its wool and exported its finished cloth. Built by James Walker, the line opened in 1834 and was unusual in that enough land was taken to allow for eventual quadrupling, although this was never needed. It was the first railway on which passengers were drawn through a tunnel by a steam locomotive, and to allay their fears, the walls were painted white and copper plates fitted at the bottom of the air shafts to reflect the light: today the former tunnel has been replaced by a deep cutting. In 1836, the Hull & Selby received approval, a thirty-one mile long line again engineered by Walker. While the lines remained independent, through working to Hull meant that transhipment at Selby onto river vessels and then again at Hull onto ships was reduced to a single transhipment at Hull.

The Leeds & Selby was leased to the York & North Midland Railway in 1840, and purchased in 1844, while the Hull & Selby was also leased by the YNMR from 1845, and eventually bought by the North Eastern Railway in 1874.

Leeds Northern Railway

Authorised in 1845 as the Leeds & Thirsk Railway and completed in 1849 by Thomas Grainger, it was routed via York and was designed to end George Hudson’s monopoly on traffic from Leeds to the north-east. It was a costly project requiring tunnels and viaducts, with the most spectacular being a 23-arch viaduct across the River Aire followed by a tunnel of more than two miles at Bramthorpe and then by a 21-arch viaduct across the River Wharfe. A branch from Starbeck, the station for Harrogate, to Knaresborough should have opened with the main line, but the viaduct over the River Nidd collapsed, and could not be opened until 1851. New routes followed, with an extension from Northallerton to Stockton and then a line from Melmerby to Northallerton, again with Grainger as engineer, both of which opened in 1852, a year after the Leeds Northern title was adopted.

A connection was established with the London & North Western Railway at Leeds and to Hartlepool Docks, and these enabled the company to challenge the combined York & North Midland and York, Newcastle & Berwick Railways. The initial prosperity of the LNR and its rivals was undermined by the reckless competition that followed, and eventually they merged in 1854 to form the North Eastern Railway.

Leek & Manifold Valley Light Railway

A 2ft 6in gauge railway authorised by a Light Railway Order in 1899 and opened in 1904, the Leek & Manifold Valley Light Railway linked Waterhouses with Hulme End. It was worked and maintained by the North Staffordshire Railway, and under Grouping became part of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway.

Leicester & Swannington Railway

The first railway worked by steam in the Midlands, authorised in 1830, engineered by Robert Stephenson, and its sixteen miles were opened during 1832-33. Passengers were carried as well as freight, but the priority was the coal traffic and the Leicestershire mine-owners saw the line as a route to the canal at Leicester and onwards to London. A stationary steam engine, part of which is now at the National Railway Museum, was used to work the 1 in 17 incline at Swannington. The railway prospered and managed to pay a dividend of 5 per cent between its opening and 1845, when it was acquired by the Midland Railway, offering a £100 Midland share for each LSR one of £50.

Letterkenny & Burtonport Extension Railway

Authorised by a Light Railway Order of 1898, the line opened in 1903 and was worked by the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway.

Liddell, Charles H, 1812-1894

A civil engineer who worked under George Stephenson on the North Midland Railway, Charles Liddell also worked on the Syston-Peterborough line of the Midland Railway, where he was caught up in the battle at Saxby in 1844, when the local landowner’s men fought railway prize fighters in an attempt to stop a survey going ahead. He worked with Robert Stephenson on other schemes in the Midlands, before working on the Newport, Abergavenny & Hereford Railway in 1851, followed by the Worcester & Hereford Railway in 1853, while in 1857 he was appointed chief engineer on the Leicester-Hitchin line of the MR, and then the Bedford-Radlett section of the extension to London in 1868. During this time he also worked on the development of wire ropes and was for a period a director of a railway in the north of Italy.

Between 1873 and 1893, he was consulting engineer on the Manchester Sheffield & Lincoln Railway, predecessor of the Great Central, and the Metropolitan Railway under Edward Watkin, before resigning over the terms for the post of chief engineer.

Light railways

The high cost of railway construction, but the value of a railway connection, meant that efforts were always made to reduce costs. One means of doing this was by using a narrower than standard track gauge as the cost of engineering works and equipment rose with broader gauges. Another was to retain the standard gauge and use lighter methods of construction and also allow tighter curves and steeper gradients. It was also possible to combine both means to produce a really low-cost railway. Such methods were important given that road transport at the time was horse-drawn, slow and expensive. There was also some linking with light railways in some areas with tram networks, and others ran alongside roads. They were often unfenced.

There was another heavy cost in building a railway, that of obtaining parliamentary sanction. On the mainland of Great Britain, this was resolved by a measure included in the Regulation of Railways Act 1868 and then later the Light Railways Act 1896, which enabled such railways to be authorised by an order under the Act rather than by full scale parliamentary legislation. There were a number of restrictions on light railways, including such matters as a maximum speed of 25mph.

In Ireland, at the time still undivided and part of the United Kingdom, the authorising measure was the Tramways and Public Companies (Ireland) Act 1883.

Limited Expresses

A number of named trains had the word ‘limited’ in their titles, mainly on the Great Western Railway. This meant that seating was limited to those with seat reservations in an attempt to end overcrowding and standing on long distance services. Often, the normal seat reservation fee was waived for such trains.

Liskeard & Looe Railway

An extension of the Liskeard & Caradon Railway opened from Moorswater, where it joined the Liskeard & Looe Union Canal, to South Caradon in November 1844, and extended to Cheesewring Quarries in 1846. Gravity working was used for the loaded wagons carrying tin ore and granite, which were returned to the head of the line using horses. The extension to Looe running alongside the banks of the canal opened at the end of 1860, and from 1862 the line throughout was worked by the Caradon railway, which shortly afterwards introduced locomotives. Initially passengers on the Caradon could travel on mineral wagons by the expedient of paying for the transport of a parcel, and receiving a ‘free’ pass! Passenger carriages were introduced on the Caradon line from 1860, and on the line to Looe from 1879.

The connection with the main line using a steeply graded and tight loop from Coombe Junction was opened in May 1901, and passenger traffic trebled almost immediately, but the ore and stone traffic was in sharp decline by this time. The Great Western Railway took over working of the Looe and Caradon lines in 1909, but the latter system was abandoned in 1916. The Liskeard & Looe Railway survived to be absorbed into the GWR in 1923. As late as 1935, a scheme was mooted for a new direct line from St Germans, which would have been easier to work, but this was not built.

Listowel & Ballybunnion Railway

Incorporated in 1886, the Listowel & Ballybunnion Railway opened in 1888, operating through a remote part of Co. Kerry between the two small towns. It was unique in that its 9¼ route miles were of Lartigue monorail, one of the most extensive of this kind anywhere. Lartigue monorail, named after Charles Lartigue who patented the system in 1883, consisted of a single rail mounted on trestles about 3ft above ground level, augmented by a light guide and stabilising rail on either side about a foot below the main rail. This left the locomotives and rolling stock straddling the line, and indeed the LBR’s locomotives were almost ‘Siamese twins’ with a boiler on each side of the track, while the carriages were also double-sided.

The line ran through compromising territory which was also remote from the main centres in Ireland, and was closed in 1924, which must be a cause of regret for enthusiasts everywhere.

Liverpool

At the dawn of the railway age, Liverpool was already one of Britain’s major ports, and the fact that the Liverpool & Manchester was amongst the country’s first railways was simply a reflection of this. The city’s ocean trade expanded rapidly throughout the nineteenth century and the railway age naturally coincided with that of the steamship and the firm establishment of the British Empire. The LMR opened in 1830, while in 1840; Samuel Cunard introduced regular steamship sailings to the United States and Canada. Even before this, with a grant of £2,000 (worth £150,000 today) from the City, Lime Street replaced the original LMR Crown Street terminus in 1836, and in 1838, the city had good railway links to both Birmingham and London. Initially Lime Street had to have its approaches worked by a cable, while the station was rebuilt and expanded in 1849 and again between 1867 and 1874. The LMR and the London & North Western Railway, which absorbed it, had reached the docks through long tunnels opened in 1839 and 1849.

The LNWR did not have a monopoly in Liverpool for long, for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway reached the city, initially stopping at Great Howard Street, but had a new terminus, Exchange, close to the docks. By 1859, the LCRY connected Liverpool with Manchester, Preston, what was then the small village of Southport, and Wigan. Nevertheless, a duopoly was soon established which other railways could not break, although the Great Northern, Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire (see Great Central Railway) and Midland Railway formed the Cheshire Lines committee in 1865 and in 1874 opened a third line between Manchester and Liverpool. Meanwhile, the LNWR had shortened its approach to the city by building the Runcorn Bridge and opening a direct line in 1869, prompted by competition for traffic to and from the Midlands following the arrival of the Great Western across the Mersey at Birkenhead in 1854.

Other developments that followed before the end of the nineteenth century included the Liverpool Overhead Railway, completely opened in 1896, running more than six miles between Dingle to Seaforth. The world’s first elevated electric railway, it used third rail DC electrification.

The Mersey Docks & Harbour Board built an extensive network of lines serving 38 miles of quays.

While the railway network changed little after grouping, although third-rail dc electrification of the lines to Ormskirk, Southport and the Wirral was completed, and integrated with the Mersey Railway, nationalisation saw electrification of services to Euston in 1962 and services concentrated on Lime Street, with Exchange finally closing in 1977. Before this, the LOR had closed because repairs and modernisation was considered too expensive. By this time, the Merseyside Passenger Transport Authority had been established in 1971, taking over the electrified lines and branding these as Merseyrail. During 1977-78, the different parts of Merseyrail were joined by two underground lines with three interchange stations, including Lime Street, and an extension to Garston. The Merseyrail network provides cross-city routes of up to 20 miles and stretches as far as Chester and Southport.

Liverpool & Manchester Railway

Authorised in 1826 and one of the first railway companies to receive parliamentary approval, after earlier attempts had failed and two engineers, William James and then his successor, George Stephenson had been sacked for failing to pursue the project quickly enough. After authorisation, Stephenson was reappointed, although later criticised by Robert Telford, both for his methods and for acting as engineer and contractor. The line required heavy engineering works, including the marshes at Chat Moss, a 1¼ mile tunnel under Liverpool to reach the docks, and other works at Olive Mount. In addition to the company’s own capital, of £510,000 it had authorisation to raise £127,500 in loans, finding this from the Exchequer Loan Commissioners in what were still pre-railway mania days.

The famous Rainhill trials in 1829 proved that steam rather than horse power was the way forward, and Robert Stephenson built eighteen locomotives for the company. Opened by the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, in 1830, the event was better known for the first railway fatality, when the Liverpool MP William Huskisson was killed by a train.

Within weeks of opening, the LMR was carrying excursion passengers, followed by mail and road-rail containers. In 1836, it probably was the first railway to suffer a strike by footplate men, after which it guaranteed them minimum wages, possibly also persuaded by poaching of experienced men by other new railways. By 1841, it had its own locomotive works, but in 1845 merged with the Grand Junction Railway, and the following year both were absorbed into the London & North Western.

Liverpool Overhead Railway

Running 16ft above street level for the 6½ miles from Dingle to Seaforth, the Liverpool Overhead Railway was built during 1893 96 and was the world’s first elevated electric railway. Third rail DC electrification was used. Elevated construction kept the line clear of the entrances to the many docks along its route, and it was nicknamed the ‘Dockers’ Umbrella’. In 1905, it was connected to the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway’s Ormskirk and Southport electrified lines. Notable firsts also included Britain’s automatic semaphore signals and, in 1921, colour light signalling.

It was closed in 1956 because the heavy cost, c. £2 million, of replacing the steel decking could not be justified in the light of declining traffic.

Liverpool Street

The largest terminus within the City of London, Liverpool Street was built to replace the Shoreditch terminus of the Eastern Counties Railway. When the ECR was absorbed into the Great Eastern Railway in 1862, the question arose again of terminus in central London, coupled with the building of additional suburban lines and the conversion of Shoreditch to a goods station. A number of locations were considered, including Finsbury Circus, and for the track to continue from Bishopsgate on viaduct. Parliament approved the scheme in 1864, mainly because the line approached Liverpool Street in tunnel so that the demolition of London’s housing stock would be kept to the minimum, but also because it was beside the terminus of the North London Railway then being built at Broad Street.

The plan was that the lines should leave the existing high level route at Tapp Street, just west of Bethnal Green, and fall to below street level, and then run in tunnel under Commercial Street and Shoreditch High Street before turning to enter the terminus, which would be built on what had been the gardens of the Bethlehem Hospital. Some demolition was inevitable, including the City of London Theatre and the City of London Gasworks, and 450 tenement dwellings housing around 7,000 people. The GER was bound under the terms of the Act to run a 2d daily return train between Edmonton and Liverpool Street, and another between the terminus and Walthamstow. Later claims by the GER to have paid between 30 and 50 shillings as compensation to displaced tenants can be discounted as the payments at the time would have been much lower.

The terminus was built below street level, much to the consternation of many of the directors, but Samuel Swarbrick, the GER’s general manager, was concerned to cut costs, despite the fact that departing trains would be faced with a tunnel through which the track climbed steeply. The new station opened in stages, with the first being on 2 February 1874, handling just the suburban services to Enfield and Walthamstow, and the station was not fully open until 1 November 1875, when the old Bishopsgate terminus was handed over to be converted for goods traffic, reopening in 1881 and remaining in use until it was destroyed by fire in December 1964.

Liverpool Street occupied ten acres in the heart of the City and had ten platforms, numbered from west to east. Platforms 1 and 2 ran under the station building and the street to a junction with the Metropolitan Railway, to the west of its Liverpool Street underground station, known until 1909 as Bishopsgate. Until its own station was completed in July 1875, the MR trains used platforms 1 and 2 of the terminus. In fact, debate over charges for through workings completely defeated the exercise, and the connecting tunnel was in the end used only for special workings, the last being a MR working from Rickmansworth to Yarmouth in 1904, and the junction was removed in 1907. The main line arrival and departure platforms were 9 and 10, and were 900ft long. The street front of the new station consisted of three blocks, with the main one 90 feet high and running along Liverpool Street itself, and a second running from its western then running into one at its northern end set at right angles to it, 67ft high. In the space left by the blocks were four roadways for pedestrians and vehicles. The roof was perhaps the best feature of the building, set high and with a delicate appearance, with four glazed spans. There was a clock tower on the outside of the building, on the roof of the north block: inside, the train shed the roof later had two four-faced clocks suspended from it.

Behind the north block, was the suburban station with eight tracks and ten platform faces, while the mainline platforms were to the east of the middle block. Later, the suburban platforms were numbered 1 to 8, with platform 9 used by both suburban and long distance services.

Costs for building a terminus in the heart of the City of London were high, and while compensation for the displaced tenants was poor, the landowners received far higher compensation, so that the cost of Liverpool Street eventually mounted to £2 million (£120 million by today’s prices), and to allow for this, an Act of 1869 allowed the GER to charge the two-mile fare for the 1¼ mile extension.

The opening of Liverpool Street encouraged the GER to build a set of three suburban branch lines north of Bethnal Green, serving Hackney Downs and Tottenham, Edmonton, with a junction with the original Enfield branch, and from Hackney Downs through Clapton to a junction with the Cambridge line and the still new branch to Walthamstow. The latter was extended to Chingford in 1873, and the line to Tottenham and Edmonton was extended to Palace Gates at Wood Green in 1878. Some of these lines were open before Liverpool Street was ready, so a new station, Bishopsgate Low Level, was opened on the new extension to Liverpool Street in November 1872. The low level station was under the existing terminus, and with no room for smoke and steam to escape, the tank engines used were equipped with condensing apparatus, which was also seen as necessary for the projected through running onto the MR. The low level station was eventually closed as a wartime economy measure in 1916.

Added to the GER’s own branches were services running from the East London Railway, completed in April 1876. In July of that year, the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway introduced a service from East Croydon, while the South Eastern Railway (see South Eastern & Chatham) started a service from Addiscombe in April 1880, which lasted until March 1884. At the beginning of 1886, the GER took over the LBSCR services, although from 1911 they terminated at New Cross and were withdrawn when the ELR was electrified in 1913.

The Growing Station

The new suburban lines, the continued growth on the earlier lines and a growing business to and from the holiday resorts and market towns of East Anglia, meant that by 1884 it was realised that the traffic at Liverpool Street itself would soon outgrow the station. Fortunately, the GER had been steadily acquiring land to the east of the station, and had eventually land up to Bishopsgate 188-ft wide and six acres in extent. Clearance began and on 1890 work began on what was to become the East Side Station. A sign of social change was that Parliament insisted that alternative accommodation be found for the tenants in the properties cleared away, and indeed that they be rehoused at low rents. Accommodation could only be found for 137 tenants in existing property, so another 600 were housed in tenements built by the GER.

It was not enough simply to expand the station: the approach lines had to be expanded as well to avoid congestion. A third pair of approach tracks was built between Bethnal Green and Liverpool Street, enabling the westernmost set of tracks to be reserved entirely for the Enfield and Walthamstow services, so from 1891, these were known as the suburban lines, the middle set became the local lines and the easternmost, the through lines. The four tracks continued as far as Romford. Inside the terminus, platforms 1 to 5 became West Side Suburban, handling suburban and local services, while 6 also handled Cambridge trains; platforms 7 to 14 handled both local and through services, and 15 to 18 handled through services only. The services to and from the ELR used platform 14, or if this was not available, 18.

The new Liverpool Street was the largest London terminus until Victoria opened, rebuilt, in 1908. By the number of passengers handled daily, it remained the busiest terminus even after 1908. In a typical day, it handled 851 passenger arrivals and departures, as well as 224 empty carriage trains, ten goods trains and five light engine movements.

The new East Side frontage was taken by the Great Eastern Hotel, completed in May 1884, and the largest hotel in the City. Designed by C E Barry, the hotel presented a far more impressive face to the world than the original station buildings. Beneath the hotel, an area known as the ‘backs’ included an extension of the tracks from platforms 9 and 10. This was used by a nightly goods train that brought in coal for the hotel and the engine docks, as well as small consignments for the offices and the hotel, while taking away the hotel’s refuse and ashes from the engine docks. The eastward extension also meant that these two platforms split the station in two, and so a footbridge was built right across the station, although on two levels and too narrow to accommodate the numbers needing to use it at peak times. Relief came when the Central London Railway reached the terminus in 1912, with the tube station under the west side, but the subway to the booking office ran the full width of the station. It was not until after nationalisation that the extension into the ‘backs’ was ended and level access provided around the ends of 9 and 10.

Meanwhile, other suburban branch lines had been added to the GER network, although the first of these, the line to Southend, completed in 1889, would not have been regarded as even outer suburban at the time. It was joined by a line from Edmonton to Cheshunt, known as the Churchbury Loop, in 1891, and between Ilford and Woodford, known as the Hainault Loop, in 1903. The former closed in 1909 due to disappointing traffic, and that to Hainault was not much more successful, so it must have been a relief when an eastwards extension of the Central Line took it over some years later.

Despite these disappointments, overall traffic continued to grow, so that by 1912, Liverpool Street was handling a thousand trains daily. These included Britain’s first all-night service, half-hourly between the terminus and Walthamstow, introduced in 1897. Walthamstow’s population had grown from 11,092 in 1871 to 95, 131 in 1901. This was not unusual and other suburbs saw similar growth.

Of all the London termini, Liverpool Street had the most difficult First World War. Several bombs fell on the approach lines on the night of 8/9 September 1915, wrecking the suburban and through lines, while the local lines were flooded by a burst water main. Repairs were completed and normal services resumed by 11 am on the morning of 9 September. Worse was to follow. A daylight raid on 13 June 1917 saw three bombs hit the outer end of the station, wrecking carriages on the noon train for Hunstanton, standing at platform 9, as well as destroying two carriages in the dock between platforms 8 and 9 which were being used for medical examinations. In all, sixteen people were killed and another thirty-six wounded.

Competition from the expanding London Underground and the electric trams meant that electrification was considered as early as 1903. Nevertheless, the Underground seemed to have stopped expanding and while Parliamentary approval was obtained, nothing was done, even though daily passenger numbers rose from around 200,000 in 1912 to 229,073 in 1921, but just fourteen trains had been added to the timetable. The cost was enormous, however, estimated in 1919 at £3.5 million (equivalent to more than £70 million today), with little prospect of achieving a worthwhile return. The alternative, a stopgap measure, costing £80,000, was to change the layout of the approaches, the station arrangements and signalling, so that steam trains could continue to operate, but at the maximum efficiency.

The new service was officially described as the ‘Intensive Service’, but was named the ‘Jazz Service’ by one evening newspaper, partly because jazz music was the rage at then time and also because to speed loading, second-class carriages had a blue line painted above the windows, and first-class had yellow lines, while third remained unmarked. Sixteen-carriage trains of four-wheeled carriages operated with twenty-four per hour at peak periods on just one line between Liverpool Street and Bethnal Green, still using manual signalling and 0-60 tank locomotives that had first appeared in 1886. Trains spent just four minutes in a platform, while platforms 1 to 4 had their own engine docks and layouts that enabled locomotives to be shunted without going beyond platform limits. At peak periods, trains started every two minutes in sequence from platforms 4 to 1, followed by a four minute gap for arrivals.

A miners’ strike in 1921 meant that the intensive service had to be suspended to save coal, and again during the General Strike and prolonged miners’ strike of 1926. Nevertheless, the pressure began to ease not just because of the additional trains but because commuters were moving further out into the country. Gresley improved the standard of the rolling stock by producing five-car articulated units with a much improved ride. Nevertheless, traffic continued to fall, with the daily number of passengers peaking at 244,000 in 1923, but dropping to 209,000 in 1938, and eventually to 171,000 in 1959.

Grouping and Beyond

The London & North Eastern Railway took over the GER and Liverpool Street on 1 January 1923. The company, impoverished by the collapse of its hitherto heavy coal traffic as a result of the 1926 strike, could do little to implement electrification and concentrated on its more glamorous expresses to Yorkshire and Scotland from King’s Cross. The East Side booking office was modernised in 1935 and equipped with ticket issue and accounting machines, while during 1938 and 1939, an attempt was made to clean up to the station and improve its general appearance.

The Second World War was even harsher to the station than the earlier conflict. When bombs fell on Platforms 1 and 4 during the blitz, a train was wrecked and this took some days to remove. The East Side booking office was also damaged as was plat form 18, while a delayed action bomb exploded in the engine sidings beyond platform 10 and killed two men, despite being surrounded by four trucks of ballast. A bomb that fell on Broad Street threw a wagon onto the roof of Liverpool Street. The station buildings also suffered heavy damage, with the clock tower burnt out, and it took British Railways until 1961 to replace the clock.

The war also disrupted plans for electrification once government-sponsored loans became available, and the extension of the Central Line to Loughton and Hainault did not take place until 1947, when services from Liverpool Street to these towns ended. The LNER plans for overhead electrification of the line to Shenfield were not completed until after nationalisation, starting in late September 1949. To make the best of these developments and allow easier transfer between surface trains and the tube at Stratford, the through and local lines on the approaches were swapped, with the result that platforms 13 to 18 were used by electric trains, although 11 and 12 were also wired.

Electrification was extended to Chelmsford and Southend in 1956, while the 1955 Modernisation Plan called for further electrification of the suburban network, using the 25kv overhead system, and the existing overhead electrification on what had now become the Eastern Region of British Railways was also converted. Steam suburban services ended in late November 1960, and by late 1962, the remaining steam services had been replaced by diesel multiple units on local and non-electrified suburban services, and diesel-electric locomotives for the mainline or ‘through’ services. In 1963, Liverpool Street received its first fast electric service, to and from Clacton. While traffic on the inner suburban services was less than at its peak, a sign of the times was that platforms 11 to 15 were lengthened to accommodate 12carriage trains on the Southend line. Concurrent with electrification, a programme of installing colour light signalling got under way.

Sadly, electrification ended a long run of accident-free operation. On 13 December 1963, the last car of a departing electric suburban train was derailed near the former Bishopsgate Low Level station by a broken axle, killing a young woman when the carriage overturned.

Under British Railways, Liverpool Street became a cleaner, brighter place, and not just because of the end of steam. The terminus was cleaned and fluorescent lighting installed, the backs were closed and the concourse continued right across the station, albeit with a small detour, and the mainline booking hall was modernised. In 1975, it was announced that the station would be rebuilt to accommodate an office complex, but a more conservative scheme actually occurred between 1985 and 1991, when the old roof was replaced by an office block overhead, but the integrity of the trainshed was maintained, even while being extended.

Llanelly & Mynydd Mawr Railway

This was a small privately-owned railway built by an Edinburgh railway contractor on the route of an old tramway, the Carmarthenshire Railway, which dated from 1804 or 1805, in return for a share of the receipts. He also provided the rolling stock. Although authorised in 1875, the line was not opened until 1883. It ran for twelve miles from Llanelly. Unusually, the locomotives all carried names without numbers.

Lloyd George, David, Earl, 1863-1945

As a young solicitor in Criccieth, David Lloyd George battled for five years from 1890 with the London & North Western Railway for alleged discrimination against Welsh-speakers in its employ. Elected to Parliament, he was MP for the Caernarfon boroughs from 1890 until his death in 1945 without a break. Appointed President of the Board of Trade, he became involved in negotiations between the railway companies and the trade unions when a national strike was threatened in 1906, and took the political lead in establishing conciliation boards, as advocated by Sir Sam Fay, so that industrial disputes could be resolved without strike action. Despite this progress, a national strike did arise in 1911.

Locke, Joseph, 1805-1860

Apprenticed to George Stephenson in 1823, he later worked for him on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway and on his tunnels, but his discovery of alignment problems in both the Wapping Tunnel in 1827 and then, in 1832, Lime Street Tunnel, resulted in estrangement, especially when Locke replaced Stephenson on the Grand Junction Railway in 1835. His achievements included the design of the works at Crewe and the railway town. Afterwards, in 1837, he took over from Francis Giles on the London & Southampton Railway, predecessor of the London & South Western Railway, and then in 1839, from C B Vignoles on the Sheffield Ashton & Manchester, one of the predecessors of the Great Central Railway.

Locke was one of that rare breed of engineers who completed his assignments on time and within budget, keeping careful control over contractors and on expenditure. Working with Brassey and Mackenzie, his work went beyond the British Isles and included lines in France, the Netherlands and Spain. In Great Britain, his work included most of the separate lines that together formed much of the route between Birmingham and Aberdeen, foreseeing the West Coast Main Line, but his preference to avoid tunnels to cut costs also meant that there were steep gradients, especially at Beattock and Shap.

He became MP for Honiton between 1847 and 1860, when he died from overwork.

London

In 1801, London already had a population of 1,110,000 and was by far the largest city in Europe, already heavily built-up and with congested streets. Over the next forty years, the population more than doubled, and by 1901, it was 6,581,000. The topography varied, but around the Thames it was flat, often marshy, with much property built on reclaimed land, while to the north, the land began to rise, as it did to the south. Beneath the surface, there was thick, heavy clay. While the earliest railways were built away from London and between pairs of towns with local trading interests, it was inevitable that lines would be sent into London at an early date. London presented both opportunities and problems for those entrepreneurs anxious to develop the railways. The opportunities included its size and the congestion, the fact that it was a political, legal and financial capital, the largest port, and that it needed fresh food and coal brought to it in vast quantities; the problems were the congestion and the sheer impossibility of fitting anything else easily into this dense mass of humanity, housing and industry, and the poor drainage of such low-lying terrain.

The first railway in London was the Surrey Iron Railway, a horse-drawn tram-road built to carry freight from the Thames, it had no potential for the future, and it was not until the London & Greenwich and London & Blackwall Railways were built in the 1830s that railways as we know them arrived in London, and these were both short distance, local lines. The first railways were of minor importance and built largely on viaducts in poor areas, so that there were few objections even though they displaced many slum dwellers and no doubt added to their misery. When the London & Birmingham approached from the northwest and the Great Western approached from the west, they had to battle through prosperous areas with well-educated landowners able to resist the railway or fight for compensation, and both terminated outside the central area at Euston and Paddington respectively. In 1846, Parliament decided that no new termini should be built in the centre of London, with the southern boundary of the ‘centre’ being the Thames, which is why Charing Cross, Blackfriars and Cannon Street all cling to the north banks of the river. An example of the impact that railways had as they approached the centre of London was the London & South Western Railway, which had terminated at Nine Elms because of the difficulty and cost of getting closer. To extend to Waterloo in 1854 required the demolition of 700 houses for a much narrower spread of tracks than exists today. The Great Eastern extension to Liverpool Street built during 1861-64 was passed by Parliament on condition that it ran workmen’s trains from Edmonton and Walthamstow at a return fare of 2d (0.8p) per day for the journey of 6-8 miles, and was one of the few to pierce what almost amounted to a surface railway exclusion zone because the final leg of the extension was in tunnel.

Meanwhile, in 1863, at the height of a renewed, and very short-lived, railway boom, the House of Lords Select Committee on Metropolitan Railway Communications looked once again at the concept of a large central terminus for all of the railways, and once again reported against it. The Committee concluded that any new lines within the central area would have to be underground, with the limits placed by the original Royal Commission of 1846 being extended still further out. The concept of an ‘inner circle’ north of the Thames to link the termini was first mooted, and this was endorsed by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Railway Schemes (Metropolis). Thus the basis of the Circle Line were laid and assured of political support. It might have been even better if the line had managed to touch Euston rather than simply dump passengers with heavy luggage nearby, and also stray south of the Thames to include Waterloo, whose passengers at the time were the most inconvenienced, stuck south of the River Thames. The last terminus in London, the Great Central Railway’s station at Marylebone, had an especially difficult time as the company’s extension to London ran through St John’s Wood, the residents of which objected, and past Lords, the cricket ground, having burrowed under Hampstead.

The railways undoubtedly contributed much to the further growth and prosperity of London, and without them, the capital would not have been able to expand to its present extent, and by the end of the nineteenth century London was pulling in workers from as far afield as the Sussex Coast. The history of the individual stations, main line railway and underground lines is dealt with separately. Nevertheless, as the century drew to a close, the railway suburban services were suffering from growing competition from the electric street tramways, and it was this that forced the railways to consider electrification, initially in the London area this was on the South London line, linking Victoria with London Bridge, the two termini of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway. It was an instant success and encouraged the railways south of the river to start a rolling programme of electrification, although the South Eastern & Chatham plans were delayed by the First World War and not implemented until after grouping, when they were changed considerably by the Southern Railway. The widespread electrification of first the inner suburban lines and then the outer suburban may well have been the reason why London south of the Thames has been so badly served by the tube network, with only the Northern Line and District (see Metropolitan District) penetrating to any extent.

The formation of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933 not only brought together all of the underground lines and the capital’s bus, tram and trolleybus operations, it also embraced the railways whose suburban revenue within the LPTB area was pooled. Intended from the outset as an integrated road and rail transport organisation for London, the London Passenger Transport Area stretched out as far as Windsor, Guildford, Horsham, Gravesend, Tilbury, Hertford, Luton and Dunstable. Within this area, all suburban railway services were to be coordinated by a Standing Joint Committee consisting of four LPTB members and the four main line railway general managers, and all receipts from the area, less operating costs were to be apportioned between the LPTB and the railways. The Southern Railway’s share of these receipts was fixed at 25½ per cent, a tribute to the traffic growth generated by its investment in suburban electrification, by this time completed, while at the other end of the scale, with very little suburban traffic, was the Great Western Railway, with just over 1 per cent.

As the tube network grew, the Northern Line in particular took over stretches of suburban branch line for its expansion, but there was no wholesale handover of surface railway until the recent transfer of the London area operations of the train operating company, Silverlink, to Transport for London which is branding the services as ‘Overground’. The first completely new tube line to be opened since 1907 did not appear until 1968, with the Victoria Line, although this has since been joined by the Jubilee Line and the surface Docklands Light Railway. Not all of the capital’s surface railways were fully utilised over the years, and it has taken privatisation to inject worthwhile services into the West London Line.

London & Birmingham Railway

The first major trunk route out of London, after several attempts failed, the line was finally authorised in 1833. The initial share capital was £2.5 million for the 112-mile route, with Robert Stephenson as engineer. While the original intention was for the line’s London terminus to be at Camden, this was later changed to Euston. Opened in stages during 1837-38, the line had eight tunnels, of which the most difficult was at Kilsby, south of Rugby and almost 1½miles long, which suffered from running sand, and deep cuttings at Roade and Tring, but these works avoided any steep gradients other than that between Euston and Camden. Between Euston and Camden, a stationary steam engine hauled trains up the gradient, as steep as 1 in 70 in places, until 1844. A locomotive and carriage works was completed at Wolverton in 1838.

The Birmingham terminus was at Curzon Street, where the LBR connected to the Grand Junction Railway, providing a through route from London to both Liverpool and Manchester. In addition to the LBR’s own line from Blisworth to Northampton and Peterborough, completed in 1845, there were five branches constructed by companies supported by the LBR: Cheddington-Aylesbury, opened in 1839; Coventry-Warwick, 1844; Bletchley-Bedford, 1846; Leighton Buzzard-Dunstable, 1848; and Rugby-Leamington Spa, 1851.

Meanwhile, the line connected with other railways. As early as 1839, there was a junction with the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway at Hampton, between Birmingham and Coventry; and in 1840 a junction at Rugby with the Midland Counties Railway route from Derby and Leicester. In 1844, these companies merged to form the Midland Railway, and used the LBR for traffic from the East Midlands and the North-East to reach London until the Great Northern Railway opened in 1850.

Not all railway relationships were harmonious, and those with the GJR were damaged by the proposed Manchester & Birmingham Railway to provide a shorter route to the LBR. There was also growing competition as the Great Western extended its broad gauge lines into the Midlands, gaining an ally in the GJR. Nevertheless, when the LBR invested in the Trent Valley Railway, connecting Rugby with Stafford, the GJR took a 50 per cent stake. Eventually, the GJR and LBR, and the Manchester & Birmingham, all merged to form the London & North Western Railway in 1846.

London & Blackwall Railway

Originally authorised in 1836 as the Commercial Railway, the 5ft gauge line linked the Minories, to the east of the City of London with Blackwall, with the first 2½ miles of the 3½ mile route being on a viaduct 18ft above street level. An extension to Fenchurch Street was authorised in 1839, the company adopting the London & Blackwall title, and the following year the line opened. The line was worked by cable powered by stationary steam engines to reduce the risk of fire to shipping and cargo in the docks. Each carriage had a brakeman and carriages were slipped and picked up at intermediate stations. It was the first to adopt an even headway service with a train every fifteen minutes. In 1849, the line was converted to standard gauge and steam traction adopted, while the company connected with the Blackwall Extension Railway, which ran from Stepney Junction to Bow, then the Eastern Counties Railway, and in 1856, the line was linked with the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway at Gas Factory Junction.

The Great Eastern Railway leased the London & Blackwall in 1866 for 999-years.

London & Croydon Railway

Running from London Bridge to what is now West Croydon, the line was authorised in 1835 and opened in 1839. Although it had its own terminus at London Bridge, the company used the London & Greenwich Railway as far as Corbetts Lane Junction before running along its own lines for the remaining 8¾ miles to Croydon. Originally, it had been intended to use the alignment of the disused Croydon Canal, but this was not suitable.

The LCR lines were used in turn by both the London & Brighton, predecessor of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, and the South Eastern Railway from 1842. The LCR coped with the growing congestion on its line by installing the first flying junction near Norwood to carry its own trains, by this time using the atmospheric system, over the lines used by the other two companies. Although an extension was authorised to Epsom in 1844 using the atmospheric system, this proved unreliable and was abandoned in 1847, the year after the company amalgamated with the London & Brighton to form the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway.

London & Greenwich Railway

Authorised in 1833, the line ran on a brick viaduct 22 ft above street level, partly because of the existing pattern of streets around its terminus at London Bridge but also to avoid periodic flooding around Bermondsey. As London’s first railway, initially raising the necessary capital proved difficult. Like many lines, it opened in stages between early 1836 and late 1838. An unusual feature was the use of low centre of gravity carriages, with frames just 4in above the track, to avoid carriages falling off the viaduct, which had 4ft 6in walls, while as a further safety measure, the line was gas lit at night. Also unusual, and impractical, initially granite sleepers were set into concrete.

Once opened, this costly 3¾ mile line was used first by the London & Croydon, then by the London & Brighton and the South Eastern, initially for a toll of 3d per passenger, although this was increased to 4½d once the viaduct was widened in 1842, over the 1¾ miles between Corbetts Lane Junction and London Bridge. Three years later, the line was leased by the SER.

London & North Eastern Railway

Second largest of the ‘Big Four’ railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921, the London & North Eastern Railway’s constituent companies were the Great Central Railway; Great Eastern Railway; Great North of Scotland Railway; Great Northern Railway; Hull & Barnsley Railway; North Eastern Railway and the North British Railway; while as subsidiaries there were the Brackenhill Light Railway; Colne Valley & Halstead Railway; East & West Yorkshire Union Railway; East Lincolnshire Railway; Edinburgh & Bathgate Railway; Forcett Railway; Forth & Clyde Junction Railway; Gifford & Garvald Railway; Great North of England Railway; Clarence & Hartlepool Junction Railway; Horncastle Railway; Humber Commercial Railway & Dock; Kilsyth & Bonnybridge Railway; Lauder Light Railway; London & Blackwall Railway; Mansfield Railway; Mid-Suffolk Light Railway; Newburgh & North Fife Railway; North Lindsey Light Railway; Nottingham & Grantham Railway; Nottingham Joint Station Committee; Nottingham Suburban Railway; Seaforth & Sefton Junction Railway; Stamford & Essendine Railway and the West Riding Railway Committee. Many of the smaller companies were already worked by their larger neighbours, while others had been absorbed during the final year of independence. Before the First World War, the Great Central, Great Northern and Great Eastern had been refused permission to merge.

The LNER was the most heavily dependent on freight traffic of any of the railway companies, and from the outset its markets in the industrial areas of the north and Scotland were in decline, but the miners’ strike of 1926 and the accompanying General Strike had a massive impact on coal traffic, not only at the time but afterwards as export markets for British coal were lost for good. Added to this, the chairman, William Whitelaw, was from the NBR, a railway that was notorious for its economy. The net result was that the LNER board and management were cautious, and the company gained a reputation for being ‘poor but honest’. The shareholders saw little for their investment in the company, which also suffered from being over-capitalised, and the company paid its management less than did the other companies, even though productivity did improve with employee numbers falling from 207,500 in 1924 to 175,800 in 1937, while more trains were running a higher mileage. One distinct advantage of working for the LNER was that it inherited the NER’s Traffic Apprenticeship Scheme, brought by the first chief general manager, Sir Ralph Wedgwood.

The LNER board overruled Wedgwood’s proposed departmental organisation in favour of strong decentralisation with three areas, London, York and Edinburgh, each of which had its own divisional general manager and area board. There remained a small cadre of ‘all-line’ officers, including the chief mechanical engineer, the former GNR Sir Nigel Gresley, and chief general manager, whose role was largely one of advising the board, handling policy issues and adjudicating in disputes between divisional general managers.

There was a considerable difference between the operations out of King’s Cross and those from Liverpool Street, and this was also reflected in the difference in treatment between the company’s long distance high speed trains and the suburban services. Despite some electrification in the north of England, the LNER was primarily a steam railway. A series of attractive high speed locomotives were built for the main services, including the non-stop London-Edinburgh Flying Scotsman, Silver Jubilee, Coronation and West Riding Limited, culminating in setting a still unbeaten world speed record for steam of 126mph in 1938. The company served the suburbs of north and east London, which became renowned for being overcrowded and slow, as well as dirty, but nevertheless the LNER achieved much in operating such a high intensity service worked entirely by steam, and with the restrictions on the approaches to Liverpool Street in particular.

Famous for the use of articulation, with adjoining carriages sharing a bogie, on both its expresses and on the suburban services, Gresley initially applied this as a remedy for the poor riding of inherited six-wheel suburban carriages, while it also enabled the maximum number of seats to be included in any given train length. On the high speed expresses, articulation reduced train weight as well as improving the ride.

The LNER competed head on with the London, Midland & Scottish for traffic to both Edinburgh and Glasgow, although it had the advantage on traffic to Aberdeen, but it also competed with the LMS on traffic between London and Southend.

Despite the poor prospects for freight traffic, the LNER invested heavily in modern mechanized yards, including Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire and at Hull, while fast overnight goods trains were also introduced to counter growing competition from the road haulage industry and to enable perishable goods to get to their markets. Reluctant to borrow and instead heavily dependent on revenue for any investment in new equipment, the company found the ending of the Railway Passenger Duty useful, but it was not until 1933 and the availability of low interest loans from the Treasury that substantial modernisation was planned. Electrification was at last started for the London suburban services into Liverpool Street, and for the heavily used and steeply graded line between Manchester and Sheffield, mainly used for freight, but these schemes were suspended during the Second World War and for the most part were not completed until after nationalisation. One reason for the slow completion of these schemes was the decision to use overhead electrification with added engineering works especially with tunnels and overbridges. The inner London suburban services were in the area of the new London Passenger Transport Board, which became operational in 1933, with receipts being apportioned between the ‘Big Four’ and the LPTB’s own railway services.

The company’s V2 and V4 locomotives were amongst the best mixed traffic engines available, and ordered by the War Office for service overseas during the Second World War.

Despite the inroad beings made into the railways’ continental traffic during the 1930s, the LNER was the only one of the grouped companies not to take an active interest in the development of air transport. It joined the other companies in buying Pickfords and Carter Paterson, while also investing heavily in buying bus companies once the railways were allowed to do so, including United, United Counties, Eastern Counties and Eastern National. It inherited hotels, docks and shipping services from its predecessor companies, and continued to develop these, with modern vessels on its services to the Netherlands.

The LNER suffered badly from enemy action during the Second World War, although not quite as badly as the Southern, and was also put under additional pressure to move bulk freight, and especially coal, as the coastal convoys came under attack. Recognising the courage of railwaymen working through the blackout and the blitz, the LNER founded its own medal for acts of heroism. In one case, a burning wagon on an ammunition train was uncoupled from the rest of the train and taken to safety by an engine crew before it blew up, saving the village of Soham in Cambridgeshire from almost certain destruction.

Post-war, the LNER was nationalised, despite offering a ‘landlord and tenant’ deal, somewhat similar to the current franchising system, to the government. On nationalisation, it was divided amongst the Eastern, North-Eastern and Scottish Regions of the new British Railways, the only company to be divided into three.

London & North Western Railway

Formed in 1846 by an amalgamation of the London & Birmingham, Grand Junction and Manchester & Birmingham railways, initially it consisted of 247 trunk route miles stretching as far north as Preston, with through running over other lines to Carlisle, while also serving Liverpool and Manchester. Lacking a regional base and vulnerable to competition, the LNWR immediately set about establishing alliances and also acquiring other lines along its route. The first major alliance was known as the Euston Square Confederacy, formed in 1850, and was a defensive measure against the Great Northern. This was followed by the Octuple Agreement, pooling receipts for traffic between London and points north of York, which in turn was replaced by the English & Scotch Traffic Agreement which ran from 1859 to 1869, and which gave Glasgow traffic to the LNWR’s West Coast route and that to Edinburgh to the East Coast.

In the meantime, by 1859 the LNWR had added Cambridge, Leeds, Oxford and Peterborough to its network, while also leasing the Lancaster & Carlisle Railway, and concluded an alliance with the Caledonian Railway, so that the West Coast Main Line served not just Glasgow, but also Edinburgh and Aberdeen. It had also acquired the Chester & Holyhead Railway and the major share of the traffic to Ireland through both Holyhead and Liverpool, where in 1864, the company acquired the dock at Garston, which was enlarged in 1896, mainly for coal to Ireland. Later, it reached the Cumberland coast and started running through mid-Wales and established a cross-country service from Shrewsbury to Swansea and Carmarthen, largely run over its own lines. This was followed by a further cross-country service from Hereford to Cardiff and Newport, and acquiring a number of branch lines in South Wales. In the London area, it acquired the North London Railway which retained its identity as a subsidiary, and used a number of lines in west London operated jointly with the Great Western that enabled it to by-pass the capital and operate through to the south. In 1847, the Trent Valley line opened, by-passing Birmingham, and this was followed by another line in 1864 that by-passed major junctions at Winwick and Golborne, and in 1869, a direct line was opened to Liverpool through Runcorn.

From 1861, all locomotive building was concentrated on Crewe, while the works at Wolverton that had built locomotives for the Southern Division before it was merged with the Northern Division, concentrated on carriage building. Crewe also included a steelworks and produced the company’s rails, at the time longer than any other railway in the British Isles at 60ft, helping to provide the smoother ride and high quality permanent way in which the company took such pride. Eventually, almost everything from soap and tickets to signalling equipment was produced ‘in-house’.

Crewe became the ultimate company town, with the LNWR providing the services that would normally be provided by a local authority. The chief mechanical engineer from 1871 to 1903, F W Webb, took the existing stock of 2-2-2 and 2-4-0 locomotives, added many more of the latter, and then started to build compound locomotives, and the first 0-8-0 freight locomotives in Britain.

Despite collaboration with the GWR in London, competition developed on traffic to Birmingham and Liverpool. In an attempt to secure its position, the LNWR proposed a merger with the Midland Railway, but this failed and further competition resulted when the Midland managed to reach London over the GNR. A planned merger with the North Staffordshire Railway also failed. By 1869, there was heavy competition with the MR and later the Great Central for Manchester business. This extended to Anglo-Scottish traffic once the Midland completed its Settle and Carlisle line in 1875.

A far happier relationship flourished with the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, despite competition between Liverpool and Manchester, and in 1863 the two companies established a series of traffic pooling agreements. Parliament rejected a merger in 1872, but in 1908 the two companies and the MR agreed to send freight consignments by the shortest route. Freight was important to the LNWR, and at Liverpool, it operated no less than six goods depots. In 1882, it pioneered gravity-operated marshalling yards at Edge Hill. The mixture of slow freight traffic and fast expresses led the company to quadruple its tracks and when this was not possible provide a double-track alternative, so that by 1914, 89 per cent of the 209 miles between Euston and Preston was covered in this way, as well as much of the route to Holyhead and to Leeds. Flying junctions, of which the first was at Weaver Junction, north of Crewe, also accelerated traffic and reduced conflicting movements.

While the company invested in shipping as well as railways and ports, it did not acquire the mail contract from Holyhead to Ireland until 1920, while previously political considerations had left this with the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company. The LNWR had worked hard for the previous forty years to gain this business, building a new harbour and quays at North Wall, Dublin, as well as building faster ships. The reward in the interval was a major share of cattle and freight traffic across the Irish Sea. Earlier, in an attempt to gain the traffic between Great Britain and Belfast, the company took a majority shareholding in the Dundalk, Newry & Greenore Railway, and in 1873 had started a shipping service to Greenore. Perhaps more successful was the joint operation with the LYR from Fleetwood to Belfast and from Stranraer in Scotland to Larne with the Midland, Caledonian and Glasgow & South Western.

Despite the length of its trunk route to Scotland, the chairman between 1861 and 1891, Sir Richard Moon, believed that excessive speed used too much coal and argued that 45mph was sufficient. Nevertheless, a step forward in comfort came with bogied carriages in the late 1880s, and these were followed by all-corridor trains for the Scottish services in 1893. With Liverpool the major port for transatlantic traffic at the time, special twelve-wheel carriages were built for the boat trains, but eventually most of the traffic transferred to Southampton. Between 1914 and 1922, it electrified, using the fourth rail system favoured by the Underground Group of Companies, its suburban services from Euston and Broad Street to Watford, and after grouping, these were extended to Rickmansworth.

In the year before the grouping, the LNWR finally merged with the LYR, using the LNWR name, a move intended to strengthen its influence in the eventual grouping in 1923, when the LNWR was one of the three largest railways in the British Isles and contributed 2,066 route miles to the London Midland & Scottish.

London & South Western Railway

Largest of the constituent companies that formed the Southern Railway, the LSWR had its origins in the London & Southampton Railway, which received Parliamentary approval in 1834, and was opened from Nine Elms to Southampton in 1840, by which time the name had been changed to the London & South Western Railway. The new railway set about a vigorous programme of expansion, doubtless anxious to get as far west as possible before any rival appeared. It reached Dorchester in 1847, Portsmouth from Eastleigh in 1848, the same year as it also reached Salisbury, and then secured its position as one of the two main routes to the West Country when it reached Exeter in 1860. The LSWR had already acquired the Bodmin & Wadebridge Railway in 1847, giving a clear indication of its ambitions, but did not reach Plymouth until 1876 and Padstow, the end of the line, until 1899. The London terminus was moved from Nine Elms to Waterloo in 1848, recognising that the former was too remote. In the light of the town’s subsequent growth, it seems strange that the original line westward from Southampton to Poole and Dorchester avoided Bournemouth, and it was not until 1888 that the town was served by a direct route.

The variety of services operated by the LSWR was greater than that of the other ancestor companies of the Southern. Like the others, it had its London suburban network, in this case covering the western end of Surrey, part of Middlesex and much of Berkshire, and had a longer distance mainline network extending from Portsmouth to Exeter, but it also had the sprawling network to the west of Exeter which ensured that it was the main railway to serve North Devon and part of North Cornwall. Essentially, after Woking, the Southern split into three main lines, the Portsmouth Direct which branched off at Woking, the Exeter line that branched off at Basingstoke, and then the original Southampton line that eventually went all the way to Weymouth. An important secondary main line served Aldershot and Farnham, and for many years provided an alternative route to Winchester, while the network of lines serving the Thames Valley centred around the Waterloo to Reading line as its core.

Military and naval traffic was important from the start, with the LSWR area including Portsmouth, Portland, Aldershot and also running through Salisbury Plain. The importance of this first became apparent during the Boer War, when all of the traffic for South Africa was shipped through Southampton, where the docks had been acquired in 1892, and again during the First World War, although in this conflict the railways were effectively taken over by the government. In peacetime, it did mean that on the Portsmouth line, for example, heavy weekend and holiday traffic was balanced by a reverse flow of servicemen travelling home on leave or for the weekend, and in later years this was to become one of the most profitable routes in the south. In fact, in retrospect, it seems strange that the LSWR never seemed to accord the Portsmouth line the heavy service that it seemed to deserve, and did not spend more providing easier gradients, leaving the line difficult to work with steam traction and prone to earth slips.

The LSWR had competed with the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway for the important London-Portsmouth traffic, with the line through Eastleigh competing with that through Arundel, but the extension of the line from Guildford to create the Portsmouth Direct placed Portsmouth firmly in LSWR territory, but only just in time as the South Eastern had planned a branch to Portsmouth off the line from Redhill to Guildford – the embankment can still be seen to this day just south of the junction for Shalford, but it never carried track. There was competition with the Great Western for although the LSWR route to Plymouth was circuitous, as far as Exeter the route was the most direct. The LSWR route to Reading was never as fast as that of the GWR from Paddington, although it could be a better bet for those with the City as their ultimate destination. Windsor was another destination served by both companies.

The suburban network was completed in 1885 with what has become known as the ‘New Guildford Line’, running through Cobham.

One of the greatest achievements of the LSWR, and one for which many passengers have had cause to be grateful over the years, was the construction of flying and borrowing junctions, with a total of seven on the 42 miles west of Raynes Park, although the last of these, Worting Junction, was a Southern achievement. The major omission from this programme, and one that would have saved many conflicting train movements, was the flat junction at Woking, almost certainly due to space constraints as the town quickly coalesced around the station, and this has always been the Achilles Heel of the South Western main line, with as many as six trains an hour coming off the Portsmouth Direct in addition to those starting from Guildford.

At one time, it was the practice for transatlantic liners to put passengers and mail ashore at Plymouth, saving a day in the journey to London, and the LSWR was spurred on by this to provide fast boat trains to Waterloo. Timings were eased considerably after one of these trains derailed at Salisbury in 1906 in the LSWR’s worst accident, killing 24 of the 43 passengers on the train.

Shipping services were an important feature of the LSWR’s expansion, and here too at first it competed with the GWR, with the LSWR’s Channel Island services from Southampton competing with the GWR services from Weymouth, although the LSWR line to the town was the more direct. Eventually, the two companies operated a combined service to the Channel Islands. Southampton also proved the base for a network of ferry services to Le Havre and St Malo, while a Lymington to Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, ferry service was also started. At first, because legislation barred the railway companies from operating shipping services directly, services were developed at arm’s length through shareholdings in shipping companies, in this case the South Western Steam Navigation Company, formed in 1842, but before the end of the decade railways were allowed to operate shipping services provided that they specified the route, and by 1863 complete freedom was granted.

The LSWR was a profitable railway, paying a dividend of 5½ per cent or more from 1871 onwards. Surprisingly, while mainly a passenger railway, freight, docks and shipping business provided almost 40 per cent of turnover by 1908. Innovation included the first track circuits between Woking and Basingstoke installed between 1902 and 1907. While not a fast railway overall, the LSWR did have some fine locomotives from 1878 onwards with a growing degree of standardisation under a succession of chief mechanical engineers, CMEs, including Adams, Drummond and Urie. Nevertheless, it was not until Herbert Walker was poached from the London & North Western to become the LSWR’s last general manager in 1912, that suburban electrification started, including the rebuilding of Waterloo, until that time a collection of four stations built at different times to cope piecemeal with expansion, so that this had the distinction of becoming the first major railway terminus in the world built for an electric railway. In 1922, the LSWR completed a new marshalling yard at Feltham, with electrically-controlled points and hump shunting.

The LSWR operated a number of joint lines, but the most important of these was the Somerset & Dorset Line, which the company acquired in partnership with the Midland Railway in 1875, much to the anger of the GWR which had its eyes on this important cross-country route that linked the South Coast with the West Country and provided a good through route to the Midlands and North West. In 1907, it also acquired the Waterloo & City Railway, completed in 1898, helping to ease the isolation of Waterloo by giving a through non-stop direct link with the City of London, taking passengers to just outside the Bank of England. Waterloo’s position was also helped by the completion of the Bakerloo and Hampstead (now the Northern Line) tubes in 1906 and 1926 respectively. One final acquisition before grouping was the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, a 2ft narrow-gauge line providing an important link across a sparely populated part of North Devon, but which, ironically, was to be one of the few closures during the Southern’s reign.

In 1922, the LSWR operated 862 miles, and was involved in joint ventures that covered a further 157 miles.

London Bridge

The oldest of the London termini, London Bridge grew in a haphazard way, a situation not helped by being used by two railway companies with an uneasy relationship since Waterloo also grew piece by piece, but benefited greatly from the massive rebuilding of 1910-1920 that created an elegant and functional station.

In 1832 a 3½ mile railway, the London & Greenwich, was planned between Greenwich and Tooley Street, close to London Bridge. This set the fashion for many of the railways in the area by being built on a brick viaduct with 878 arches, creating a valuable investment income from the business premises and stables developed within the arches, and allowing the line to travel easily over the roads in this built up area. The first section of the new line was ready on 8 February 1836 between Spa Road, Bermondsey, and Deptford, making the former London’s first terminus although, of course, purely a temporary one. The line was opened to the first London Bridge Station on 14 December 1836, with a grand opening attended by the Lord Mayor of London, even though it was outside his jurisdiction, the Common Council and sheriffs and around 2,000 guests. The grandeur of the opening was in stark contrast to the reality of the station, which was basically little more than the end of the viaduct, with low platforms and with the railway offices and booking offices below. The railway only ran as far as Deptford and it was not to reach Greenwich until 1838. Plans for a triumphal arch at the entrance to this crude station were never fulfilled. Yet, the new railway was not short of ambition, and had bought more land than it needed with the London Bridge end of the viaduct able to take eight roads. The LGR saw potential in allowing other railway companies to reach London through using its terminus. The first of these was the London & Croydon Railway, authorised in 1835, which joined the Greenwich line at Corbett’s Lane, Bermondsey, and then ran to London Bridge, paying the then not inconsiderable sum to the LGR of 3d (1.25p) per passenger carried. A similar arrangement was proposed for the South Eastern Railway which would effectively extend the London & Croydon to Redhill and Dover.

While the LCR had to operate over the LGR’s tracks, it had its own three road platforms immediately to the north of the LGR’s terminus at London Bridge when it opened on 5 June 1839. This station obviously had the SER’s needs in mind as it was far beyond the needs of the initial service of twelve trains daily. The LCR station was a grander development than that of the LGR, with a train shed 170ft long and 48ft wide, but again the booking office was in the street below, with the unusual refinement of separate staircases for first and second class passengers. A small goods station was also provided.

The LCR facilities were also to be shared with the new London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, but Parliament insisted on additional tracks on the Greenwich viaduct, preferring widening of an existing route to a new construction. It also persuaded the LGR and LCR to swap stations so that the LCR, SER and LBSC would not have to cross its tracks.

The additional lines into London Bridge were ready on 10 May 1842, although the first sections of the Brighton line had been opened since 12 July 1841. On 26 May, 1842, SER trains began to operate into the new station from Tonbridge. The new joint station was not ready until February 1844, and was operated by the Brighton, Croydon & Dover Joint Station Committee. Had it not been overtaken by later expansion, it could have been an attractive station, with a two storey frontage with a booking office and waiting rooms on the ground floor while the station offices were in a separate building. There were three train sheds, one on the site of the old LGR station with another two, one for arrivals and the other for departures, each with two platforms and three tracks. Access to a four road carriage shed was by traversers. Platforms varied between 240ft in the old LGR station now intended for the North Kent Railway, to 338ft for the main departure platform and 531ft for the main arrival platform.

The LGR, ever keen to make an extra penny out of its strategic position, now demanded 4½d (1.875p) per passenger, forcing the LCR with its short journeys to refuse to carry third class passengers between New Cross and London Bridge, while also considering introducing a horse bus service between New Cross Station and London Bridge. A slightly more practical measure was the construction of a new terminus for the LCR and SER at Bricklayers’ Arms, which opened on 1 May 1844. The new station had one big advantage in that there was enough room to expand the goods facilities and also introduce those for sheep and cattle. The new station meant that the LGR lost its toll revenue, while the LCR at last felt free to introduce an hourly service, and was able to charge less than it had for trains to London Bridge. This had the desired results, forcing the LGR to charge more reasonable tolls and at different levels to reflect the fare paid, while the LCR responded by standardising fares and frequencies to both termini until it realised that London Bridge was the more attractive destination for its customers and pulled passenger traffic out of Bricklayers’ Arms, which became a goods-only station.

Named after a nearby coaching inn, Bricklayers’ Arms was neat and compact rather than grand: it had greater potential as a goods terminus than as a passenger one, being even further from the West End and City than London Bridge.

The SER agreed to take over the running of the LGR on lease from 1 January 1845, and this arrangement continued so that the LGR was one of the companies acquired by the Southern in 1923.

London Bridge then became the focus of one of the many inter-company squabbles that so marred the early development of the railways. The joint station was far too small for the SER and LBSC, but no attempt was made to create an enlarged joint station that might have worked as a cohesive whole. The SER built a boundary wall and established a new terminus on the north side of the site, with a three storey building at the street end with a canopy supported by iron pillars to provide shelter for travellers boarding or alighting from cabs. The main building was joined by another stretching down the approach road and dividing it from Tooley Street, with shops on Tooley Street and further shops and refreshment rooms on the approach side.

Inside the main building, were separate booking offices for the Greenwich, North Kent and Dover lines, with the Greenwich lines using the narrow shed built for the LCR as their station, and immediately adjoining these to the south was the station for the North Kent lines, with two platforms providing an arrival and departure road which were separated by a road used as a siding for rolling stock. Then, to the south of this, was the ‘Dover Station’ of similar layout, with its own single span roof and actually sitting on the site of the original 1836 station. The SER and LBSC had come to a truce, allowing each company toll free running rights over key sections of the other’s territory, with occasional exceptions. The SER’s willingness to accommodate the LBSC could not disguise the fact that the available facilities were inadequate, so the Brighton company built its own new station to the south of the boundary wall, and by 1854, a three storey building with an Italianate frontage was completed. It had a number of features in common with the SER building, including a flat roof and a canopy, although the latter was replaced in the mid-1880s by a glass shed extending over part of the station yard. It was only half complete when the Great Exhibition of 1851 produced a tremendous upsurge in traffic. In 1860, the LBSC had established a second London terminus at Victoria, and on 13 August 1866, the South London Line was opened via Denmark Hill to connect the two termini and also serve the densely populated area between them. This required three more approach roads into London Bridge, one for Victoria trains and two for inbound traffic. Three additional platforms were also added at this time, giving the LBSC station a total of nine.

Despite its location, London Bridge was a success commercially, with the Commons Select Committee on Metropolitan Communications reporting in 1855 that the number of passengers using the two stations had risen from 5.5 million in 1850 to 10 million in 1854. Nevertheless, all was not well, and certainly not good enough, for Sir Joseph Paxton told the committee that it took longer to travel from London Bridge to the GWR terminus at Paddington than to travel from London Bridge to Brighton.

The extensions to Cannon Street and Charing Cross required substantial changes to London Bridge, making it a through station with a route for the through roads on the north side of the SER station, but the shopping arcade on the approach road had to be demolished and replaced by a railway viaduct which led on to a girder bridge carrying the line over the station approach. The line then had almost immediately to swing south-west to avoid Southwark Cathedral, taking it into the grounds of St Thomas Hospital. In constructing the extension, the original Greenwich Station disappeared, and the lines leading to it were raised on a viaduct to provide a high level station with five platforms, two for down traffic and three for up traffic. The high level station started to handle Greenwich and Mid-Kent trains from 11 January 1864, and was opened for all lines on 1 May.

The two new termini satisfied the SER’s traffic demands for the time-being. The LBSC meanwhile saw its traffic continue to increase and put pressure on its station, but expansion in the 1870s was rejected because of the cost. Instead, tracks were re-arranged and signalling improved to get the maximum capacity out of the limited space, and by re-arranging the approaches to the platforms, many of which were extended, so that these could be used both for arrivals and departures. The cab road was shortened to allow the construction of two more short platforms. To increase capacity at London Bridge for passengers, the Continental Goods depot was moved in 1899 to Ewer Street, Southwark, on the Charing Cross extension line, and four low level terminal platforms were constructed between the LBSCR station and the high level viaduct, with canopies replacing the old depot’s wooden roof, and these platforms were ready for use from 2 June 1902, initially numbered separately as 1 to 4. A further benefit for passengers came with the City & South London tube on 25 February 1900, although it was not until 2 December 1901 that lifts were available, and this made London Bridge just a little less remote. There were further changes at the turn of the century following the joint working of the SER and LCDR, with the new SECR providing two more tracks on the north side of the approach viaduct.

Even these arrangements were far from permanent, with the LBSCR up main resignalled for reversible working on 19 October 1909 ready for the electrification of the South London Line. This also relieved the congestion on the SECR down main, which in 1912 was carrying fourteen LBSCR and five SECR trains between 17.00 and 18.00. Meanwhile, electrification started on 1 December 1909 with the South London Line using the 6,600 V ac system with overhead wires, described somewhat confusingly by today’s standards as the ‘elevated electric’, with the six most southerly platforms in the LBSC station electrified, a clear indication of the company’s intention to proceed with electrification on a grand scale. The next phases of electrification were completed during 1912, with services to Crystal Palace Low Level via Tulse Hill on 1 March, and to Streatham and Victoria via Tulse Hill on 1 June. What today would be described as the ‘sparks effect’ showed a tremendous increase in activity, with the pre-electrification services into the Brighton station running at 663 trains a day, but rising to 901 in 1912.

London Bridge was spared any damage from air raids during the First World War. The bringing together of the companies operating trains across the whole length of Southern England resulted in the creation of an opening in the wall between the former LBSCR and SECR stations, but this had to wait until 1928 as did a second footbridge over the low level to expedite movement across the station as now more than ever, it was realised that many arriving off the Brighton trains needed to continue their journey to Cannon Street, Charing Cross or Waterloo. The platforms were re-numbered in a single consecutive sequence 1 to 22 from north to south, with the omission of any platform 5, although there was a fifth road for light engine movements between the tracks served by platforms 4 and 6. Platforms 1 and 2 are believed to have been the first in London to have had the benefit of a loudspeaker system when this was installed as an experiment in 1927.

The initial electrification of what was now the Eastern Section of the Southern Railway saw third-rail electrification of services running through London Bridge to Addiscombe, Beckenham Junction, Bromley North, Hayes and Orpington from 28 February 1926, with services to Dartford via Blackheath, Bexleyheath and Sidcup all electrified on 6 June, although full services were not operated until 19 July. Services to Caterham and Tattenham Corner on the Central Section were electrified from 25 March 1928, with a full service from 17 June. This was accompanied by conversion of the Brighton overhead to third rail, with the services to Crystal Palace (Low Level) switching on 25 March 1928, and those to Victoria via the South London Line, Crystal Palace via Tulse Hill, Coulsdon North, Epsom Downs via West Croydon, Streatham Hill, Selhurst and Sydenham, were also on the dc system from 17 June, while on 3 March, 1929, third rail also covered services to Dorking North and Effingham Junction via Mitcham.

These changes also necessitated changes to the working of the approach tracks, and in 1936, the locomotive turntable opposite the ends of what were by now platforms 15 and 16 was removed, leaving the few remaining steam locomotives working the Kent Coast and Hastings trains to turn at New Cross Gate sheds.

The Southern next turned its attention to the South Coast, where many of its longer distance trains operated at peak period frequencies that rivalled some suburban lines. Platforms 14 and 15 were lengthened to 800ft. As an interim measure, electric trains started to operate to Reigate and Three Bridges from 17 July 1932, but on 1 January 1933, main line electric trains operated from London Bridge to Brighton and West Worthing. Seaford and Hastings via Eastbourne services followed on 7 July 1935, and from 3 July 1938, those to Littlehampton and Bognor, the latter reached by the Portsmouth No2 Electrification Scheme.

As the Second World War approached, London Bridge handled 250,000 passengers daily, although of these, 80,000 were on the trains continuing through to the City and West End. The station handled 2,407 railway movements daily, and in the morning peak hour received 94 trains, of which 46 terminated while 29 continued to Cannon Street and another 19 to Charing Cross. The war brought air raids, and the railways were a prime target because of their strategic importance. On 9 December 1940, the signal box had a parachute mine settle against its wall with its parachute caught on a signal, and displaying great heroism, the three signalmen continued working while a naval officer and a rating defused the mine. On the night of 29/30 December 1940, the station, while not in the City shared in the massive raid using incendiary bombs, and at 00.27, the upper floors of the station buildings were gutted by fire, which also destroyed many station offices. In an attempt to get the station working again, a wooden temporary ticket office was sited on the main concourse.

Post-nationalisation, London Bridge was badly neglected by British Railways for several decades, even leaving the wooden ticket office functioning. The only substantial changes for some thirty years were those associated with the spread of electrification to the Kent Coast. It took London Transport until 1967 to replace the lifts for the underground station with escalators.

London, Brighton & South Coast Railway

Railways had come to the South of England early. The Surrey Iron Railway had been authorised by Parliament in 1801 as the world’s first public railway running from the banks of the River Thames at Wandsworth to Croydon, some 8¼ miles, following the course of the River Wandle. The track consisted of cast-iron plates of L-section fixed to stone blocks, with a gauge of 4ft 2in. Traction was provided by horses, which because of the lack of any substantial gradient could move five or six wagons, each weighing 3½ tons fully loaded, at around 2½mph. The line was supported by the many mills and factories spread along its route, showing that some at least of London’s urban sprawl pre-dated the arrival of the railways. The promoters of the line were keen to see it extended to Portsmouth, but only succeeded in extending the tracks as far as the quarry at Merstham, a further 8½ miles. Part of its route was later to be used by the London Brighton & South Coast Railway.

The LBSC, or the ‘Brighton’ as it was commonly known, first appeared in 1846 on the amalgamation of the London & Croydon and London & Brighton Railways, and already had a network that included Brighton, from which a line had opened to Shoreham in 1840, while the main line to London Bridge was opened throughout the following year. Having its main line to London, the company set about making the most of the ‘South Coast’ in its title, reaching Chichester to the west and St Leonards to the east in 1846, and then continuing to Portsmouth in 1847. Newhaven was also reached in 1847, with Horsham in 1848 and Eastbourne in 1849. A second terminus in London was achieved in 1860 with the opening of Victoria, so that the railway was reasonably well placed to serve the West End and the City, although not actually within either.

The company was not above making the most of circumstances to grow its business. It was no coincidence that when the Crystal Palace was demolished after the Great Exhibition of 1851 that it was moved from Hyde Park to Penge Park, sold by its owner, an LBSCR director to a company associated with the LBSC, who opened a new branch ready for the official re-opening of the re-erected building by Queen Victoria in 1854. That this was an astute move can be judged by the fact that a single day in 1859 produced 112,000 passengers visiting the Palace.

A problem arose when the Brighton & Continental Steam Packet Company was found to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the LBSCR, as railways were barred at the time from running shipping, and had to be liquidated. Despite this setback, the railways were gradually allowed to operate shipping services and, as with all of the major companies in the South, shipping soon became very important, with the LBSCR introducing its first shipping services from Newhaven to Dieppe in 1867 in partnership with the Ouest Railway of France, and also operated shipping out of Littlehampton from 1867 until 1882. Nevertheless, all was not well, and by 1867, the line was in danger of bankruptcy, partly through having paid over-generous dividends for the day of 6 per cent (at a time when the standard rate of interest was around 2½ per cent). More prudent policies over the next seven years led to far healthier finances so that during the final quarter of the nineteenth century dividends could be afforded of 5 per cent or even higher.

The Brighton line was not always the fastest in the country, but still produced an acceptable performance for the time, with through non-stop journey times taking 90 minutes in 1844, reducing to 75 minutes in 1865 and 60 minutes by 1898, which made the twentieth century timings look fairly lame and unexciting by comparison. This of course marked one big difference between steam trains and the first generation of electric trains, with the former performing at speeds that electric trains found hard to match on longer distances, while the electric trains came into their own on services with many stops because of their far superior acceleration. Freight was reasonably important for the LBSCR, producing a quarter of the company’s turnover by 1913.

To maintain high end to end speeds while not neglecting the needs of intermediate stations, the LBSCR introduced the first slip carriages in the British Isles, serving Haywards Heath from 1858. Pullman cars were introduced in 1875, and electric lighting started to be introduced from 1881, while the ‘Brighton’ also rated highly for braking and signalling practice. Yet, in common with the Great Western, the ‘Brighton’ was also criticised during the late nineteenth century for its poor provision for third class passengers.

The LBSCR enjoyed a monopoly on its main lines, although there had been competition with the London & South Western Railway for Portsmouth traffic prior to the opening of the Portsmouth ‘Direct’ in 1859, which settled the matter in the latter’s favour once and for all. It cooperated with the LSWR at Portsmouth and at Ryde, where the two companies were responsible for the line from the Pierhead through to St Johns and jointly owned the Portsmouth-Ryde ferry service. It also sought a similar relationship with the South Eastern Railway at Redhill and London Bridge, but found working relations difficult, and eventually resolved this at Redhill through the construction of an avoiding line, a by-pass line, for fast traffic, known as the ‘Quarry’ line, in 1900. This would have been needed sooner or later to avoid the flat junction at Redhill with its branches off to Guildford and Tonbridge.

The monopoly only extended as far as competition from other railways was concerned. The LBSCR had built a substantial suburban network, dominating the suburbs between Dulwich and Purley. Yet, this extensive network was vulnerable to competition from the new electric tramways, which often provided a more direct route for travellers, with the advantage of passing closer to the doorstep and to the destination. This was the spur for early electrification. There was also the threat of a new London & Brighton Electric Railway shortly after the turn of the new century. The LBSCR struck back, quadrupling its main line as far as Balcombe Tunnel and obtaining Parliamentary powers for electrification in 1903. The first electric services were introduced on the London Bridge to Victoria South London Line in 1909 using a 6,700 volts ac overhead system, and after this proved successful, the lines to Crystal Palace and Selhurst were electrified in 1912.

Including joint lines, in 1922 the LBSCR had a total mileage of 457 miles.

London, Chatham & Dover Railway – see South Eastern & Chatham Railways Managing Committee

London Electric Railway

The title for the original Great Northern Piccadilly & Brompton Railway (or Piccadilly Line), it was renamed in 1910 and became the parent company for the Bakerloo and Hampstead tubes. In 1913, the organisation was acquired by the Underground Group, and all passed into the control of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.

London & Midland & Scottish Railway

Largest of the four grouped railway companies, and believed to be the largest private enterprise concern in the British Empire, the London, Midland & Scottish had as its constituent companies the Caledonian Railway; Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, which had already agreed to be purchased by the London & North Western Railway; Glasgow & South Western Railway; Highland Railway; the Midland Railway; North Staffordshire Railway and the Furness Railway; with subsidiaries including the Arbroath & Forfar Railway; Brechin & Edzell District Railway; Callander & Oban Railway; Cathcart District Railway; Charnwood Forest Railway; Cleator & Workington Junction Railway; Cockermouth Keswick & Penrith Railway; Dearne Valley Railway; Dornoch Light Railway; Dundee & Newtyle Railway; Harborne Railway; Leek & Manifold Valley Light Railway; Maryport & Carlisle Railway; Mold & Denbigh Junction Railway; North & South Western Junction Railway; North London Railway; Portpatrick & Wigtownshire Joint Committee; Shropshire Union Railways & Canal; Solway Junction Railway; Stratford-upon-Avon & Midland Junction Railway; Tottenham & Forest Gate Railway; Wick & Lynster Light Railway; Wirral Railway and the Yorkshire Dales Railway. Some of the smaller lines were already leased to or worked by the larger companies.

This was the only railway company to be operating in all four countries of the United Kingdom, and its network stretched from Thurso in the north of Scotland to Bournemouth on the South Coast, and from Londonderry to Essex. Organising such a disparate and widespread set of railway companies into a cohesive whole was a massive problem, not helped by the fact that from the start there were struggles for dominance between the senior managers of the former MR and their counterparts in the LNWR, while in Scotland, the CR established itself as the dominant force and policy setter. On the engineering side, there was also serious fractional fighting between the two major locomotive works at Crewe, ex-LNWR, and Derby, ex-MR. The MR owned the former London, Tilbury & Southend Railway, which meant that the LMS was in direct competition with the LNER and under pressure from local authorities to electrify this line. The company also owned the Northern Counties Committee, the former Belfast & Northern Counties Railway, which had a main line from Belfast to Londonderry, with an important branch to Portrush and a secondary mainline to Larne, operating on the Irish broad gauge of 5ft 3ins, and had a significant interest in the County Donegal Railway, a 3ft gauge line running across the border into the Irish Republic from Londonderry. It shared the Somerset & Dorset Railway with the Southern Railway. It was not until 1927 that the public began to notice the change of ownership.

The legacy of the pre-grouping companies was mixed to say the least. The MR was famous for its policy of small locomotives, and this contributed in no small part to the LMS having the lowest main line speeds of any of the ‘Big Four’, although an earlier belief on the LNWR that 45mph was good enough did not help! On the other hand, the LNWR had begun electrification of its London suburban network, while the MR’s policy of centralised train control was adopted and proved successful. Both the LNWR and MR had a reputation for comfortable mainline rolling stock.

The LMS was second only to the LNER in its dependence on freight traffic, and this was to prove to be a weakness with the years of the Great Depression worsened by the 1926 miners’ strike and the loss of major export markets for British coal. Nevertheless, rationalisation of freight handling and management meant that by 1939, the company’s freight business was generally profitable. This was despite the failure to introduce large 20-ton mineral wagons, even though new 2-8-0 Stanier freight locomotives accelerated trains and new fast freight trains were introduced, so that by 1938, there were seven running daily more than 150 miles non-stop, and another 57 running more than 90 miles non-stop. It was also a major operator of London commuter services, which it could not afford to electrify beyond the original LNWR scheme and which can hardly have been profitable.

The first step towards organising the LMS into a cohesive whole came with the creation of three, later four, operating divisions. Sir Josiah (later Lord) Stamp was appointed president in 1926, heading a four man executive, later increased to seven, which fulfilled the role of general manager and an officers’ committee. Stamp came from outside the industry, and his management practices were those currently in vogue in the United States, including such practices as work study. A year later, he also took on the role of chairman. Costs were analysed and working practices standardised, and as funds permitted, this soon extended to new equipment.

Sir Henry Fowler of the MR became the first Chief Mechanical Engineer, and was ordered to produce a more powerful steam locomotive to end double heading. This was a tall order for a CME accustomed to building small locomotives and the result was the Royal Scot 4-6-0, which still fell short of what was needed. When Fowler retired, Sir William Stanier was recruited from the Great Western. One of his first achievements was to end the Crewe-Derby battles, and then to start a massive locomotive rationalisation and building programme that saw the number of classes fall from 404 in 1932 to 132 by 1938, while the number of locomotives needed to operate the system fell by 26 per cent. Similar standardisation followed in carriage and wagon design, which with modernisation of the repair shops also saw massive gains in productivity. For the main line services, corridor carriages were mass produced which have generally been regarded as the best in the British Isles for comfort, while the later versions provided the basis for the British Railways Mk1 rolling stock. His famous ‘Black Fives’, the Class 5 4-6-0 mixed traffic locomotives, also provided the basis for a British Railways standard design postnationalisation. Irish broad gauge versions of the locomotives and carriages were built for the Northern Counties line. At Derby, a research laboratory and testing facility was opened and in 1938, this was joined by the world’s first School of Transport.

Such forward thinking and a penchant for excellent publicity material nevertheless could not disguise the fact that the entire railway did not stand up to critical appraisal. Stations reflected the company’s poverty, seldom painted and often dirty, and generally unwelcoming. Its branch line trains were often slow and dirty, in contrast to the fast expresses such as the streamlined Coronation Scot, running between Euston and Glasgow. The Wirral, Mersey and Manchester South Junction & Altrincham lines were electrified, the latter jointly with the LNER, but many of the electrified lines were inherited from the LYR and the LNWR.

Like the other members of the ‘Big Four’, the LMS operated ports, shipping and hotels, with Europe’s largest chain of hotels, and in 1938 operated 6,870 route miles on the mainland of Great Britain alone. Its ferry services from Heysham and Stranraer to Northern Ireland and from Holyhead to Dublin were successful, although it was less involved in port operation and management than the LNER or the Southern. Nevertheless, despite the progress made between grouping and the outbreak of the Second World War, it struggled to make a profit and dividends were scarce.

The Second World War probably affected the LMS less than the other members of the ‘Big Four’, although it suffered badly in the bombing of Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast. Its regional control centres proved themselves more than adequate for crisis management. Nevertheless, the strain of wartime operations and the shortage of skilled manpower meant that the weaknesses of the LMS were accentuated, giving rise to the graffiti; ‘The LMS, a hell of a mess’. There are anecdotal stories of passengers being unable to see station name signs because of the grime on the carriage windows.

On nationalisation, the LMS was divided between the London Midland Region and Scottish Region of British Railways, with the services to Southend from Fenchurch Street passing to the Eastern Region. Its interests in Northern Ireland eventually passed to the Ulster Transport Authority and the County Donegal Railway came under the control of the Irish State-owned C I E.

London Passenger Transport Board/London Transport/London Transport Executive

The first official attempt at an integrated passenger transport system in the United Kingdom, ‘London Transport’ was adopted as the operating title and fleet name for the London Passenger Transport Board, which came into being in 1933. The first nationalised transport concern, its Act required it to provide a completely coordinated system of public transport by road and rail over its area, which amounted to almost 2,000 square miles and, inconveniently, did not match the boundaries of the London County Council, the Metropolitan Police area or that of the Metropolitan Traffic Area, one of a number of regional traffic areas set up under the first Road Transport Act in 1931. It covered not only underground trains, but also trams, trolleybuses and motorbuses, including a large fleet of green country buses and the Greenline coach network pioneered by the London General Omnibus Company, as well as taking over depots, vehicles and services from other bus companies whose operations were caught in its area, such as Thames Valley, for example.

The Act also required the LPTB to operate in coordination with the ‘Big Four’ mainline railways. In practice, this meant that their suburban fares were pooled with the receipts of the London Underground, and each of the grouped companies received a share of the revenue. The large suburban network of the Southern Railway ensured that it received the largest share after the LPTB itself, while the Great Western, with virtually no suburban system, had the least.

The actual board was appointed by five ex-officio trustees, including the Minister of Transport.

In 1948, the LPTB was taken over by the newly formed British Transport Commission, which operated through a series of executives, so it became the London Transport Executive, but the name London Transport survived, although the circle and bar logo was steadily up-dated to keep pace with changing artistic taste. When the BTC was scrapped in 1963, a new London Transport Board emerged, directly responsible to the Minister of Transport. In 1970, control was passed to the new Greater London Council, and the name of London Transport Executive was resurrected. In 1984, control was taken from the GLC and given to London Regional Transport with separate companies operating buses and trains, but even this situation has now been reversed and control is vested in a new body, Transport for London. Expansion has continued with the acquisition of the Silverlink North London Line, which has become part of the new ‘Overground’, now a railway network, with the East London Line, while the London Transport Executive built, and its successors have continued to expand the Docklands Light Railway.

The LPTB and its successors up to and including the London Transport Board, became a huge monopoly. At its best, it coordinated bus and underground railway travel, but this was at the cost of fares that reflected railway operating costs rather than those of road transport. Even British Railways had to pool suburban revenue. No one could operate a bus service in London without its approval, while it trained and examined its own bus drivers, who could not use the resultant PSV licence if they left to work for another employer.

London, Tilbury & Southend Railway

Authorised in 1852 as a joint scheme by the Eastern Counties and London & Blackwall Railways running from Forest Gate Junction on the ECR to Tilbury and Southend, ending rivalry between the two companies to expand into the area. In many ways, this was a contractors’ line as the impetus had come from G P Bidder, as engineer, and the contractor Samuel Morton Peto, who was joined by two others, Thomas Brassey and E L Betts, who built the line, which opened in stages between 1854 and 1856, and then worked it under lease until 1875, although rolling stock was supplied by the ECR. The sponsors’ ambitions were to attract the excursion traffic from Tilbury to Gravesend, and only later did the holiday market for Southend become important.

At first, trains were divided at Stratford with portions for Bishopsgate and Fenchurch Street. A branch was opened to Thames Haven in 1855 by the Thames Haven Dock & Railway Company, and this was taken over by the LTSR on opening. Traffic grew quickly, and an avoiding line had to be built to avoid Stratford, opening in 1858, which then became the main line while all trains ran to and from Fenchurch Street only. The LTSR became independent in 1862, although the main shareholders remained the LBR and the newly-created Great Eastern, and the LTSR started running the line in 1875, after which the line was modernised and received its own 4-4-2T locomotives and carriages, with the LTSR running its own trains from 1880. Full independence followed in 1882, with the other two railways no longer appointing directors. In 1884, an extension from Southend to Shoeburyness, long delayed by War Office objections, was opened, with a shorter line from Barking to Pitsea via Upminster opened between 1885 and 1888, and in 1893 a branch opened from Grays to Romford. Meanwhile, the opening of new docks at Tilbury in 1886 provided goods traffic and called for boat trains when liners called, while the line served the new housing developments in the east of London as well as a growing commuter market at Southend.

Although acquisition of this thriving line by the GER was widely expected, in 1912 the LTSR was acquired by the Midland Railway, and under grouping passed to the London, Midland & Scottish, a self-contained and isolated line away from the company’s main area of operations.

Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway

Authorised in 1853, initially the line was to be 14 route miles linking Londonderry and Letterkenny, with a branch to Buncrana. It was the Buncrana to Londonderry section that first opened in 1863, and initially this used Irish standard gauge of 5ft 3in, but it was converted to 3ft gauge in 1885 and all the subsequent lines were built to this gauge. It acquired the Letterkenny Railway, opened in 1883; the Cardonagh Railway, opened in 1901; and an extension opened to Burtonport in 1903, running 50 miles from Letterkenny through sparsely-populated and mountainous country.

The company was unprofitable for much of its life, but before the First World war, efficiency improved and it even managed to pay a small dividend. Lough Swilly was a major anchorage and naval base for the Royal Navy and during the war years, traffic to the base at Buncrana was heavy. Postwar, traffic declined to its old level and the situation was made worse by growing competition from motor bus services and road haulage, so that the LLSR became heavily dependent on subsidies from the then Irish Free State to continue. After the Second World War, the line was not nationalised and eventually closed in 1953, but the company survived as a relatively small bus operator and road haulier for many years.

Longmoor Military Railway

A number of railways were built by the British Army which had often extensive training grounds and encampments in England. The value of railways had been learnt during the First World War when the military even built a network of narrow-gauge lines behind the Western Front to move supplies and troops. Post-war, even though funds were short, a small number of military railways were built, including one on Salisbury Plain.

The most important of these was the Longmoor Military Railway. This was one of the most significant military railways to survive between the two wars. Originally founded as the Woolmer Instructional Railway for training members of the Royal Engineers in railway operation and maintenance, the Longmoor Military Railway also had the potential to serve the large base area around Bordon in Hampshire. The LMR linked the Waterloo to Portsmouth main line, known in railways circles as the ‘Portsmouth Direct’, at Liss with a branch line at Bordon, and in between a substantial network developed. The line was sufficiently important to have been kept open by the British Army, which by this time had created a Royal Corps of Transport, until 1970.

In its heyday, the LMR operated a stud of tender locomotives and a number of 0-60ST, or saddle tanks, with ex-civilian railway passenger carriages painted blue. All of the locomotives, no matter how humble, were named. Many of them were bargains, including 0-6-2T Thisbe, acquired by the Woolmer Instructional Railway in 1914 after its original owners, the Shropshire Light Railway, found it too heavy for their needs.

Lynton & Barnstaple Railway

Authorised in 1895, 1ft 11½in narrow gauge railway opened in May 1898 with almost 20 route miles. It was promoted by Sir George Newnes, Bt, and who also promoted a funicular railway linking Lynton and Lynmouth. This independent approach was because neither the Great Western nor the London & South Western Railways, who met at Barnstaple Junction, would commit to building a railway in a sparsely populated area with some difficult geographical features. The choice of narrow gauge was based on estimates that put construction of standard gauge at £8,000 per mile (almost £700,000 by today’s values) as against £2,500 for narrow gauge, but in the end the cost per mile was double this sum. The rise in costs occurred when landowners who had supported the line demanded more money for their land, and because the contractor had not realised that much of the line would have to be cut through hard rock.

The heavy cost of construction and the need for additional capital to be raised, meant that the line was financially burdened from the start and only a dividend of ½ per cent could be paid, and then only between 1913 and 1921. One effect of these prob lems was that the line could not be extended at Lynmouth to a more suitable terminus, more convenient for passengers and with a better water supply that did not dry up during a hot summer: In the height of summer, water had to be brought by rail from Barnstaple, adding to costs, and water had to be taken on at Parracombe Halt, extending journey times.

To stimulate tourist traffic, the company built stables for road traffic at Blackmore so that passengers could reach Ilfracombe, but the time saved compared to a through journey by road between Lynton and Ilfracombe was insufficient to attract sufficient passengers. Later, in 1903, a second attempt was made to capture this trade by using motor coaches, but the vehicles were unreliable and the police and the local magistrates forced the ending of this service. On the other hand, freight traffic grew steadily until after the First World War, when competition from road haulage began to be felt.

Although not formally grouped in 1923, in March of that year, the LBR was bought by the Southern Railway. The new owners completely re-ballasted the line and replaced the sleepers, and also advertised the service. Nevertheless, the decline continued, aided by re-routing of the main road between the two towns to avoid two steep hills.

Eventually, the line was closed in September 1935. It was largely shunned by local people in its final years, although it remained a great favourite with visitors, and had the railway preservation movement started a couple of decades earlier, it might still be open today.