N

Naming of trains

In considering titled trains, specials such as ‘Excursion’ or descriptive terms such as ‘Limited’ or ‘Mail’, are generally rejected, although this does cause problems with titles such as ‘Night Ferry’, both descriptive and yet also official. Purists also reject informal titles, but it can surely be argued that these gain some credibility through constant use. In fact, early Bradshaw’s did include a number of titled trains that were descriptive, and also justified their status with accelerated timings, and by 1877, there were already several of these, mainly mail trains, but the term ‘Flying Scotsman’ or ‘Flying Scotchman’ originated as a railwayman’s nickname for the fastest King’s Cross to Edinburgh express at around this time: it was only after grouping that the London & North Eastern Railway made it official, and confusingly also gave the name to a locomotive.

In the north-west of England, the term ‘club train’ was applied to any with club carriages, and was informal, if also informative, but later became a general term for commuter trains into Manchester from Blackpool and North Wales.

In Scotland, many of the companies applied names as a description of the service offered, with the ‘Further North Express’ operating between Inverness and Dornoch.

In the south of England the first titled train arrived almost by accident. It wasn’t a railwayman’s idea at all, but that of a hotelier! Nor was it introduced by one of the smart, well-heeled and progressive companies such as the Great Western was to become, and as the London, Brighton & South Coast and Midland Railway already were, well before the turn of the twentieth century. It was the humble and poverty-stricken South Eastern Railway that introduced the first named railway train in the British Isles when, on 22 December 1876, it launched the Granville Special Express. The promoter of this train was the new owner of the Granville Hotel at Ramsgate, although at the time it proclaimed its address as being in the rather more up-market sounding St Lawrence-on-Sea. Its impact was such that the rival London, Chatham & Dover Railway also introduced its own competitor, the Granville Express, but this was the nature of the ruinous ‘me too’ competition between these two companies until they finally settled on a joint working arrangement as the South Eastern & Chatham Railway. The SECR dropped all titles abruptly in 1905, but suddenly, in 1921, the title Granville Express re-appeared. Many of the Southern Railway’s named trains were Pullmans, not only because of the relative prosperity of the area throughout the twentieth century, but because the journey times were often well-suited to Pullman service, with at-seat meals and no time for more than a single sitting, which otherwise would have favoured a conventional dining car. The exception was the Atlantic Coast Express launched in 1926, and which could include portions for up to six branch lines in North Devon and North Cornwall.

The Great Western Railway was associated with famous expresses, most probably the Cornish Riviera, first used in 1904 and later becoming the Cornish Riviera Express, redolent of holidays in Cornwall. These were only a small part of the GWR, or even of its passenger services, but as on other railways, it was the great expresses that raised the image and were so often part of the public profile for a railway. The GWR’s speciality was the ‘limited’ express, which ensured a seat for every passenger by requiring prior reservation, but the company did not neglect the Pullman concept entirely. Plymouth still had transatlantic liner traffic during the early days of the grouped railways and before Southampton became the dominant passenger liner port. The GWR ran boat trains and, in May 1929, as an experiment, Pullman carriages were added to the boat trains running between Plymouth and Paddington. This was followed in July by the Torquay Pullman, an all-Pullman express. This was to be the predecessor of another named express that did not have the Pullman supplementary fare; something never fully understood or appreciated by many travellers on the Great Western or elsewhere.

In 1930, the Pullman cars were removed from the boat trains and the Torquay Pullman was withdrawn, with all of this rolling stock transferred (since it actually belonged to the Pullman Car Company) to the Southern Railway, where it continued to operate on boat trains, but this time between Waterloo and Southampton, and on the all-Pullman Bournemouth Belle.

Contrary to folklore, the ‘Cheltenham Flyer’ was never an official title, no matter how well deserved the appellation. Certainly the name does not appear in the timetable and the train was officially known as the Cheltenham Spa Express. Nevertheless, the confusion over the title is understandable, as the GWR indeed did refer to the train as the ‘Cheltenham Flyer’ in its own internal magazine, and also sponsored a book about the train.

In 1923, the GWR decided that rather than simply speed up this service as part of its overall programme of accelerating its longer distance trains, it would aim instead to provide the fastest British express. The fastest timings for the day were those on the London & North Eastern Railway over the 44 miles between Darlington and York, against which the GWR could offer the almost level 77.3 miles between Swindon and Paddington. A morning down and an afternoon up service was selected and renamed the Cheltenham Spa Express to set the record for a regular scheduled service, initially taking just 75 minutes for the Swindon-Paddington section. The service was never uniformly fast, and indeed the title of express was really earned by the dash between Swindon and Paddington, although by cutting the number of stops between Swindon and Cheltenham the service did maintain a reasonable speed even at the ‘country’ end.

In 1927, the London, Midland & Scottish Railway launched the Royal Scot, but rather spoilt the prestige by naming the second through express of the day between Euston and Glasgow as the Mid-day Scot. Some names seemed set to be transient, such as the London & North Eastern Railway’s Silver Jubilee, which marked the jubilee of King George V in 1935 and ran between King’s Cross and Newcastle. In 1937, when King George VI had his coronation, the LNER launched the Coronation, while the LMS introduced the Coronation Scot. Perhaps there was much to be said for timeless contrived names, such as the SR’s Golden Arrow and its French counterpart, the Fleche d’Or.

Named trains had locomotive and carriage headboards, while the Golden Arrow and Bournemouth Belle both had their own sets of Pullman carriages, making just one return journey a day. By contrast, when the first electric Pullman train, the Brighton Belle was introduced, the electric multiple units shuttled between Victoria and Brighton every three hours throughout the day, serving breakfast to commuters and late suppers to homebound theatre-goers.

After nationalisation, it took some time for named trains to gain acceptance, although a number were reintroduced by the ‘Big Four’ before nationalisation. The nationalised British Railways reintroduced a number, but also later invented some of its own, including the Golden Hind, between Paddington and Plymouth; the Red Dragon, between Paddington and Cardiff; and the Liverpool and Manchester Pullmans, both with intensively used sets of special rolling stock, each making two return journeys a day. There were also a number of trains aimed at the business traveller, such as the Bradford Executive and Hull Executive.

Fast goods trains were also named, especially by the Great Western between the wars, while many more had working titles that were descriptive.

Nationalisation

Because the railways were often seen as having a monopoly, at least locally despite the multitude of companies, some compared the iron road with the public highway, especially when at first many railways were meant to be open to anyone who wanted to run a train, and so the railways also brought into being the concept of nationalisation, of state ownership, even though the first example of this was in another form of communications altogether, the telegraph system. The railways marked the change from the state providing a service, such as the Royal Mail, to the take over of a functioning business, or businesses.

Greater state control of the railways had been proposed almost from the dawn of the railway age by those who were concerned about the impact of the new form of transport. As early as 1836, one James Morrison wanted Parliament to revise the railway’s tolls, this being the time when railways were seen as being rather like turnpike trusts with open access to anyone who wanted to put a carriage or wagon on the iron road. No less a person than the Duke of Wellington, in opposition in 1834, had urged Lord Melbourne to protect the country against the mismanagement and monopoly of the railways. This, of course, shows an early divergence of opinion between those who saw the railways as a monopoly supplier and those who felt that the monopoly was nothing more than the superiority of the railways compared with all other forms of inland transport. Certainly, throughout the early years, Parliament never intended any one railway to have a monopoly.

Outright proposals for nationalisation appeared as early as 1843, when a certain William Galt wrote a series of four books in 1843 and 1844 on Railway Reform and it was this that led Gladstone to include in his Railway Regulation Act 1844, a measure giving the government the power to acquire from 1865 onwards any company sanctioned following the 1844 Act. Galt was a solicitor and it is generally taken that in pressing for reform of the railways, he was more concerned with what would be best for the country as a whole, seeing the railways as similar to the highways and the Post Office, than advocating state ownership as part of a political platform. He returned to his theme in 1864 when his book was revised and republished, providing a thorough survey of the state of the nation’s railways at the time, and then went on to appear before the Royal Commission on the Railways the following year. The members of the Devon Commission certainly considered nationalisation, but decided that nothing further should be done.

The economist Walter Bagehot was another advocate of nationalisation, writing in The Economist: ‘It is easy to show that the transfer of the railways to the state would be very beneficial, if only it can be effected.’ He was unsure over just how it could be done. Advocates of nationalisation fell into several camps, and it was not until much later that this became part of a political platform, and one that contemplated state ownership far in excess of the railways. Many of the earlier advocates saw the railways as constituting a public service, rather like the Royal Mail, and in 1868, the first nationalisation appeared in the form of the government buying out the operators of the telegraph. This included the many telegraph lines operated by the railway companies, and the measure was not without benefit to many of them, with, for example, the London Chatham & Dover Railway, albeit still in receivership, using the £100,000 (around £5 million today) paid by the Post Office for its telegraph system towards the building of a much-needed new station in the City of London at Holborn Viaduct. It is not surprising, therefore, that Sir Rowland Hill, the Postmaster General, was amongst those keen on nationalising the railways, but more surprising to find that he was joined by, for example, a shipowner who was also a director of the London & North Western Railway. The Board of Trade inspector, Henry Tyler, was also pro-nationalisation, although this did not stop him from later becoming a director of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada and a Conservative MP.

Arguments against nationalisation largely centred on the powers of patronage that it would put in the hands of politicians, as it was alleged had been the case in Belgium. The problem was, of course, that state ownership of the telegraph system was an almost instant success. It created a single unified telegraph system where before it had been fragmented. This strengthened the argument of those advocating similar treatment for the railways. On the other hand, a railway is not a telegraph system. Interoperability is far easier to ensure between railways even within different ownership, and there are even opportunities for competition that can benefit the consumer and even hasten technical progress. It is also true that the railways were not guaranteed that their predominant position in inland transport would remain forever, although this could not be foreseen at a time when even the future shape of the railways was unclear. Once again, though, we come back to another argument, which is that the railway network would have been far sparser were it not for the boom of speculation. The lines in the far north of Scotland were built with public money or relief from rates, and it would seem fair to speculate that had the railways been nationalised earlier, many uneconomic lines might have been built for social and strategic purposes, while the development of lines in the heavily industrialised and densely populated areas might have been relatively neglected. One can surmise that there would have been too few lines, with many cross-country routes not built and the trunk network having fewer sections with multiple track (i.e. more than two lines).

Nationalisation finally became a political issue in 1894, when the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, predecessor of the National Union of Railwaymen, declared in favour of state ownership. In 1899, Sir George Findlay, a director of the London & North Western Railway, looked at the problem and, while opposed to nationalisation, worked out a system which could allow it to work. The new Labour Party made nationalisation one of its core policies early in the twentieth century.

Many advocates of nationalisation saw the railways becoming a department of state, rather like the Post Office, and one wonders just how many, especially in the trade unions, would have been so keen had they realised that it would eventually be state ownership at arm’s length in what would be effectively a state corporation.

A further Royal Commission was appointed in 1913 by the then Liberal Government to consider the question of nationalisation of the railways, but its deliberations were overtaken by the outbreak of the First World War. Wartime saw the railways under state control, and in 1919 the question of nationalisation was raised again, but instead, it was decided to amalgamate the railway companies into four strong geographically-based groups, as we saw earlier. After a further spell of government control during the Second World War (see Railways in Wartime), the post-war Labour administration felt that it had a mandate for nationalisation, although, as a rear-guard action, some railway directors tried to plan a system that would transfer the infrastructure to the state, but allow the companies to remain as managers, not so different from the current situation, but this was rejected.

National Union of Railwaymen

Originally founded in 1872 as the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, it was renamed the National Union of Railwaymen in 1913 after amalgamating with the General Railway Workers’ Union, founded in 1890, and United Pointsmen’s and Signalmen’s Society, dating from 1880. It no longer exists since it merged with the National Union of Seamen in 1990 and the combined union became the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, RMT.

The ASRS was founded in 1872, at a time of a shortage of labour, while the previous year the Trade Union Act had eased the law relating to unions, which could no longer be accused of being illegal for acting in restraint of trade. Some of the union’s early supporters would have seemed unlikely in later years, including M T Bass, the leading brewer and Member of Parliament, who objected to the excessive overtime demanded of its employees by the Midland Railway. Bass even subsidised the union’s newspaper, Railway Service Gazette. Initially, the ASRS was non-militant and even published the Railwaymen’s Catechism in 1875, which described strikes as ‘evil to masters and men’. The mass of the early members were drivers, guards and signalmen, the better paid and highly skilled, as opposed to porters and other manual workers.

The welfare of the members was seen initially as reducing the number of hours worked in order to avoid the high accident rate: in 1875, 767 railwaymen were killed, or 0.3 per cent of the workforce. It even mounted exhibitions to demonstrate new safety devices, especially for such high accident areas as shunting, but little interest was shown by the companies.

Until the last decade of the nineteenth century, the ASRS was primarily a friendly society, but over those years, it became a trade union, albeit one also offering benefits to its members. The new role boosted membership from 9,000 in 1885 to 26,000 in 1990. It started with the Darlington Programme of 1887 calling for a ten hour day, reducing to eight hours in busy areas. Overtime rates of 1¼ times hourly earnings and a guaranteed weekly wage were other demands formulated around this time. Encouraged by the outcome of a strike in the London docks, these demands were pressed upon the companies, but only on the North Eastern Railway did the directors agree to meet representatives of the ASRS and use arbitration. By this time, the ASRS was also advocating nationalisation of the railways.

Despite the earlier legislation, in 1901 the Taff Vale Railway was awarded £23,000 damages for loss of business during a strike in 1900. Nevertheless, this was rectified by the Trade Disputes Act 1906, while union financing of MPs was permitted by the Trade Union Act 1913. Meanwhile, the larger companies had already agreed to the concept of conciliation boards, long advocated by Sir Sam Fay of the Great Central, to discuss differences over pay and conditions. Despite this progress, all of the railway unions other than the Railway Clerks’ Association, predecessor of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, joined the first national railway strike in August 1911. The merger with the other two unions changed the nature of the new NUR, with the General Railway Workers having catered for the less skilled and least well paid of railway workers. Membership soared to 267,611.

During the two world wars, the NUR found itself dealing with just one body, the Railway Executive, and with a severe shortage of labour, not only were woman enlisted, from 4,546 in 1913 to 55,000 in 1919, but a series of bonuses was paid. Post-grouping, the deteriorating economic situation and the growth in competition from road transport, as well as the great depression and the General Strike of 1926, combined to undermine the finances of the ‘Big Four’. Wage cuts of as much as 2 shillings in the pound first appeared in 1930, and were not fully reinstated until 1937. Nevertheless, these were years of no inflation, and many prices actually fell. The movement of railway companies into bus operation after 1929 also enabled the NUR to start recruiting amongst the forty-one companies acquired by the railway companies.

However, as the Second World War threatened, the unions were about to call another national strike, and this was only averted by pleas from the government, which stressed in a meeting that it ‘would need you to get the children away’. Once again wartime saw the number of women on the railways increase, rising to 114,000, while the Railway Executive again increased pay, which over the years 1939-1945 rose by 60 per cent, even though the cost of living only rose by 29 per cent, partially because of the controls imposed through rationing.

Post nationalisation, the NUR’s membership peaked at 462,205, and extended beyond railways and buses to the nationalised hotels, canals and docks. Membership soon started to fall, dropping below 400,000 by 1952, and eventually to 70,000 by 1994.

The NUR continued its dual role of representing railwaymen in their quest for better working conditions and acting as a lobby for the railways, including proposing more electrification. Not all of its proposals were negative: a proposal to abolish guards on passenger trains on the newly-electrified line between Bedford and St Pancras was met by a counter-proposal that guards should become travelling ticket inspectors, and a six month trial saw revenue increased despite a static number of passengers.

Neath & Brecon Railway

One of the least hopeful projects, the Neath & Brecon Railway acquired the powers of two predecessor companies, both unsuccessful, and opened its 72 route miles between 1867 and 1873. The line ran through sparsely-populated country, with no towns of any significance and even the coal traffic was relatively meagre. The N&BR passed into receivership in 1873, despite which by 1877, costs exceeded revenue by no less than 238 per cent. The line was only saved by the Midland Railway’s ambitions, in this case to grow traffic from Birmingham and Hereford to Swansea by taking running powers over the N&BR, while at the southern end of the line, coal traffic was sufficient to be profitable.

Neverstop Railway

A form of railway devised by Adkins and Lewis, with the trains propelled by a shaft laid between the tracks with which a mechanism on each car was engaged. While the shaft revolved at a constant speed, the spiral band linking the car to the shaft had a varied pitch so that when passing through stations the speed of the cars dropped to around 1 mph, while between stations it rose to 20mph. There was no need for signalling as the cars could not run into one another and it was possible to create a system that had a car available in every station for boarding.

The system was demonstrated at Southend in 1923 in the grounds of the Kursaal, after which a line was provided for the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924-25. There do not appear to have been any further examples. The limitations on speed and the mechanism indicate that it was feasible only on short routes, such as between airport terminals, for example, and it was probably more expensive than a travelator or moving pathway.

Newcastle

Horse-worked wagonways or tramways existed on both sides of the River Tyne from early in the eighteenth century, while the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway reached Gateshead in 1837, leaving passengers to be ferried across the river. The Tyne was bridged by the NCR in 1839, which also extended its line into the centre of Gateshead. In 1844 the Great North of England and the Newcastle & Darlington Junction Railways provided a through line to York and London from Gateshead, but could not bridge the Tyne because of the depth of the gorge. It was not until George Hudson agreed in 1844 to provide a double-deck bridge carrying trains on the upper level and wagons below that a bridge could be built by Robert Stephenson, completed in 1849 at the then astronomical cost of £500,000, and the following year Newcastle Central was opened.

For a while the NER had a monopoly of railway services in and around Tyneside, but this was broken in 1864 when the Blyth & Tyne Railway entered the city with its terminus at Picton House, but the port of Blyth did not fulfil its promise and in 1874, the BTR was purchased by the NER. It was not until the opening of the King Edward VII Bridge, west of Stephenson’s high level bridge, in 1906, that trains running through to and from Scotland were spared the time-consuming reversal at Central.

Grouping had little impact on railway services in the area, but post-nationalisation, a number of branch lines were closed, but some were rescued by providing the route for the Tyne & Wear Metro, which opened in stages from 1980 and was the first in the revival of tramways and light railways in the British Isles. The East Coast Main Line was electrified in 1991.

Newcastle & Carlisle Railway

An east-west link across the north of England had been mooted for some time, but the end result was just the short Carlisle Canal, opened in 1823. In 1829, a horse-drawn railway was authorised, and Francis Giles was appointed engineer. The first section opened ion 1835 and the line was completed throughout in 1839, after problems with landowners who objected to it using steam locomotives, which were forbidden by the terms of its Act, and Giles being dispensed with due to his heavy commitments elsewhere and control being passed to John Blackmore, his assistant.

In 1848, George Hudson leased the company as an extension to his York Newcastle & Berwick Railway, but the YNBR rejected the NCR, which became independent again in 1850. The North Eastern Railway tried to lease the NCR, but was unsuccessful until an Act of 1862 authorised a merger. A branch was opened to Alston in 1852, but a link with the North British Railway followed in 1862 near Hexham.

Nock, Oswald Stevens, 1904-1994

Known as O S Nock throughout his career, he spent his entire railway career with the Westinghouse Brake & Signal Company, eventually becoming chief mechanical engineer, and travelled extensively throughout the UK, eventually claiming to have travelled on almost all of the world’s railways. Nevertheless, it was his writing on railway subjects for which Nock became famous, eventually writing more than 140 books, and almost 1,000 magazine articles, most of which were in a series on locomotive performance in Railway Magazine, where he followed Cecil J Allen.

Norfolk Railway

Created in 1845 when the Yarmouth & Norwich Railway, which dated from 1844, merged with the Norwich & Brandon, which had just opened. The latter linked at Brandon with the Eastern Counties Railway, which ran from Cambridge to London. The NR built branches to Lowestoft and Fakenham between 1847 and 1849, giving it 95 route miles in total. In 1848, the ECR leased the line without first attaining Parliamentary approval, but had to rebuild much of the line during 1856-57. Both companies became part of the Great Eastern in 1862.

Although the second line to use electric telegraph for train control, the NR had a poor safety record, and it seems that this became even worse after the ECR took over.

North & South Western Junction Railway

Opened between 1853 and 1857, the North & South Western Junction Railway linked Willesden on the London & North Western Railway to Old Kew Junction on the London & South Western Railway, and had a branch from South Acton to Hammersmith and Chiswick. It was worked by the LNWR and LSWR, while the passenger service was provided by the North London Railway. Between 1871 and 1922, it was leased jointly by the L&NWR, NLR and the Midland Railway, while under grouping it passed to the London, Midland & Scottish. Mainly used by freight trains between the south and the Midlands and the North West avoiding central London.

North British Railway

Authorised in 1844 after the York & North Midland Railway was persuaded by George Hudson to provide £50,000 to complete an east coast line between Edinburgh and London, after Scottish investors had failed to provide sufficient capital. The line opened over the 57 miles to Berwick-on-Tweed in 1846, but had been poorly constructed and within three months, floods swept away many weak bridges and undermined embankments. Despite this, the NBR built branches to Duns, North Berwick and Hawick, with the last providing a link via Carlisle, the ‘Waverley’ route, with the west coast line when it opened in 1862. In return for allowing the North Eastern Railway to run over its line between Berwick and Edinburgh, the NBR was allowed running powers between Newcastle and Hexham.

After an extremely shaky start, with poor punctuality and scant dividends, Richard Hodgson became chairman in 1855 and began to rebuild the company’s operations. It acquired the Edinburgh, Perth & Dundee Railway in 1862, and in 1864, Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway in the face of fierce competition from its stronger rival, the Caledonian. Hodgson’s reign ended in 1866 when its was discovered that he was falsifying the accounts in order to pay an improved dividend, and nearly led to a merger with the Caledonian but for a shareholders’ revolt. It was not until the completion of the Settle & Carlisle line by the Midland Railway in 1876, allowing through trains from St Pancras to reach Edinburgh over the Waverley route, that the company’s circumstances improved. Dugald Drummond, the NBR’s locomotive superintendent, designed a new 4-4-0 express locomotive to handle the Anglo-Scottish expresses, before being poached by the Caledonian in 1882.

Competition with the Caledonian continued and proved ruinous. Both companies wanted the lucrative Fife coal market and both wanted to be the best route to Aberdeen, while the NBR wanted its share of the growing Glasgow commuter traffic. Both companies built large and prestigious hotels, with the NBR’s flagship being that at Waverley Station, now known as the New Balmoral. Still more ambitious was the effort made to create a port and a resort at Silloth in Cumberland, which also included building much of the town as well as a hotel and golf course. The port attracted ferry services to Ireland and the Isle of Man, but the resort failed. Rather more success was enjoyed in developing the resort of North Berwick. The company later bought the port of Methil in Fife to handle shipments of coal from the local coalfields. The NBR even attempted to compete with the CR on the Clyde, initially putting two ferries into service in 1866, but soon had to withdraw them, and a second attempt, based on Dunoon, saw heavy losses. A later attempt in conjunction with the Glasgow & South Western saw steamer services from Greenock, while steamers were also operated on Loch Lomond after the NBR purchased a local company.

The heavily indented coastline of Eastern Scotland meant that the North British had substantial ferry operations of its own across both the Forth and the Tay until bridges could be built across these two wide estuaries. The first attempt at building the Tay Bridge resulted in disaster, with the bridge collapsing in a storm while a train was crossing on 28 December 1879, with the loss of all seventy-two people aboard. A new bridge was built and this was followed by the imposing Forth Bridge, completed in 1890. These two bridges meant that the NBR was the fastest and most direct route to Dundee and Aberdeen. Nevertheless, the company failed to get the NER to allow it to handle expresses from London on the stretch of line between Berwick-on-Tweed and Edinburgh.

Traffic boomed, however, with heavy congestion at Waverley that required the station to be rebuilt and the tracks to Haymarket, with the intervening tunnels, quadrupled, with the result that when the rebuilt station opened with its suburban platforms in 1898, it was claimed to be second only to Waterloo in size. Freight traffic also grew, and shipments of coal through the port of Methil rose from 400,000 tons in 1888 to 2.8 million tons twenty years later.

While most of the railway network had been completed by 1880, the NBR had two of the last major railway projects in the country prior to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. The first of these was the West Highland Line, which ran from Craigendoran, west of Glasgow, to Fort William, and opened in 1894, and then the extension to Mallaig, completed in 1901, but which had taken Robert McAlpine four years for just 40 miles and almost uniquely in Great Britain, had needed a subsidy of £260,000 (about £17.5 million today) of taxpayers’ money. These were followed by a line from Dunfermline to Kincardine and a small number of light railways, essentially infilling gaps in the system.

With the major naval base of Rosyth, opened in 1916, although its railway station opened the previous year, on the coast of Fife, plus the anchorages in the Cromarty Firth and at Scapa Flow in Orkney, the NBR was heavily involved in the First World War, including handling the famous ‘Jellicoe Specials’ which ran from London to Thurso, and put a heavy strain on a largely single track route north of the Forth. Rosyth alone received 1.25 million tons of coal from Wales in 1918. As with the other railways, the shortage of skilled men and the demands placed on the system combined to ensure that there were serious arrears of maintenance as the war ended. Nevertheless, the NBR was one of the more successful in obtaining compensation from the government, receiving just under £10 million.

The NBR was the largest Scottish railway company contributing 1,300 track miles, 1,100 locomotives, 3,500 carriages and 57,000 wagons to the new London & North Eastern Railway on 1 January 1923.

North Eastern Railway

Formed in 1854 when four railway companies merged their operations, the York, Newcastle & Berwick, the York & North Midland, the Leeds Northern and the tiny Malton & Driffield Junction, although the three larger companies did not merge their shareholdings until 1870. The NER came into being with 700 route miles, but was not a complete rationalisation of railway operations in the north-east as four other companies remained independent for the best part of ten years.

One of the independent companies, the Stockton & Darlington, which had supported the construction of the South Durham & Lancashire Union line, allied with the London & North Western Railway, but after the SDR and SDLUR merged, they were taken over by the NER in 1863. Similar action was taken by the West Hartlepool Railway, which served a port that was a strong competitor to Hull and Middlesbrough, and sought an alliance with the LNWR, planning to compete with the NER, and it was not until 1865 that it agreed to be taken over, and that year the Newcastle & Carlisle was also absorbed. This left just the Blyth & Tyne as an independent company within the NER area, and this was not absorbed until 1874. The acquisition of these companies was often difficult, and once in NER ownership, integration proved to be slow and difficult.

The NER was a vital link in the line from London to Edinburgh, linking the Great Northern in the south with the North British Railway at Berwick-on-Tweed, which formed what is now the East Coast Main Line. Between 1868 and 1871, it built cut-offs amounting to 26 miles, with the two main ones between Durham and Gateshead, and between Doncaster and York. Nevertheless, the NER was slow to introduce the block system of signalling and interlocking of points and signals, and these as well as management failings contributed to the four accidents suffered in late 1870. William O’Brien, the general manager was sacked and Henry Tennant succeeded him, making the necessary reforms both to the structure of the company and to its operating practices, despite which the newly integrated company managed to pay a dividend of more than 8 per cent during the 1870s. It also mounted ‘The Jubilee of the Railway System’ at Darlington on the SDR’s fiftieth anniversary in 1875. On the other hand, possibly to appease the powerful iron masters, it was the last of the trunk railways to abandon iron rails in favour of steel. It also refused to send a delegate to the Railway Clearing House to discuss standardising railway telegraph codes as it could not consider any revision of its own codes.

The NER’s monopoly in the north-east soon came under threat. Hull Corporation was angered by the NER entering into a traffic pooling agreement for freight receipts for all of the ports between the Tyne and the Humber. The Corporation backed plans for a new dock to ease congestion on the Humber, and a new independent railway to bring coal from South and West Yorkshire. Originating as the Hull Barnsley & West Riding Junction Railway & Dock Company, but later becoming the Hull & Barnsley Railway, the new 66-mile line was authorised in 1880. Railway and new docks were both completed in 1885. A rate war ensued, which forced the Hull & Barnsley into receivership during 1887-89, but an agreement was reached, and while the NER was never able to acquire the HBR, the two companies shared construction of the large new deep water dock, the King George V, which opened in 1914.

The 1870s were not a period of easy growth for the railways, and the financial performance of the NER is all the more creditable for this. Faced with a recession in mineral traffic, the company began to encourage third-class travel.

The NER gained momentum and prominence when Tennant was superseded by G S Gibb in 1891. Gibb believed in building a management team with diverse experience rather than continuing the NER’s own introspective policies, and recruited R L Wedgwood, Frank Pick and E C Geddes, all of whom rose to prominence in the industry. Gibb changed the NER’s working statistics, using ton-mileage rather than train-mileage to assess performance. At first other companies were dubious about the changes when introduced in 1899, but in due course these became the industry standard. Forward thinking was also evident when the NER became the first railway to negotiate with trade unions on hours and wages. Gibb himself moved on in 1906, becoming managing director of London’s Underground Group of Companies.

Meanwhile, a succession of chief mechanical engineers, starting with Wilson, and then Thomas Worsdell and Vincent Raven, took the company into electrification. It started with the Quayside freight line at Newcastle in 1902, and then the suburban system north of the city in 1904, and by 1915 had also electrified the longer distance line from Shildon to Middlesbrough. The company even planned for electrification of the ECML between York and Newcastle, but in the end, this was shelved through grouping and nationalisation and did not take place until 1991.

The HBR was finally absorbed by the NER in 1922, and the NER became a constituent company of the London & North Eastern Railway in 1923.

North Lindsey Light Railway

Opened in 1906 between Scunthorpe and Winterton and Thealby, and extended to Winteringham in 1907, and Whitton in 1910. It was worked from the start by the Great Central Railway, before passing to the London & North Eastern Railway in 1923.

North London Railway

Authorised in 1846 as the East & West India Docks & Birmingham Junction Railway, running 13¼ miles from Camden Town on the London & North Western Railway to Blackwall, and opened in stages between 1850 and 1852. It was renamed the North London Railway in 1853. Its promoters naturally enough saw freight traffic as its main business, but passenger trains operated quarter-hourly from its opening. Initially, Fenchurch Street on the London & Blackwall Railway was the terminus, but the approach was indirect and time consuming, but a two mile stretch of line was opened from Dalston to Broad Street in 1865, and passenger traffic grew quickly. Much of the business was generated by trains running over 54¾ miles of track belonging to other companies. By 1907, the NLR’s revenue was split 50:50 between freight and suburban passenger traffic.

William Adams built the NLR’s locomotives from 1863 at its own works at Bow. The locomotive stock was highly standardised, with 4-4-0T for passenger services and 0-6-0T for freight.

The major shareholder was the LNWR, and managed to keep Great Northern trains out of Broad Street, although after 1875 NLR trains were able to work to GNR stations, including High Barnett, Potters Bar and Enfield, over a curve at Canonbury. NLR trains ran over the London & South Western to Richmond. The NLR also provided the services on the North & South Western Junction Railway line between Willesden and Kew after it opened in 1853, which was jointly leased by the NLR, LNWR and the Midland in 1871, as well as the Hampstead Junction Railway, which ran for 6½ miles from Camden Town to Willesden and opened in 1860, which was another LNWR venture. In short, the NLR was the strategic link that was far more important than its route mileage suggested and linked the railways running to the west, north and east of London – only the London, Brighton & South Coast and the two south-eastern companies were not directly linked to it. An idea of its importance was that it had no less than 123 locomotives by 1908, and 620 carriages. At Kentish Town Junction, Camden Town, the NLY installed the first completely interlocked points and signals, made at its own works at Bow. In 1874, the line between Broad Street and Camden Town was quadrupled. An interesting feature was that the NLR only provided first and second class accommodation until 1875.

Generally a highly efficient and well run railway, as it needed to be given the traffic coming off other lines, it nevertheless suffered a spate of accidents with trains running into one another on the connecting curve with the GNR at Cannonbury Tunnel in 1881, and the cause was found to be GNR signalmen not understanding NLR bell codes.

By 1880, the railway had settled into a steady business which lasted until the turn of the century, and except for two years when dividends were 6¾ per cent, it paid 7½ per cent. Nevertheless, it was also one of the first to suffer the impact of electric tramways, and this forced it to consider electrification. The LNWR took over operations from 1909, although the LNR remained as a separate company, and electrification was approved in 1911 as part of the LNWR’s scheme for its London suburban services, with electrification completed between Broad Street and Richmond in 1916, and then between Broad Street and Watford in 1922, using the third rail system.

The NLR was one of the few railway companies to suffer enemy air attack during the First World War, and occasionally had to close its passenger services.

On grouping, it became part of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway.

North Midland Railway

Authorised in 1836 to extend the Birmingham and Derby Junction and the Midland Counties, both which were extensions of the still uncompleted London & Birmingham, from Derby to Leeds, a distance of 73 miles, and to be a vital link in a line from London to the North East. George Stephenson was the inspiration supported by the banker, G C Glyn, as well as other investors in London, the north-west and Yorkshire. Working with his son Robert, Stephenson chose an easy route rather the most direct, which would have taken the line through Sheffield and Barnsley, with a maximum gradient of 1 in 250, but even so there were three major tunnels, including one of a mile at Clay Cross.

When opened in 1840, the line had cost twice the original estimate: revenues soon proved disappointing, with an average dividend of just 3.2 per cent for the first three years. After Glyn resigned in 1842, the shareholders demanded a committee to investigate expenditure and management, and this was dominated by George Hudson, chairman of the York & North Midland Railway. The outcome was that drastic economies were introduced, with a substantial reduction in employee numbers and a reduction in the remuneration of those who remained. After a serious accident in 1843, the new policies came to the notice of the Board of Trade.

The situation was little better at the BDJR and the MCR, both of which also suffered financial difficulties, so Robert Stephenson and George Hudson agreed that all three should amalgamate to form a new company, the Midland Railway.

North Staffordshire Railway

Formed in 1845, by local industrialists to keep the Potteries free from incursions by the big companies that were emerging, the NSR used the Staffordshire Knot as its emblem and became known affectionately as ‘The Knotty’. It developed a network of more than 200 route miles, and secured running rights over more than 300 route miles belonging to other companies. Although formed to transport coal, ironstone and quarried materials, it also became the largest railway canal owner, starting with an amalgamation with the Trent & Mersey Canal in 1846, but unlike other railway companies, it continued to develop the canals it bought.

The main lines linked Crewe with Derby and Colwich with Macclesfield, meeting at Stoke. The Macclesfield line was used by the London & North Western Railway as a cut-off to avoid Crewe and save five miles between Euston and Manchester. A loop line completed in 1875 linked all six Potteries towns, while branches connected the NSR with the Great Western at market Drayton and another served the Biddulph Valley. With the Great Central, the NSR was joint owner of the 11-mile long Macclesfield Bollington & Marple Railway. It also worked the 2ft 6in gauge Leek & Manifold Light Railway, opened in 1904.

Before the First World War, freight and passenger traffic combined provided an average 5 per cent dividend, while demands to reduce Sunday services were resisted and instead industrial workers were encouraged to make excursions into the countryside.

On grouping, the NSR became a constituent company of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway. Rationalisation and some decline followed, but during the Second World War, a branch was opened to a Royal Ordnance factory at Swynnerton, near Stone, which carried 3 million passengers a year from 1941 on trains that never appeared in the public timetables. Colwich to Stone and Macclesfield were electrified during the 1960s.

North Sunderland Railway

Opened in 1898 between Chathill on the North Eastern Railway to North Sunderland and Seahouses, it was managed and worked by the London & North Eastern Railway from 1939 before passing to British Railways in 1948, and closed in 1951.

North Union Railway

A merger of the Wigan & Preston railway with the Wigan Branch railway in 1834, the NUR opened in 1838, running to Preston from Parkside on the Liverpool & Manchester, giving a through route from London and an important link in the West Coast Main Line. It was joined at Euston Junction in 1843 by the Bolton & Preston Railway, which broke what would have been a monopoly for the NUR, and a fares war broke out for traffic between Preston and Manchester, which even extended to using road transport, before the two companies merged in 1844.

In 1846, the NUR was leased jointly by the Grand Junction and Manchester & Leeds Railways, and then the NUR passed to the London & North Western Railway, while the MLR became the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway. An unusual feature of the former NUR’s lines is a stone cutting near Chorley which is buttressed by 16 flying arches.

Northern & Eastern Railway

Originally authorised in 1836 to link London and Cambridge, it was allowed in 1839 to use the Eastern Counties Railway between Stratford and Shoreditch, using the same 5ft gauge as the ECR. That same year, Robert Stephenson replaced James Walker as engineer. The line had reached Bishop’s Stortford, claiming to be running the fastest trains in Great Britain, with a branch to Hertford, by 1843, but there was no further progress until it was leased by the ECR and the line was extended through Cambridge to Brandon, where it met the Norfolk Railway running from Norwich, in 1845. The previous year, both the NER and ECR converted to standard gauge.

The Great Eastern Railway acquired the NER in 1902.

Northern Counties Committee – (see Belfast & Northern Counties Railway)

Northern Ireland Railways

Formed in 1967 on the winding up of the Ulster Transport Authority, which had managed railways in Northern Ireland since 1949. It used the brand ‘NI Railways’ and operated almost 200 miles of Irish standard gauge 5ft 3in track. The main lines are from Belfast to Londonderry, with a branch to Portrush, and Belfast to the border on the line to Dublin, while there are also lines from Belfast to Bangor, seaside resort and commuter town, and to Larne, from which ferries operate to Scottish ports.

Northern Line

Renaming in 1937 of the Edgware Highgate & Morden line, which had originated from the Hampstead Line and the City & South London Railway. The Northern Line benefited from a programme of works that eventually included new rolling stock in 1938, as well as extension of its network over London & North Eastern branches to High Barnet and East Finchley. Plans to extend the line beyond Edgware to Bushey Heath were dropped post-Second World War. When formed, the Northern included a Northern City section that was separate from the rest of its network, but transferred to British Railways in 1975.

Until 1988, the tunnel from East Finchley to Morden via Bank (the City branch of the Northern) was, at 17¼ miles, the longest continuous railway tunnel in the world. Overall, the Northern consists of 40 route miles.

Notation of wheels – see Wheel notation

Nottingham & Grantham Railway

Opened in 1850 with a terminus at London Road, Nottingham, it was taken over by the Great Northern Railway, but also used by the London & North Western Railway running from Market Harborough.

Nottingham Suburban Railway

A railway linking Trent Lane Junction with St Ann’s Well, Sherwood and Daybrook, opened in 1889 and closed in 1951.