M
McAlpine, Sir Robert, 1847-1934
Having started work in the collieries at the age of seven, at sixteen McAlpine became a bricklayer and within five years was working as a contractor, owning two brickyards by 1874, but his fortunes took a sharp reversal in 1877 with the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank. Nevertheless, he created his own company, McAlpine & Co, with his five sons, and moved into railway work in 1885 with a contract to build the Lanarkshire & Ayrshire Railway. This was followed by the Lanarkshire & Dumbartonshire Railway in 1892 and then completed the Glasgow Subway in 1896, the same year that he obtained the contract for the North British Railway’s Yoker to Dalmuir extension. The following year, he began the West Highland Railway’s line to Mallaig, a difficult line with much rock to be cut and removed, and many bridges and tunnels. By this time he had gained a reputation for fast and low cost completion of contracts, partly by planning a suitable use for the spoil and also by being one of the pioneers of the extensive use of concrete from 1892 onwards, and gradually extended the size of concrete bridge spans from 60ft to 127ft. He earned himself the titles of the ‘Concrete King’ or ‘Concrete Bob’. His most famous concrete structure was the curved 21 arch Glenfinnan Viaduct, 100ft high.
He became a baronet in 1918, but meanwhile the company he founded had moved into general construction as the demand for new railways faded.
McIntosh, John Farquharson, 1846-1918.
After early experience with the Scottish North Eastern Railway which he joined in 1862, he became chief running superintendent of the Caledonian Railway in 1891, being promoted to locomotive superintendent in 1895. He adapted the 4-4-0 and 06-0 designs of Dugald Drummond, creating the highly successful ‘Dunalastair’ 4-4-0s of 1896, followed by an 0-8-0 heavy goods class and then the 4-6-0 express locomotives in 1903 that were the predecessors of the Cardean-class of 1906. His work was adopted by Belgian State Railways between 1898 and 1910; an unusual tribute. He also produced twelve-wheeled passenger carriages and was amongst the first to build higher capacity bogie coal wagons, which improved railway productivity whenever colliery owners could lay down sidings without tight curves.
The connection between the Post Office and the railways dates back to 1830, when the Superintendent of Mail Coaches met the board of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway to examine the possibility of mail being carried twice daily between the two cities. The LMR agreed to do so at a cost of 1d a mile, or 2s 6d per single trip, and this was accepted by the Post Office. Not all of the early arrangements were between cities served by the railway, with, for example, the Grand Junction Railway, acting as the railway link in carrying mail between Birmingham, that had arrived by road from London, onwards to Liverpool and Manchester.
It was clear that this was going to be an important traffic, and anxious to impose some uniformity on arrangements, the Post Office pressed for legislation and this resulted in the Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act 1838, which gave the Postmaster-General power to require all railways, both existing and any that would be authorised in the future, to carry mail at such hours of the day that the Post Office might require. Mail carriages and trucks would be carried on flat wagons provided by the railway companies, and, if necessary, special carriages were to be provided exclusively for the carriage of mail and for sorting, and if necessary special trains were to be provided. Wisely, the charges for these services were left to negotiation. That was the same year that the first exchange apparatus, devised by Nathaniel Worsdell, the LMR’s carriage superintendent, appeared, but this was rejected by the PO.
The Post Office was quick to take advantage of new routes almost as soon as they were opened. When the Great Western Railway opened the first section of its line in 1838 between London and Maidenhead, after just two weeks of operation it was carrying mail coaches on flat trucks. Again, it became part of the railway/road combination used to serve destinations not yet reached by the railway, with the Cheltenham mail coach carried from late 1839, while those for Bath, Bristol, Gloucester and Stroud followed early in 1840. Other similar arrangements were made with other companies. Mail coach practice was followed to the extent of the mails being accompanied by a guard provided by the Post Office, while the mail had its own compartment or van, or could be carried on the roof in a container known as an ‘Imperial’. On first the GJR, using a converted horsebox, and then the London & Birmingham and North Union Railways, travelling post offices, TPO, with sorters were in use by 1842.
It was not until 1855 that the first all-mail trains started, running between Paddington and Bristol on the GWR, the same year as the GWR’s first TPO. Between 1869 and 1902, the GWR mail between London and Penzance carried passengers, but reverted to mail only service in the latter year. Posting boxes were installed on all TPO trains from 1882, but letters so posted had to have an extra ½d stamp. The TPOs used mail exchange equipment invented by a PO employee, John Ramsay, adopted after successful trials at Boxmoor on the LBR in 1838. When corridor connections were provided, on TPOs the connection was offset to one side away from the sorters, who worked on one side of the carriage while mail bags were moved and readied to be dropped on the other, but eventually centre connections were provided to ease problems when connected to passenger carriages.
Further legislation was necessary for parcel post, introduced in 1883. To enable the same arrangements to be made with the railway companies, the Post Office (Parcels) Act 1882, enforced the carriage of parcels by train, with the main difference being that the railway companies received 55 per cent of the gross receipts of the PO for the parcels carried by train. To make calculation of this figure easier, each half-year the PO conducted a week-long audit of the parcels carried by rail and sent from the post towns, rather doing this on a nightly train-by-train means. In 1922, the railway companies agreed to the share of gross receipts being cut to 40 per cent in exchange for the PO agreeing not to send more than 10 per cent of parcels by road. While some sorting of parcels did take place on trains, there was no late posting facility and no exchange of parcels by trains on the move.
Nevertheless, an increasing volume of mail started to be moved by road, and also by air. All parcels were transferred to road by the early 1990s and in May 1993, the Anglo-Scottish TPOs were withdrawn. British Railways set up Rail Express Systems and the PO created Railnet, a streamlined mail network with a ten year contract with RES, with much mail being containerised, and new multiple unit TPOs were also introduced. Nevertheless, the early twenty-first century has seen most mail transferred to road haulage, mainly overnight.
Mallard – see High Speed Trains
Manchester
The opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830 was a reflection of the city’s importance as an important centre for the cotton industry in particular, for which it needed access to the docks at Liverpool both for the import of raw materials and the export of finished goods. Nevertheless, that not all was well in relations between the two cities was demonstrated by the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 to avoid the high harbour dues at Liverpool. The railways that follow provide a history of the growth of Manchester’s railway network, along with the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, the Midland Railway and the Great Central Railway.
Manchester & Birmingham Railway – see London & North-Western Railway
Manchester & Leeds Railway
Authorised in 1837, the MLR was 51 miles long running from Oldham Road, Manchester to Normanton, from where it would have running powers over the North Midland Railway to Leeds, and later to Hull and York. The engineer was George Stephenson, and the route across the Pennines required many viaducts and tunnels, of which the most difficult was Summit Tunnel, more than a mile and a half long. It was no mean achievement that the line opened during 1839-40. Branches opened to Heywood in 1841; Oldham, 1842; Halifax, 1844, and Stalybridge, 1846, followed by a connecting line across Manchester in 1848 to the London & North Western Railway. Meanwhile, the Oldham Road terminus was relegated to a goods depot after Victoria Station was opened in 1844, allowing easy interchange between the MLR and the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. In 1846, the MLR took over the Manchester Bolton & Bury Railway, which dated from 1838, and the Liverpool and Bury Railway, which was still under construction, as well as joining the Grand Junction Railway in leasing the North Union Railway. The following year, the company changed its name to the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway.
Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway – see Great Central Railway
Manchester South Junction & Altrincham Railway
Formed in 1845 to provide a link between its owners, the Liverpool & Manchester Railway and the Sheffield, Ashton & Manchester, a predecessor of the Great Central, running for its 1½ mile length on a brick viaduct on the south side of the city, but with an eight mile branch from Castlefield to Altrincham, which soon became far busier than the connecting line as it encouraged the development of suburbs. Both shareholding companies provided frequent suburban trains to Altrincham, initially from Oxford Road and then, in 1879, from London Road, by which time they had developed into the London & North Western and Manchester Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railways.
Despite having come together to build the MSJAR, the two proprietors had an increasingly unhappy relationship, to the extent that a further Act in 1858 ensured that an arbitrator should attend their meetings. The MSJAR had its own carriages and wagons, but most locomotives came from the MSLR. In 1931, by which time the owners had become the London, Midland & Scottish and London & North Eastern Railways, the line was electrified using a 1,500 V dc overhead system, converted in 1971 to 25k V ac system used for electrification of the main line services to London and enabling through services to be run onto other lines. In 1883, the Castlefield-Altrincham line was converted to become part of the Manchester Metrolink tramway system, but remains in use for trains to Chester.
Mania – see Railway Mania
Mansell, Richard C, 1848-1882
While carriage superintendent of the South Eastern Railway, Mansell designed, and in 1848, patented the wheel that carries his name. A disc is built up from an iron or steel centre boss using 16 teak segments, and the disc forced into the tyre under hydraulic pressure, and then secured by screw bolts and nuts. There was no recorded failure of these wheels, but manufacture stopped before the First World War.
Other work by Mansell included some of the first standard gauge bogie carriages, first built in 1878. He also designed the SER’s royal saloon. He resigned in 1876 after a dispute with the SER’s chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, whose son succeeded him for a short time, but Mansell returned as locomotive superintendent until 1878.
Mansfield Railway
Opened in stages between 1913 and 1917, linking the Great Central at Kirkby, via Mansfield, with the same company’s Chesterfield-Lincoln line, originally the Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast Railway at Clipstone. The line was worked by the GCR and passed to the London & North Eastern Railway on grouping.
Manx Electric Railway
Originally opened between Douglas and Groundle as the Douglas & Laxey Coast Electric Railway in 1893, using a 3ft gauge, the line reached Laxey in 1894, by which time the original track had been relaid and doubled. The line had been built by Alexander Bruce. At Groudnle, an R M Broadbent built both a hotel and a 2ft gauge railway. The extension to Laxey coincided with Bruce reorganising his business interests into the Isle of Man Tramways and Electric Power Company, which had also purchased the Douglas horse-tramway. A further extension to Ramsay was opened in 1899, with a half-hourly service between Douglas and Ramsay.
Meanwhile, Bruce also built and opened the Snaefell Mountain Railway in 1895, another electrified line but at 3ft 6in gauge and using the ‘Fell’ safety system on which a horizontal centre rail was engaged by guide wheels.
Bruce’s empire had been underwritten by a local bank, Dumbell’s, and when this collapsed in 1900, the shock seems to have contributed to Bruce’s death from heart failure six months later. The entire empire went into receivership and was broken up, with Douglas Corporation buying the horse tramway, and a syndicate of Manchester businessmen buying both the Douglas & Laxey and the Snaefell Mountain Railway. In 1902, the two railways were renamed the Manx Electric Railway.
Competition from bus services and a decline in tourism combined after the second World War to reduce the number of passengers, but the MER was rescued and nationalised by the Manx government during the 1950s because of its importance to the tourist industry. It eventually provided a convenient shelter for the remnants of the Isle of Man Railway when that too was nationalised.
Manx Northern Railway – see Isle of Man Railways
Marylebone
The last terminus to be built in London, and always resembling a small provincial terminus, Marylebone was built for the London extension of the Great Central Railway. Some would claim that it was built to fulfill the ambitions of one man, the GCR’s chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, whose interests in railways were wide and varied. He was chairman of the Metropolitan Railway from 1872. Earlier he had become chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, a cross-county operation whose main line ran from Grimsby to Manchester. Without a London route of its own, it lost this growing traffic to the Great Northern Railway and, later, the Midland Railway. Opposition to Parliamentary approval was strong, especially from the cricketing fraternity as the line would run close to Lords. There was also opposition from the artists of St John’s Wood. Eventually, the extension from near Nottingham to London was authorised in 1893.
The MSLR was not allowed to use the Metropolitan lines, which had a new chairman after Watkin stood down due to a stroke, but was able to use the same alignment. This was not just spite on the part of the new chairman, John Bell: the Metropolitan was already very busy with its own suburban traffic. Fresh powers had to be obtained so that new lines could be laid. It was also considered expedient to change the company’s somewhat provincial title to the more impressive Great Central Railway on 1 August 1897.
The GCR needed more than fifty acres for the terminus, coal and goods depots, and 4,448 persons were evicted during the slum clearance that followed, with many moved to homes nearby, but 2,690 were moved to six five-storey blocks of flats, known as Wharncliffe Gardens after the new chairman of the GCR, built by the company. This was despite much of the approach being in tunnel or cut and covered construction passing under the streets of St John’s Wood. The gradient was kept to 1 in 100. The engineers for the difficult two mile approach were Sir Douglas and Francis Fox. To allow for possible future quadrupling, not one but two tunnels were excavated under Hampstead. Between the Hampstead tunnels and St John’s Wood tunnel, the line crossed the London & North Western Railway main line on a bridge. Three further parallel tunnels took the line under Lords.
Approaching Marylebone, the seven tracks expanded to fourteen as the line passed over the Regent’s Canal, which included a second span for the proposed and authorised, but never built, Regent’s Canal, City & Docks Railway. Coal and goods depots were built on both sides of Lisson Grove. Finally, outside the terminus the lines became down slow, up slow, down main, and to the east of these, a siding road, carriage sheds, locomotive yard and a platform or wharf for fish and milk. Provision was made for sixteen tracks over Rossmore Road, with a terminus of five double faced platforms, but only part of this was built.
The feeble resources of the GCR were stretched almost to breaking point by its expansion southwards. In its best year, 1864, its predecessor, the MSLR had achieved a dividend of just 3.5 per cent. An architect for the station was beyond the company’s resources, while the terminus was a modest affair, albeit conveniently at street level, and the Great Central Hotel was left to others to develop. The extension demanded extra locomotives and rolling stock, but these could only be afforded by creating a trust company which bought the necessary equipment, and then sold them to the GCR under a form of hire purchase. A three storey office block was provided, with provision for additional floors when required, but most of the accommodation remained unused until the GCR moved its headquarters from Manchester in 1905. The concourse, intended for a terminus twice the size with five double-faced platforms, stretched beyond the nine tracks and four built at its eastern end. At the eastern wall were two tracks, then arrival platforms 1 and 2, separated by a 30-ft wide roadway. Two more tracks followed, with departure platforms 3 and 4 beyond and then a single track. Even the Great Central Hotel, with its 700 bedrooms, was over-ambitious, and in 1916 it was requisitioned by the government as a convalescent home for wounded officers. Its one oddity was a cycle track on the roof! In the end, after being purchased as offices by the London & North Eastern Railway after the Second World War, it became 222 Marylebone Road, headquarters of the British Transport Commission, and when that was dissolved, the British Railways Board.
Goods traffic on the London extension started in 1898 with coal trains. On 9 March 1899, a ceremonial opening was performed by the President of the Board of Trade. Public traffic started on 15 March. For the first month, only two platforms were used. By summer, there were eleven trains daily each way, of which seven were Manchester expresses, but while the track bedded in, running times were not fast, at five hours for the 212 mile journey. Where the GCR did score was in the comfort of its new carriages, all of which were corridor stock with electric lighting.
The problem was that the GCR route to Manchester was longer than that of the LNWR, and that to Sheffield longer than that of the Great Northern. The GCR was best for Leicester and Nottingham, neither of which matched the other cities for traffic. Even so, the Marylebone to Manchester journey time was down to 3hrs 50 min by 1904, and Sheffield was three hours.
Much of these improved timings were due to a new general manager, Sam (later Sir Sam) Fay, who understood the need for good publicity and high standards of service. Timings were reduced, through services introduced to Bradford and Huddersfield using the LCR, and to Stratford-upon-Avon using the Stratford-upon-Avon & Midland Junction Railway. Buses were laid on to carry arriving passengers to the West End, for which Marylebone was well placed, and to the City, for which it was not.
Before Fay joined the GCR, the MR had completed quadrupling its lines as far as Harrow, and later, in 1906, the MR lines to Chesham, Brill and Verney Junction were leased to a new joint operating company of the GCR and MR, with the companies taking turns every five years to manage and staff the line. The agreement was that the GCR should not take local traffic between Marylebone and Harrow, but it was allowed to develop suburban traffic on the joint lines. The GCR soon took advantage of this, introducing local trains to Chesham and Aylesbury from March 1906. A year later, the opening of the Bakerloo tube line meant that Marylebone had good quick connections throughout the West End and to Waterloo and Charing Cross.
Despite the new found alliance between the GCR and the MR, the former still wanted a new route of its own. The MR line was more steeply graded than the GCR wanted for its planned express network, and also the curves were too severe for high speed running, especially at Aylesbury, which had a severe reverse curve. The answer lay in using the Great Western’s new line from Paddington to Birmingham, with a connecting line from near Quinton Road to Ashendon, and then from Neasden to Northolt. The shared section of the main line was managed jointly by a committee of the GCR and GWR. In return for its generosity, the GWR had the GCR abandon its own plans for a route to Birmingham. The new route also offered new local and suburban possibilities, and brought welcome new traffic to Marylebone.
There was one serious accident at Marylebone. During the afternoon of 28 March 1913, a train arriving from Leicester was crossing to platform 4 as a train left platform 3 for High Wycombe. The fireman on the High Wycombe train could not see the starter signal which was obscured by smoke from the Leicester train, but the driver could see that the intermediate starter was off and believed that his fireman could see the starter signal. Too late, the driver realised his mistake and braked, but his locomotive collided with the last carriage of the up train, killing one passenger and injuring twenty-three, while five passengers on his train suffered slight injuries.
The terminus was largely unaffected by the First World War, and by retaining restaurant cars and not reducing train speeds by too much, it actually increased its share of the market.
Grouping
The GCR passed into the London & North Eastern Railway under Grouping, giving the new company three termini in London. The LNER reduced the use of the joint line with the GWR, but suburban traffic continued to grow. When Wembley Stadium opened in 1923, sporting events ensured that Marylebone became busy, while the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park in 1924 and 1925, prompted modernisation of the signalling. During the first year of the exhibition, a ten minute frequency non-stop service was provided that was superior to the Metropolitan alternative.
The LNER was, if anything, even shorter of funds for investment than the GCR had been. The recession and the strikes of 1926 saw much of its coal traffic lost, and as the member of the ‘Big Four’ most dependent upon goods traffic, the years of the Depression had the worst effect.
Marylebone itself escaped unscathed during the Second World War, with a few incendiary bombs soon extinguished, but the tunnel approach through St John’s Wood was badly damaged, forcing Marylebone to close between 5 October and 26 November 1940, with single line working until August 1942. The goods depot was destroyed by fire on 16 April 1941. Finally, towards the end of the war, the signal box was hit by a flying bomb, killing two men.
Nationalisation, and rationalisation
At first, nationalisation must have seemed like an improvement in Marylebone’s station, with the High Wycombe and Princes Risborough services concentrated on the terminus from mid-1949. In 1951, however, the stopping service to West Ruislip was cut. On the other hand, when diesel multiple units were introduced in 1961, first-class accommodation, lost during the wartime reductions, was reinstated. Meanwhile, British Railways introduced two named expresses to Marylebone, reversing the reductions of the LNER years, with the ‘Master Cutler’ to Sheffield introduced in 1947, and the ‘South Yorkshireman’ to Bradford the following year. Nevertheless, the policy of BR was rationalisation and concentration, stopping competing services from different London termini, and from 1960, the station lost its services to Bradford, Manchester and Sheffield, and services to Leicester and Nottingham were reduced. Then all main line services were withdrawn in September 1966.
There was a temporary reprieve, when the Western Region’s services to Birmingham were transferred to Marylebone while signalling and layout at Paddington were modernised during 1967-1968.
Nevertheless, the station was earmarked for closure and plans were laid for it to be converted into a coach station, being ideally placed for services coming off the new M1 motorway. It was not to be. Marylebone survived and was retained for suburban services, while post-privatisation, the new train operating company, Chiltern Trains, expanded services and extended them to Birmingham once again.
Maryport & Carlisle Railway
Authorised in 1837 to extend the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway westwards. Engineered by George Stephenson, the 28-mile line was opened in stages between 1840 and 1845. In 1848, it briefly became part of George Hudson’s empire, but regained its independence in 1850. Traffic consisted mainly of coal from the northern part of the Cumberland coalfield, but there was also iron ore and passengers and grain. Two branches were built, one through Mealsgate in 1866 failed to capture the anticipated traffic, but the second, to Brigham and known as the ‘Derwent branch’, opened the following year, provided a link to Cockermouth and with it the company reached a total of 43 route miles. It was an early convert from coke to coal as a fuel, and one locomotive is believed to have had the first all-steel boiler in 1862. Another distinction was the absence of any serious accident throughout its history.
The line achieved an average dividend of 6.6 per cent between 1850 and 1922, while between 1870 and 1882, it reached 11.1 per cent. It remained independent from 1850 until absorbed by the London Midland & Scottish Railway in 1923.
Maunsell, Richard Edward Lloyd, 1868-1944
Richard Maunsell was the Southern Railway’s chief mechanical engineer, and a contemporary of Walker. Maunsell started his career at the Inchicore Works of the Great Southern & Western Railway of Ireland. He moved in 1891 to the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, where his experience was broadened and three years later he became assistant locomotive superintendent of the East Indian Railway, before he returned to Inchicore as works manager in 1896.
Maunsell joined the South Eastern & Chatham Railway as its chief mechanical engineer in 1913, inheriting a mixture of locomotives of differing quality from its two cash-starved constituent companies. He immediately created a new engineering team which set about improving the existing 4-4-0 locomotives as well as introducing modern 2-6-0 and 2-6-4 tank engines ideally suited for the shorter distance expresses and commuter trains of the South East.
Maunsell became chief mechanical engineer for the Southern Railway in 1923, when he continued the improving work started at the SECR by tackling the ex-London & South Western Railway Urie 4-6-0s and in the process introducing a degree of standardisation. He was responsible for the highly successful Schools-class as well as heavy 4-6-0 and 0-6-0 locomotives for goods, but his main work was on electrification and during his tenure the Southern limited funds for steam locomotive development because of the capital demands of electrification. A major disappointment was the rejection by the civil engineer of his plans for a four cylinder 4-6-2 express locomotive and for three cylinder 2-6-2 locomotives, with the former having to wait for his successor, Oliver Bulleid.
Maunsell concentrated locomotive work on Ashford and Eastleigh, introducing modern line production methods, and effectively sidelined the old LBSCR works at Brighton and Lancing, although these were run down rather than closed.
He retired in 1937 and died in 1944.
Mawddwy Railway – see Cambrian Railway
Mersey Railway
Originating as the Mersey Pneumatic Railway, authorised as early as 1866, it became simply the Mersey Railway two years later. Nevertheless, it did not open its first section of 2¼ miles underground between James Street, close to the Liverpool docks, and Green Lane, Birkenhead until 1886, and in 1888 a further section opened to a surface station at Birkenhead Park, shared with the Wirral Railway. Later extensions were between Green Lane and Rock Ferry, with a junction with the Birkenhead Joint Railway, opened in 1891, and then between James Street and Liverpool Central (Low Level) in 1892, making a total mileage of just 4¼ miles.
Originally planned as a pneumatic railway, but conventional steam locomotives were used once it opened with powerful condensing apparatus, but the result was extremely unpleasant with tunnels, stations and carriages filled with smoke and soot, so that the Birkenhead ferries advertised themselves as the ‘health route’, with the result that passenger traffic was so bad that the company was in receivership between 1897 and 1900. Salvation came in the form of third-rail 650 V dc electrification in 1903, which immediately turned the company’s fortunes so that by 1930, it was carrying 17 million passengers annually. This was the first railway in the British Isles to convert from steam to electric traction.
Notable features were the steep gradients and US-style clerestory carriages with stable half-doors. It was not included in the grouping in 1923, but in 1938 was integrated into the newly-electrified Wirral lines of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway. Today it survives as the heart of the Merseyrail TOC.
Metro-land
Loosely, a word used for the area serviced by the Metropolitan Railway, but strictlyspeaking it applies to the land obtained by the company and developed for residential purposes. During the nineteenth century, railways were not entitled to hold land for non-railway purposes and any land left over after construction had to be offered back to the original landowners within a set period, often seven years, or otherwise sold. The MR overcame this by obtaining Parliamentary powers to buy land for residential development, and in 1915 produced the Metro-land slogan to promote some ten estates built close to its stations by a subsidiary.
The impact of this on stimulating suburban traffic was that the company earned twice as much per third-class seat during the 1920s as the three largest main line companies, while the Metropolitan Railway Country Estates subsidiary produced an 8 per cent dividend during these otherwise lean years.
Metropolitan District Railway
Opened in 1868 as the second underground passenger railway in the world, the line was more usually known as the ‘District’. The MDR was promoted separately from the Metropolitan Railway for financial reasons, but the two were linked as the aim was to fulfill a recommendation by a House of Lords Committee that there should be a circular railway serving central London. When the Inner Circle was completed in 1884, the two companies had moved apart rather than merged and the operation of the jointly-owned Circle was the result of continuous disputes.
The District was difficult to build, even though it was able to use much of the Thames Embankment, then under construction. When the section between South Kensington and Westminster Bridge opened in 1868, it was worked by the Metropolitan until it withdrew in 1971. The line was completed between West Brompton and Mansion House by 1874, after which it began to expand south of the Thames, often using lines built by companies that were nominally independent to help in raising capital. By 1889, it operated to Ealing Broadway, Hounslow, Richmond and Wimbledon in the south-west, including operation over London & South Western Railway metals, to Whitechapel in the east, and over the East London Railway to New Cross. Using the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway, it reached Barking in 1908, and in 1932, went further east to Upminster on what had become the London, Midland & Scottish Railway.
Despite its expansion, the line was seldom profitable. In an attempt to stimulate exhibition traffic, the big hall at Earl’s Court was built on its property.
The extent of the disagreements between the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District delayed electrification from the mid-1890s and in the end the method of electrification had to go to arbitration, but South Harrow was electrified in 1903 and all trains were electrically worked by 1905. The MDR passed to the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, and later, the Piccadilly Line took over services to South Harrow and Hounslow. In 1933, its trains operated over 58¾ route miles, of which 25 were on its own tracks.
Metropolitan Railway
Opened on 10 January 1863, between Paddington and Farringdon Street, the Metropolitan was the world’s first passenger underground railway and was constructed using the cut-and-cover system running for the most part beneath streets. At the outset, it was sponsored by the Great Western Railway and laid a 7-ft broad gauge to enable the GWR’s passengers to reach the City of London. Nevertheless, the relationship between the two railways was unhappy and was finally severed in 1867, when the line changed to standard gauge. A programme of expansion followed, reaching Hammersmith in 1864, Harrow-on-the-Hill between 1868 and 1880, and, using the East London Railway, New Cross in 1884, by which time the intention was one of creating a railway circle around central London with the Metropolitan District Railway that would link the major termini north of the Thames. Known as the ‘City Widened Lines’, the original MR was also intended to provide access to the City of London for the Midland Railway, Great Northern Railway and London Chatham & Dover Railway.
Further expansion saw the railway expand into the countryside, reaching Aylesbury from Harrow in 1892, with connections to the Great Central Railway, which gained its original access to London over the MR in 1899, and the two companies ran the line north of Harrow jointly after 1906. Uxbridge was reached in 1904, Watford in 1925 and Stanmore in 1932, while it acquired the Great Northern & City tube line, in 1913, but the two lines were never linked. More than any other railway in London, the MR was popularly associated with the expansion of the suburbs, and even had a country estates subsidiary while its catchment area became known as ‘Metroland’. Uniquely amongst the London underground railways, the MR provided three classes for its passengers, and even operated two Pullman cars, while second-class was abandoned in 1905 and first disappeared under the wartime restrictions on suburban railways in 1941. Goods and parcels traffic was also handled. Electrification of the underground section was introduced in 1905, initially with trains switching to steam at Harrow, but electrification was later extended to Rickmansworth.
Growing competition from motor buses after 1910 meant that the outer suburban services became increasingly important, and indeed the Bakerloo Line eventually was developed to relieve the inner sections of the MR. The company used its country routes to argue unsuccessfully against incorporation into the new London Passenger Transport Board in 1933. Under London Transport and later Transport for London, the MR increasingly lost some of its distinctiveness, with the Hammersmith & City Line separated, although continuing to use the widened lines along with the Circle Line. Alone amongst London’s underground railways, its current stock has 2 + 3 seating, but this is likely to be sacrificed with the next generation in favour of more standing room.
Mid-Suffolk Light Railway
Authorised by a light railway order in 1901, the Mid-Suffolk opened to goods between 1904 and 1906, and to passengers in 1908. Running between Haughley, Laxfield and Cratfield, some sections were closed in 1912 and in 1915. It was acquired by the London & North Eastern Railway in 1924, but completely closed in 1952, some four years after nationalisation.
Middleton Railway
Having the distinction of resulting from the first Act of Parliament for a railway, passed in 1758, although instead of authorising construction, it simply ratified agreements with landowners. Built as a horse-drawn tramway to a gauge of 4ft 1in, it carried coal from Charles Branding’s collieries at Middleton to Leeds. In 1812, two primitive rack and pinion steam locomotives were introduced, but these were worn out by 1835, when a sharp fall in the cost of fodder saw a return to horses until 1862, when new owners introduced conventional steam locomotives, and in 1881 converted the line to standard gauge. The coal mines that had been behind the need for the railway were all closed by 1890, but the line was used by local factories to feed into the Midland Railway. By 1958, most of the line was closed, but it was rescued in 1960 by the Middleton Railway Trust, the first standard-gauge preservation society to commence operations, and through working to Middleton was achieved by 1969.
Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway
The longest of the joint railways at 183 route miles, the line was an attempt by the Midland and Great Northern Railways to penetrate East Anglia, bringing Midland and Yorkshire coal to Norfolk and fish and agricultural products to the industrial centres of the Midlands and the north. Initially, the line used four short contractors’ lines, promoted by Waring Brothers, to get from Peterborough to Bourne, Spalding and King’s Lynn, which were opened between 1858 and 1866 and worked by the MR and GNR. Later, other lines were opened beyond King’s Lynn with the Lynn & Fakenham, opened in 1882 and a line between Yarmouth and North Walsham, that had opened throughout in 1888, which combined to form the Eastern & Midlands Company, running across Norfolk and later a branch to Norwich was added, followed by one to Cromer in 1887.
Nevertheless, the EMR passed into receivership in 1890, when the MR and GNR purchased it and added the earlier sections to it to form the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway in 1893. The following year, a branch was opened westwards from Bourne to meet the MR at Saxby, adding through services to Nottingham, Leicester and Birmingham. The new owners also doubled some of the line, but even so, 77 per cent remained single track, but operations were much improved after new tablet-exchange equipment was introduced in 1906. While the two owners had operating rights, the line also pursued an independent existence with its own locomotive works at Melton Constable. With the wide range of destinations served by this time, cattle and fish traffic alone required five trains daily during the summer, while the line also brought holidaymakers to Cromer and Yarmouth. The GNR even ran through trains between London and Cromer, but this was a lengthy route at 174 miles, 35 more than on the Great Eastern.
Rivalry with the GER was left behind in 1896, when the three companies agreed to develop the Norfolk & Suffolk Joint Railway, but only two sections were completed, between Cromer and North Walsham in 1898, and Yarmouth and Lowestoft in 1903. Nevertheless, this meant that the MGHJR and its owners could reach Lowestoft. On grouping, the line remained joint, passing to both the London, Midland & Scottish and London & North Eastern Railways, but in 1936 administration and control was taken over completely by the LNER, in whose home territory the line ran. Post-war, the line passed to the eastern Region of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948, and then began a steady decline in the face of road competition and the decline of the fishing industry, eventually being closed in 1959.
Midland & South Western Junction Railway
Last to be absorbed into the Great Western, gaining almost an extra nine months of independence, the Midland & South Western Junction provided an important link between the Midlands and the growing port of Southampton, but had a difficult early life.
Due largely to the efforts of the London & South Western Railway, Southampton’s importance as a port grew throughout the nineteenth century, so that it became a significant centre and worthy of consideration for a through line from the Midlands rather than having all traffic directed through London. As early as 1845, the initial plan was for a line from Cheltenham to Southampton, but in fact the line eventually had to be built in two stages, first as the Swindon, Marlborough & Andover Railway, authorised in 1873 and completed in 1881, and then as the Swindon & Cheltenham Extension Railway which opened in 1891, and reached Cheltenham over the Great Western Railway, by which time the two lines had merged to form the Midland & South Western Junction Railway. The 62 route miles proved costly to build and the original Swindon & Marlborough received financial assistance from its contractors, although not strictly speaking a contractor’s line, but once opened it passed into receivership where it stayed until 1897.
The MSWJR was rescued by Sam Fay who was seconded to the company in 1892 from the LSWR as receiver and general manager. Fortunately, Fay felt that the line held considerable potential, and upgraded the system including a new line to avoid the GWR at Savernake. Fay remained until after the company returned to solvency in 1897 and did not return to the LSWR for another two years, by which time one contemporary railway commentator credited him with having ‘made an empty sack stand upright’. The MSWJR had branches connecting it to the GWR at Swindon and to the military base at Tidworth, the station on the line with the highest receipts. The value of the line lay in the potential for through carriages to run to and from Southampton, with Sheffield and Birmingham served in this way from 1893, followed later by Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, while for a period carriages ran from Whitehaven to Southampton carrying emigrants.
Midland Counties Railway
Originally intended to be a line for the owners of coal mines running from Pinxton to Leicester and mooted as early as 1832, it eventually was opened as the Midland Counties Railway in 1840, providing a link from Derby and Leicester to Rugby, where it connected with the London & Birmingham Railway, with a branch from Nottingham. Engineered by C B Vignoles, the line ran through level countryside and had just two significant bridges, over the River Trent and the Warwickshire Avon. Its opening coincided with that of the North Midland Railway from Derby to Leeds, and the MCR became a vital link in the route between London and Yorkshire. Unfortunately, opening also coincided with that of the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway, which also connected with the LBR, and although eleven miles longer than the MCR, ruinous competition was the result. The situation was not resolved until both companies merged with the NMR to form the Midland Railway in 1844.
Midland Great Western Railway
Authorised in 1845 as a line from Dublin to Mullingar and Longford, which opened in 1847, the Midland Great Western was then extended to Athlone, Westport and Galway and through Connemara to Clifden, Sligo and Cavan. The line eventually extended to 538 route miles by 1914. On grouping of the railways in 1925 in Southern Ireland after independence, it became the second largest constituent part of the Great Southern Railways.
Midland Railway
Authorised in 1844, the Midland Railway resulted from the amalgamation of the Birmingham & Derby Junction, Midland Counties and North Midland Railways, and had George Hudson, the ‘Railway King’, as its first chairman. This was the first significant merger of railway companies sanctioned by Parliament. Initially, the Midland was a regional railway without its own access to London, and acted as a link between the London & Birmingham at Rugby and the York & North Midland, another Hudson railway, at Normanton. Initially, the MR had a monopoly of traffic from London to the North East, but a more direct line, the Great Northern, was authorised in 1846 and opened throughout in 1852.
Nevertheless, the MR had by this time then started its own programme of expansion, reaching Lincoln in 1846, and that year leasing the Leeds & Bradford Railway, which was authorised to extend to Skipton, where it would connect with the North Western Railway (not to be confused with the LNWR) line to Lancaster and Morcambe. The MR itself reached Peterborough in 1848, and then acquired the Birmingham & Gloucester and the Bristol & Gloucester. Nevertheless, expansion was soon checked by the stock market crisis of 1847-48, and then by Hudson’s downfall in 1849.
Hudson’s successor was John Ellis, who provided the steady hand the company needed. The MR then started a period of profitable operation, and even paid a dividend in the difficult period of 1849-51, with an average of 4 per cent paid up to 1859, and then more than 6 per cent during the 1860s.
The relationship with the NWR had not worked as well as the MR had anticipated and the decision was taken to build its own line between Settle and Carlisle, which was authorised in 1866, with poor timing as this followed a collapse in the stock market. The MR tried to abandon the project, but the North British and the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railways, which had supported the measure, managed to persuade the MR to press ahead, although the line took ten years to complete because of extensive engineering works including the Ribblehead Viaduct. Meanwhile, the MR reached Manchester in 1867 running through the Peak District and with running powers over the Manchester Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, forerunner of the Great Central. Next, the MR headed towards London, initially with a line from Leicester to Bedford and Hitchin, where it connected with the GNR and acquired rights to run to King’s Cross, but finding this far from satisfactory, built a line from Bedford to London, where it opened its terminus at St Pancras in 1868. It was intended at one time that the head office should move from Derby to London once St Pancras was completed, but this did not happen and instead the building at the London terminus became a hotel. Derby did enjoy another innovation later, when in 1910, a central control office was created in an attempt to improve the poor punctuality of the MR’s trains.
The Settle & Carlisle Line and the St Pancras extension were part of a £6 million investment programme, equating to at least £350 million today, although given the high cost of property in the London area, probably the real figure would now be very much higher. This organic growth was not the sole way forward, as the MR sought to expand. In 1875, it joined the London & South Western Railway in leasing the Somerset & Dorset, enabling it to reach Bournemouth on the South Coast. The following year, running powers were acquired that enabled the MR to reach the coalfields of South Wales.
In 1872, the MR announced that it would carry third-class passengers on all of its trains, a revolutionary move at the time when many railways regarded third-class as a nuisance. In 1875, it announced that it was scrapping second-class, which meant that third-class passengers enjoyed the comfort of former second-class rolling stock, and at the same time, the MR cut first-class fares. While this was intended to put its competitors at a disadvantage, many other companies retained second-class, in some cases as late as 1912. The MR’s move had another advantage, for while it could reach Edinburgh and Glasgow by way of the Settle & Carlisle, it was a longer route, and by providing a more comfortable service, it meant that it could compete once through running started in 1875. A further step in ensuring the comfort of passengers followed a visit to the USA by the competitive general manager, James Allport, in 1874, which had him persuade the board to introduce Pullman cars, for which a supplementary fare could be charged: once restaurant and Pullman cars did start running on the MR, the company gained a good reputation for its food.
While the MR certainly took passenger traffic very seriously, it was also a major freight railway, and this part of its operations actually increased with the extension to London. It was amongst the first to attempt to purchase the private owners’ wagons that used its rails, and while not completely successful, this was certainly a measure approved of by most railway managers.
Despite the excellence of its facilities at Derby, the MR had no hesitation in buying locomotive or rolling stock from other sources when quality, innovation or price made this attractive. Nevertheless, the company had just two locomotive superintendents between 1844 and 1903, Matthew Kirtley and S W Johnson. It inherited its engineer, W H Barlow, from the MCR in 1844, but he remained until 1857, and then continued as a consultant, building St Pancras. He was succeeded by J S Crossley, who was responsible for the Settle & Carlisle line. The magnificent engineering of the Settle & Carlisle and the grand St Pancras nevertheless were in contrast to the MR’s policies on locomotives, which were relatively straightforward and smaller than those appearing on other railways during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so that double heading was a feature of MR expresses. There was some logic behind this, as the MR’s routes were more sharply curved than those of the other main line companies, and it was its policy to run lighter, but more frequent, trains.
As the century ended, the MR was still expanding. Its partners in Scotland were the Glasgow & South Western Railway and the North British Railway, with the latter helped by the MR contributing 30 per cent of the cost of building the Forth Bridge, opened in 1890. On the other side of Scotland, it acquired a 25 per cent stake in the Portpatrick & Wigtownshire Joint Railway, which ran from Castle Douglas to Stranraer and Kirkudbright, which took traffic that had come of the West Coast line at Dumfries on to connect with the packet service to Larne in Northern Ireland, a route later known as the ‘Port Road’. It strengthened its hold on the Ulster market in 1903 when it bought the Belfast & Northern Counties Railway, the most prosperous railway in the north of Ireland. In 1904, it opened a new port at Heysham in Lancashire for packet services to Belfast. It helped to create the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway in 1893 so that it could reach East Anglia. Less logical as it was isolated from the rest of its network, was the purchase of the London Tilbury & Southend Railway in 1912, which the MR promised to electrify, but never did. The company did, nevertheless, develop its existing network, separating slow freight trains from fast expresses, so that between London and Leeds, it had a higher proportion of quadrupled route mileage than its competitor, the Great Northern.
In 1923, the MR became a constituent part of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway, which adopted many of its ideas and practices, such as central control, but not the legacy of small locomotives.
Milne, Sir James, 1883-1958
Like Inglis before him, Milne was an engineer. He trained and graduated in Manchester before joining the locomotive department of the Great Western Railway in 1904 at the age of twenty-one years. In contrast to Inglis, however, rather than continuing to rise through the engineering ranks, Milne eventually moved to the company’s head office and became involved in collecting statistics and gained operational and traffic experience. He moved to the new Ministry of Transport when it was formed in 1919, becoming director of statistics, but returned to the GWR in 1922, on the eve of grouping, as assistant general manager.
On Pole’s departure in 1929, Milne took over as general manager. He inherited a company suffering from the after effects of the miners’ strike that had lost many of the export markets for coal, with output in South Wales in decline, while wider economic depression was also taking its toll, along with growing road competition for both goods and passengers. Milne was forced to find ways of reducing costs, but he consistently took a longer term view, and after railway companies were allowed to invest in road transport in 1929, he took the GWR into a greater involvement in bus operation and road haulage, while later he invested in air services both through Railway Air Services and Great Western Air Services, including collaboration with the Southern Railway. He also considered main line electrification for the GWR, but on closer examination this proved to be too costly for its less densely trafficked network, and further analysis was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. He was knighted in 1932.
During the Second World War, Milne was deputy chairman of the Railway Executive Committee, but since the Minister of Transport was the chairman, he was ipso facto chairman. As plans for the railways post-war began to be discussed, including the strong possibility of nationalisation, which was Labour Party policy, he made clear his strong opposition to state ownership. Even so, no doubt because of his war service on the REC, he was offered the chairmanship of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission, but declined it, leaving the post to be offered to his counterpart at the Southern Railway.
Ministry of/Department of Transport
After four years of war and state control, Britain’s railways were in a poor condition, and as a result it was decided that the state should be more active and in 1919 a separate department was established, the Ministry of Transport, under the first minister Sir Eric Geddes. It was Geddes who was responsible for the passage of the Railways Act 1921 through Parliament, providing the legal framework for grouping. Later, the responsibilities of the new department extended to include road transport, and the Road Transport Act 1930 was the first in a series of measures that brought some control to road transport, although these measures were also intended to help protect the railways as much as regulate road haulage and road passenger operations.
The Board of Trade retained responsibility for shipping until after the outbreak of the Second World War, when a Ministry of War Transport was formed in 1941. When the ministry reverted to its former title postwar, it retained shipping until that returned to the BoT in 1965. It became the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation in 1953, but aviation passed to the BoT in 1965 before returning to the MoT in 1983. Meanwhile, in 1971, the MoT had merged with the Ministry of Housing & Local Government and the Ministry of Works to form the Department of the Environment, before a Department of Transport was created in 1976, to which shipping returned.
Missenden, Sir Eustace, 1886-1973
Son of a Kent stationmaster, he joined the South Eastern & Chatham Railway in 1899 as a junior clerk, but made rapid progress to become a district traffic superintendent and became a divisional operating superintendent for the Southern in 1923. In the years before the Second World War, Missenden was assistant superintendent of operations in 1930, docks and marine manager at Southampton in 1933, and traffic manager in 1936. He became acting general manager in 1939 when Gilbert Szlumper was seconded to the War Office, and became general manager in 1942 with Szlumper’s transfer to the Ministry of Supply.
In the preparations for nationalisation, Missenden became chairman of the Railway Executive, as second choice to Sir James Milne of the Great Western who had rejected the post. Missenden was a Southern man through and through, and, not surprisingly, he found the Railway Executive uncongenial and in addition he found the relationship with the British Transport Commission, the ‘catch-all’ body for all the nationalised transport industries, difficult, so he retired in 1951.
Missenden’s life centred on the railway. A shy man, a competent and conscientious railwayman, a sound if not always inspiring leader, and an opponent of nationalisation, with a healthy disregard for politicians and civil servants.
Monorail
Frequently held up by enthusiasts for change as the way forward in the development of the railways, monorails have consistently continued to disappoint, despite the concept dating from at least 1821, when the London Dock Company’s engineer, one H R Palmer, patented the concept. The early monorails as built by Palmer were used to carry goods, used horses and the loads were balanced as with panniers on either side of a single load-bearing rail. A man-powered monorail, with the ‘driver’ cycling, carried passengers and was known as the William the Fourth Royal Car, and ran on a circular track around the Royal Panarmonion Gardens in London: the single carriage was suspended from a single track along which two-wheeled trucks ran in tandem.
One system that did in fact become operational on a public railway was the Lartigue monorail, named after Charles Lartigue who patented the system in 1883, consisting 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. It was used on Ireland’s Listowel & Ballybunnion Railway opened in 1888. An earlier version of the same system was patented by John Barraclough Fell in 1868.
Later, in 1903, Louis Brennan obtained a patent for the Gyroscopic Monorail, which was demonstrated in 1909, a year after a demonstration by E W Chalmers Kearney, whose system used a car running on a single rail but with an overhead stabilising rail. Others, using suspended cars, included the ‘George Bennie Railplane’, which was successfully demonstrated near Glasgow in 1929, and was powered by tractor and pusher aeroplane propellers mounted front and rear. The MAGLEV system of railcars using electro-magnetic levitation to keep them in position above a single track was also a variant on the monorail theme, but a practical system linking Birmingham International railway station with the airport, opened in 1984, was closed in 1995 due to the cost of spare parts.
Museums
There are few museums in the British Isles dedicated solely to the preservation and presentation of items of railway history and artefacts, with the most notable example being the National Railway Museum at York. Many others are museums of transport, which include railway items, and typically include the Glasgow Museum of Transport and the London Transport Museum, or museums of science and industry, of which the most noteworthy is the Science Museum in London. Railway items also can be found in many local and municipal museums.
Those interested in railway history are fortunate in that the importance of the early locomotives and rolling stock was apparent even as early as the 1850s, and individuals and railway companies were keen to preserve this history, although there was little guarantee that the items were secure for the longer term, or that conservation techniques were understood. While railway museums were founded in Norway and Germany during the late nineteenth century, it was not until 1927 that the London & North Eastern Railway opened Britain’s first railway museum at York, and eventually this was the forerunner of the present National Railway Museum.
The role of the museums is complemented by the railway preservation movement which first became significant during the 1950s. The preservation movement can take the credit for providing an experience of a steam railway for generations born after the end of steam. On the debit side, many of them are providing a steam railway experience, an up-market fairground ride, rather than an insight or introduction to railway history, and unlikely combinations of locomotives and rolling stock can be experienced. The conditions of their light railway orders and the length of line preclude high speed running. It is also the case that since this is a voluntary movement, handled and funded by individuals, the collections reflect individual interests and finances. There is an imbalance in the locomotives and rolling stock preserved, sometimes as a result of the movements having developed as steam was ending its days, so that interesting older locomotives were scrapped before preservationists could get to work. The absence of truly historic rolling stock also means that vacuum-brake vehicles are not as common as they should be, and locomotives have been converted to provide air braking. Finally, the passion for steam and the costs involved have meant that electric and diesel rolling stock is rare in preserved form.
It has to be recognised that in Britain’s risk adverse society, much earlier railway rolling stock would be banned for health and safety reasons.
That said, some of the best preserved lines are the Welsh narrow gauge lines, whose character has lived on.
Related to railways, but apart from them, are the preserved trams at Crich in Derbyshire.