P

Padarn Railway

A private mineral line built in 1848 and using two gauges, 4ft and 1ft 10¾ inches in Snowdonia.

Paddington

Alone amongst the ‘Big Four’, the Great Western had just one London terminus, Paddington. This was the result of there being only one company amongst those grouped to make the ‘new’ Great Western with a London connection, yet, for travellers to the City, Paddington was probably the least convenient location at which to arrive in the capital. Not for nothing did the GWR value its stake in the Hammersmith & City Line, or at one stage operate by a circuitous route through the west of London to Victoria.

Built to accommodate the broad gauge, Paddington acquired a natural spaciousness, and gave the impression of being built by an affluent railway, with the graceful roof provided by Brunel almost cathedral-like, even to the extent of having what almost amounted to transepts.

Confident that all problems would be resolved, preparatory work on the approach to Paddington was carried out even before it received Parliamentary sanction in 1837. The line reached London from Kensal Green along the alignment of the Grand Union Canal towards Bishops Walk, subsequently re-named Bishops Road and then Bishops Bridge Road, using land leased from the Bishop of London. An immediate shortage of capital meant that a temporary station had to be built, mainly of wooden construction with the passenger facilities and offices in the arches of the bridge under Bishops Road, and with just an arrival and a departure platform separated by a broad vehicle roadway. The temporary station opened on 4 June 1838, on the day that the line itself opened for business over the 22.5 miles between Paddington and Maidenhead. The line extended to Reading on 30 March 1840, and the ambition of linking London and Bristol was achieved on 30 June 1841.

Temporary it may have been, but the early Paddington Station was clearly regarded as being fit for royalty. Queen Victoria made her first railway journey on 13 June 1842, travelling from Slough, the nearest station to Windsor, behind the locomotive Phlegethon. Gooch drove the locomotive at an average speed of 44mph, which alarmed Her Majesty somewhat, so that Prince Albert was moved to request that future journeys be conducted at lower speeds.

The original station was perfectly adequate for the twelve trains or so on an average day, but the opening of the line to Bristol immediately put it under pressure. Enlargement was the answer, and by 1845, there were three arrival platforms and two for departures to the south of the arrival platforms, as well as a further two tracks, while at the country end of the station lay a carriage shed, and beyond that an engine shed and workshops. As an interim measure, the Great Western directors initially authorised a departure shed, hoping that, despite the line nearing completion in South Wales and to Birmingham, the original temporary station would be adequate as an arrivals shed for a while longer. In 1853, the board bowed to the inevitable, and agreed that the permanent terminus could be completed in its entirety.

Brunel’s Paddington

Brunel had the wisdom to engage one of the most eminent architects of the day, Matthew Digby Wyatt, as his assistant, officially to provide ornamentation. In his design for Paddington, Brunel was influenced by his time as a member of the building committee for Paxton’s famous Crystal Palace, and also by the new main station in Munich, which led him to design a metal roof, the first for a large station. The buildings at the town end of the station had to be impressive as the platforms lay in a cutting, and the station offices were alongside the main departure platform. The splendid face of Paddington to the world was that of the Great Western Hotel, later renamed the Great Western Royal Hotel, which opened on 9 June 1854. Designed by Philip Hardwick, as built, the hotel had 103 bedrooms and 15 sitting rooms, and the impact of the frontage was literally raised by two towers at each end, both two stories higher than the main building. A sculpture of Britannia surrounded by displays of the ‘six parts of the world, and of their arts and commerce’, stood above the pediment.

The new station was located more than 200 yards south of the temporary terminus, much of it on the old goods sidings, and was 700 feet long and 238 feet wide. Offices, some 580 feet long, were built on the southwestern side of the station along what was then known as Spring Street, but is today Eastbourne Terrace, while a cab road was built on the north-eastern side. As with the original temporary station, arrival platforms were on the northern side and departure platforms on the southern, and with royal patronage firmly in mind, the latter could be reached through a private entrance in the office building and a special royal waiting room, expensively furnished with French furniture. Above the royal entrance from the street, there was a crown, but the two doorways to the platform had one surmounted by the royal coat of arms, the other by that of the Great Western.

The greatest visual impact came from the roof, towering up to 55 feet above the platforms and with glass and corrugated iron supported by wrought iron arches. There were three spans, 70 feet, 102.5 feet and 68 feet, separated by two 50 feet transepts. The transepts were ornamental, but had the practical function of accommodating large traversers to move carriages between the tracks, but these machines were never used.

Broad gauge tracks were complemented by wide platforms, with the main departure platform next to the offices being 27 feet wide. North of the subsidiary departure platform lay another track, then five more used for storing carriages, then two more on either side of an arrival platform, 21 feet wide, with a tenth track serving a further arrival platform which, including the cab road, was 47 feet wide. The site of the temporary terminus was not abandoned, but instead became the new goods depot. To modern eyes, the unusual feature of the platforms was that the subsidiary platforms were all island platforms as there was no main concourse and the tracks extended beyond the platform ends to nineteen turn-plates (some tracks had two) for horses and carriages to be loaded and unloaded. Rather than build a subway or even a footbridge, access to the subsidiary platforms was by small bridges that rested on a truck and could be lowered and raised using hydraulic power. One of these survived in use between platforms 1 and 2 until 1920, and was only finally scrapped during the Second World War.

The departure side was brought into use on 16 January 1854, followed by the arrival side on 29 May. New engine sheds came into use at Westbourne Park during 1855, allowing those by the temporary station to be closed and the entire site taken over by the new goods depot. Westbourne Park had another function, for in common with many railways of the time, tickets were not collected as trains rumbled into the terminus, impractical given the lack of corridors on early rolling stock, but at a station close to the end of the line, and a call at the ticket platform at Westbourne Park was a necessity.

Signalling at first had consisted of the disc and crossbar type using revolving posts, and semaphore signalling did not appear until 1865, with block operation introduced the following year as far out as Ealing.

The dream of a fast and spacious broad gauge railway was a nightmare for many users, and the GWR failed to make the most of its advantages either in the width of rolling stock or in achieving speed significantly higher than those elsewhere. As early as 1861, the GWR agreed to amalgamate with the West Midland Railway, a standard gauge line, and to enable its trains to reach Paddington, standard gauge track had to be laid between Paddington and the connecting junction thirty-seven miles out of London at Reading West. By September 1870, Paddington’s suburban services were mainly standard gauge, but it was not until early on 21 May 1892 that the services to Plymouth and Cornwall were finally converted.

Paddington may have compared well with many of the other railway stations being built at this time, both in space and amenity, but it was far away from the West End and even further from the City of London. Appreciative of this problem, the GWR decided to invest in the new North Metropolitan Railway to the extent of £175,000. The intention was that the railway should be built as a mixed gauge line, with standard and GWR broad gauge, and a connection to the GWR just west of Paddington. Re-named the Metropolitan Railway in 1854, it reached Farringdon Street in 1863, although passengers from Paddington had to use a separate station, Bishops Road, to reach the underground. The Metropolitan could not introduce rolling stock of its own until late 1864, and in the meantime managed to survive using locomotives from the Great Northern Railway and carriages from the London & North Western Railway, for which the standard gauge tracks proved a blessing. The Metropolitan’s other priority, in addition to funding its own rolling stock and completing the line, was to buy out the GWR’s stake in its business. This was not the only underground connection, as from June 1864, using Bishops Road Station, the Hammersmith & City Railway commenced operations to Hammersmith leaving the GWR main line at Westbourne Park, but it was intended to act mainly as a feeder into the Metropolitan, and enjoyed the support of both companies, which by 1867 had recovered from their earlier differences and managed the Hammersmith & City through a joint committee. Initially the Hammersmith & City was worked by GWR broad gauge trains, but from 1 April 1865, the Metropolitan used its own standard gauge rolling stock over the entire route between Farringdon Street and Hammersmith, while GWR broad gauge trains eventually ran over Metropolitan tracks as far east as Moorgate until March 1869, and then, once standard gauge rolling stock was delivered, as far east as Liverpool Street. In the other direction, GWR trains also ran through to Kensington. Trains from as far away as Windsor, by this time a branch off the line at Slough, ran through to the Metropolitan. The growing Metropolitan Railway was extended to Gloucester Road, and in October 1868, a new station was opened in Praed Street directly opposite the Great Western Hotel. Even so, there was no footbridge providing direct access to the services from Bishops Road, later re-named Paddington (Suburban) until 1878, and no subway between Paddington and Praed Street until 1887.

This growing network of urban services continued to use the GWR main line between Bishops Road and Green Lane Junction, near Westbourne Park, until 30 October 1871, when separate suburban lines were opened with stations at Royal Oak and Westbourne Park, but the increasingly busy main lines were crossed by the local trains until a dive-under was commissioned between Royal Oak and Westbourne Park on 12 May 1878.

It was on the lines to the underground that the worst accident occurred at Paddington on 5 May 1864, when a Great Northern 0-6-0 locomotive leaving Bishops Road at 09.05 for Farringdon Street suffered a boiler explosion. A number of people were injured, two of them seriously, and the station was badly damaged, with one piece of debris falling 250 yards away, penetrating the roof of the mainline station.

The Hammersmith & City Line was electrified on 5 November 1906, and once the Metropolitan Line was also electrified, GWR trains were hauled to the City of London by Metropolitan electric engines.

Paddington’s isolation was eased further by the building of the deep level tube line, an extension of the Baker Street and Waterloo, or ‘Bakerloo’, proposed as early as 1899, but not actually agreed until 1911. To the dismay of the Metropolitan, which saw the new arrival as a competitor, the GWR drew the Bakerloo northwards from Baker Street with the inducement of a subsidy, and services started on 1 December 1913, with the line extended to Willesden Junction in 1915 and to Watford in 1917. The new deep level tube platforms were more than forty feet beneath a new booking hall underneath the cab road close to the arrival platforms.

The Growing Station

The original arrangement of two tracks to and from Paddington was soon inadequate as traffic continue to grow, and by 1871, four tracks were in place between Paddington and Westbourne Park, but these did not reach Slough until 1879, and Maidenhead until 1884. The new arrangement was for the fast lines, known as the ‘main lines’, to be on the south side and the suburban lines, known as the ‘relief lines’, on the north. In 1878, a new arrival platform, No 9, was commissioned, and a new cab road approached the station using a bridge over the approaches to the goods depot. A new section of roof sheltered the new platform and roadway, albeit less grand than the original. Two new departure platforms were introduced in 1885, and some time later were re-numbered as 4 and 5. This expansion was achieved by the simple expedient of reducing the number of tracks available for carriages in the main station or train shed, and new West London Carriage Sidings to the south of the main line were commissioned during the late 1880s. In 1893, further changes enabled platform 7 to be moved southwards, with another new arrival platform. Apart from the expansion of 1878, all of these changes were accommodated under the original Brunel roof.

In 1880 Paddington became one of the first railway termini to use electric light, although unreliable. Nevertheless, in 1886 a more reliable supply was introduced using three generators installed at Westbourne Park and which lit the terminus itself as well as the offices, goods sheds and yards, and the stations at Royal Oak and Westbourne Park. The generators had to be moved in 1906 to allow Platform 1 at Paddington to be extended, and new facilities were installed at Park Royal with a fully-fledged power station.

Milk traffic became so important that it used the main terminus. The 1878 platform had a milk arrival dock completed in 1881 at its outer end, and accommodation was also arranged for this traffic on the departure side. By 1900, more than 3,000 milk churns were being handled each day at Paddington, joined by trains handling meat, fish, newspapers and horses, while there were also special flower trains during the early spring, bringing produce from as far away as the Isles of Scilly via Penzance.

In response to the growing number of through workings between railway companies in the north and Midlands and those in the south, early in the twentieth century, the GWR encouraged the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, whose Victoria terminus it had used, to introduce a daily return service between Brighton and Paddington. The journey to and from Brighton reached Paddington using the Latimer Road spur and the West London Railway, with the through service taking 100 minutes, but the operation only lasted from July 1906 to June 1907, as it failed to attract sufficient custom.

The GWR had started services to and from Victoria as early as 1 April 1863, with what was essentially a suburban service from Southall where connections could be made with its main line services. Wartime restrictions saw the end of the Southall service in 1915, and in any case, such a service was really superfluous with the opening of what is now known as the Circle Line between Victoria and Paddington in 1868.

Edwardian Heyday and Beyond

The new century saw trains becoming longer and heavier, with corridor coaches with connections between the carriages, which especially on main line duties increasingly were mounted on bogies. Once again, Paddington was in danger of being outgrown. Before the problem could be resolved, a substantial amount of preparation had to be put in hand. In March 1906, a new locomotive depot was opened at Old Oak Common, allowing the earlier structure at Westbourne Park to be closed. New carriage sheds were also opened at Old Oak Common. There were other minor works as well, all of which contributed to the whole, so that in 1908, the main departure platform had an extension, numbered 1A, used primarily for excursion trains and, later, for down milk traffic, although milk traffic was finally moved to the goods depot in 1923, probably reflecting the increasing use of tanker wagons. Later 1A became a platform for rolling stock waiting to be moved onto the main platform, cutting the interval between departures, and then it became a double-sided parcels platform. At around this time, island platforms 2 and 3 were extended to around a thousand feet, while platforms 1 to 5 had a luggage subway built with lifts to the platforms.

All of this really consisted of tampering with the edges. In 1906, a more comprehensive scheme was approved by the Great Western’s directors. The arrival side of the station was to be extended with the addition of three new platforms under a 700 feet long and 109 feet wide steel and glass roof, intended to be in sympathy with the original, with platform 9 extended to 950 feet, while the Bishops Road platforms were also to be extended. The old overbridges with their brick arches were to be replaced by a new steel structure with long spans that would allow the tracks to be re-arranged, and would allow greater freedom for such adjustments in the future. The most radical of these changes was the construction of a new goods depot to be built at South Lambeth, as the GWR termed Battersea to avoid confusion with the LB&SCR station, which would ease the pressure on Paddington goods, and no doubt make interchange with other railways in the south easier.

These works took until the years of the First World War to complete. In the meantime the approach tracks were rearranged. As with many of the older termini, empty stock workings at Paddington for many years occupied the running lines and significantly reduced line capacity for revenue-earning trains. There had been some relief with new engine and carriage roads to serve the new engine and carriage sheds at Old Oak, but these only ran part way on the north side of the line. Sharing of the main and suburban lines by goods trains made the problems worse. In 1911, work began on lines to segregate all empty carriage and light engine workings over the entire three miles between Paddington and Old Oak Common, hampered by the need to rebuild Westbourne Park station, but war intervened and work ground to a halt in 1916, was suspended for ten years, and the entire project was then not finally completed until 1927.

The new layout meant that there was a down empty carriage line all the way from Paddington to Old Oak Common north of the suburban or relief lines, shared by goods workings, while the old engine and carriage line was converted into a goods running line. From the junction with the subway or dive under, a second up empty carriage road was provided into Paddington. The result of these changes was that the last three quarters of a mile into Paddington was arranged, from the north, as follows:

Up City

Down City

Down carriage

Up relief (suburban)

Up main

Up carriage

Down main

Up carriage

Ten years later, the up main and up relief lines were re-signalled to enable them to be used to ease congestion on the down carriage line, and then later the down carriage line and one of the up carriage lines also became running lines.

Paddington was being transformed. The layout of the approach tracks was remodelled to provide improved connections to the Hammersmith & City lines and the Ranelagh engine yard on the south side of the lines at Royal Oak station, where locomotives from the provinces were turned. The old goods yard and its approaches were replaced by three new platforms with a roadway. While the new roof was not completed until 1916, the new platforms were brought into use in stages between November 1913 and December 1915, and introduced new features to the GWR, including hydraulic buffers. Passenger amenities continued to improve, with space provided from 1910 beneath platform 1 for lavatories, bathrooms and a hairdressing salon. The new station had platforms 1 to 4 for departures on the main line, 5 to 7 for outer-suburban trains, while platforms 8-11 were for main line arrivals. Until 1923, platform 12 handled milk arrivals, and other perishable traffic such as fish, as well as mail and parcels, while the opposite face of the platform opened out onto a sunken roadway so that these goods could be manhandled easily across the platform onto the backs of road vehicles.

The First World War had far less impact on Paddington than on the termini of the southern companies, but even so the number of troop movements meant that a twenty-four hour free buffet was introduced, staffed by lady volunteer workers. There were also a number of ambulance trains, a total of 351 over the four years or so of war. Spared air raid damage, nevertheless some of the glass panels in the roof were broken by shrapnel from anti-aircraft fire. Post-war, a war memorial to members of the GWR who had fallen in combat was installed between the doors of the royal suite on the main departure platform.

Other post-war work to complete the 1906 programme of improvements saw Brunel’s old cast iron columns supporting the roof between platforms 2 and 3 and between 7 and 8 replaced by steel columns on which Wyatts original decorations were reproduced. Other columns had been replaced during the construction of the new roof for the extension. Paddington also became the terminus for the Post Office tube railway when it opened in December 1927, with a station beneath the Royal Mail’s district office in London Street. Mail chutes were installed at the head of platforms 8 to 10, while platform 11 had a bank of no less than eight chutes, and at the bottom of these were conveyors to take the mail to the tube. In the opposite direction, mail arriving on the tube was brought up from the tube by a conveyor that emerged on the departure side of the station behind the hotel.

Redeveloped Yet Again

Interrupted by the First World War, the 1906 programme of improvements had been barely completed when further work was put in hand, made possible by a combination of the removal of the passenger duty on railway travel and the Development (Loans Guarantees and Grants) Act, 1929. Neither measure had the railway passenger in mind as both were intended to reduce unemployment. The latter measure meant that the GWR’s plans for a £1 million rebuild of Paddington had to be approved by the Treasury. Work began in May 1930, and was completed in 1934.

A significant feature was the extension of platforms, in this case 2 to 11 to beyond Bishops Road bridge, giving lengths of between 980 feet and 1,200 feet, with veranda-type roofing rather than a new overall roof, while the construction of a new parcels depot in Bishops Road allowed a passenger concourse to be constructed between the head of the platforms and the back of the hotel. Platform extension is often seen as an easy way of improving railway capacity, but the need to reposition signalling and points, or lineside structures, and rebuild bridges, can mean that extensions are expensive and time consuming, or bring shortcomings, and at Paddington some tight curves were inevitable. There were also new office blocks and new cab and goods depot approach roads. The tracks outside the station up to a distance of three-quarters of a mile were reconstructed, with a new parcels line on the down side and the Ranelagh engine yard was improved.

Between 1929 and 1933, electric power signals (as opposed to electric light signals) were introduced on all lines between Paddington and Southall West junction while electric motors were installed at points and track circuiting was introduced. New arrivals and departures signal boxes were needed due to the platform extensions, with the new departure box at Westbourne Bridge opened on 9 July 1933, and in addition to the down main lines, also looked after the parcels depot, Ranelagh yard and two of the carriage roads. The new arrivals box that opened on 13 August 1933, replacing the Bishops Road and Royal Oak station boxes as well as the original arrivals box, was badly affected by fire on 25 November 1938, closing the suburban station and forcing emergency signalling on all other movements. A makeshift box had to be improvised until a new one could be commissioned on 2 July 1939, and in the meantime through trains did not operate to the City. Meanwhile, a fire had broken out in the Westbourne Bridge signal box on 23 December 1938, so this also had to be replaced.

Paddington has always been the least troubled by suburban traffic. In 1903, when Liverpool Street on the Great Eastern had no less than 136 suburban trains arrive between 05.00 and 10.00, Paddington had just eight! Reasons for this included the slow pace at which the GWR had built its suburban stations, and the overlap of the Great Central and the London & South Western suburban networks within the catchment area for Paddington, while the proximity of the Hammersmith & City and the Metropolitan reinforced this. After the First World War, this began to change, although traffic was to remain modest by the standards set elsewhere. While the 1920s and 1930s did bring a considerable increase in Paddington’s suburban traffic as speculative builders began extending the western suburbs outwards in Middlesex and the southern part of Buckinghamshire, this was nothing compared to the developments affecting many of the other London termini.

Even so, this steady growth in suburban traffic meant that new arrangements became necessary and the decision was taken to enlarge Bishops Road station as Paddington Suburban for terminating trains and those bound for the Metropolitan. The old up and down platforms were replaced by two island platforms, one for up and one for down traffic, each with two faces. These works were completed in 1933. The usual practice was for electric trains to use the outside platforms, 13 and 16, while terminating GWR steam trains used the inner platforms 14 and 15.

On the surface, the inner end of the main station had become known as the ‘Lawn’, possibly a reflection of the time when horses and carriages were handled on this spot, and had become something of an eyesore over the years as successive forms of business were carried out. All of this was ended with the 1933 reconstruction, with for the first time a broad new concourse extending across platforms 1 to 8, whose buffers were set back to provide extra space and a uniform ending, and stretching round to platforms 9 and 10. A new, higher, steel and glass roof was provided over the concourse, although the name of the ‘Lawn’ persists to this day. The office blocks on either side of the station were revamped and new steel-framed structures built at either end of the Lawn, while the hotel was also extended, being completed in the summer of 1936 with a new total of 250 bedrooms. An electrically-operated train indicator board was installed on the Lawn in 1934, and in 1936, a loudspeaker system was introduced. A new parcels depot with two platforms was built on the site of the former platform 1A.

Wartime

Wartime enforced many changes, and through working of trains to and from the Metropolitan ended on 16 September 1939, by which time emergency cuts were being made to timetables. Paddington did not escape its share of wartime wounds, with a parachute mine demolishing part of the departure side building in 1941, while in 1944 a V-1 flying bomb damaged the roof and platforms 6 and 7. Nevertheless, traffic was not disrupted for long.

The big problem was that with a restricted train service, commuter traffic actually increased as many of the more affluent Londoners moved to the outer suburbs or even further out to escape the worst of the bombing. For holidays and for evacuees the West of England and Wales were seen as the best options, not least because most of the South Coast was taken over for military purposes with beaches cordoned off behind barbed wire, and during the period before the Normandy invasion in 1944, only residents and those with special business were allowed near the South Coast. On the morning of 29 July 1944, a summer Saturday, Paddington was closed for three hours, and no underground tickets were sold to Paddington, because the main concourse and platforms were blocked solid with people waiting to catch trains. The problems of wartime had been compounded by government restrictions on extra trains and even on extra carriages on existing trains, added to the much reduced frequencies and extended journey times. It took three telephone calls by the general manager, Sir James Milne, to the Ministry of War Transport, and the threat of a visit to Downing Street, before a man from the ministry arrived and authorised the use of the locomotives and carriages that were standing idle at Old Oak Common depot. The restrictions were eased somewhat after this, but even so, at August bank holiday weekend, then taken early in August and not at the end as today, mounted police had to be called in and the queues snaked along Eastbourne terrace, which did at least have the advantage of allowing passengers to get to and from the trains.

There was disruption of a different kind on 16 October 1944. The locomotive of a down empty carriage train was derailed outside Paddington close to the parcels depot. This was soon followed by two coaches of the down ‘Cornish Riviera’ express being derailed at the same point, and although there were no casualties, the line was blocked and normal working could not resume until morning of the next day.

Nationalisation brought major changes to Paddington. The new British Railways started to rationalise, so that what had become the Western Region eventually lost its trains to Birmingham, but in return, it became the region for all destinations west of Exeter, and the service from Waterloo was cut back to a stopping service west of Salisbury, with much of the line singled. Diesels replaced steam, as the service was not regarded as intensive enough to justify electrification, but Paddington eventually did find itself wired up when the Heathrow Express service began running to the station in 1998. The Heathrow Express was an operation owned by BAA, operators of London Heathrow, and was joined in 2005 by Heathrow Connect, a stopping service to the airport intended for airport workers and others living along the route.

Parliamentary Trains

The serious accident on the Great Western Railway at Sonning, east of Reading, on Christmas Eve 1841, with eight third-class passengers killed when their open sided wagons overturned, alerted the public and politicians to the poor conditions offered for third-class passengers. The then President of the Board of Trade, Gladstone, in 1844 obtained support for an Act that ensured that all new ‘passenger railways’, defined as those obtaining at least a third of their turnover from passenger traffic, operate at least one train a day, including Sundays, that would stop at every station, run at a minimum average speed, including stops, of at least 12mph, and carry all passengers in enclosed vehicles with seats. It was also stipulated that the fare would be no more than 1d per mile, including up to 56-lbs of luggage. The Railway Passenger Duty, then at 5 per cent, was not levied on these fares, and a subsequent act, in 1883, the Cheap Trains Act, exempted from duty all fares of 1d per mile or less.

In fact, most of the existing railways accepted the terms of the Act, even though it was intended at new railways because of the traditional British reluctance to embrace retrospective legislation. It was also a major factor in pushing through Sunday operations in those parts of the country where there was strong resistance to working or travelling on the Sabbath.

While the legislation was a significant step in both social provision and in government intervention in transport management, it did not mean that standards improved vastly. The enclosed vehicles often had little or no artificial lighting, wooden benches for seats, and only small windows set high. The standard was in fact lower than that of third-class, which many railways provided often on the same train. It was also unpopular in some areas, including much of Scotland, as many railway managers believed that passengers who could afford to pay more were using the Parliamentary trains. The terms of the Act were not revised other than under the Cheap Trains Act, so 12mph became very slow as the years passed, and in 1874, a court ruling upheld payment of the tax on trains that did not stop at every station.

The Parliamentary Trains began to disappear during the twentieth century, although they did not disappear completely until 1935.

Pearson, Charles, 1794-1862

Solicitor to the Corporation of the City of London from 1839 until his death in 1862, as well as MP for Lambeth between 1847 and 1850, he supported the improvement of public amenities as well as supporting the construction of the Metropolitan Railway, which he saw as giving slum dwellers the opportunity to find lower cost but better accommodation on the outskirts. He was instrumental in pushing through the concept of workmen’s trains.

Peel, Sir Robert, 1788-1850

As a Member of Parliament, Peel did not take an interest in railways until he was encouraged to support the legislation authorising the Birmingham & Derby Junction line in 1835. When he became Prime Minister in 1841, he attempted to limit government intervention in railway matters, bringing him into conflict with his President of the Board of Trade, Gladstone. He dissolved the board headed by Dalhousie to sift railway proposals before they reached Parliament after it had worked for just a year, and allowed the Railway Mania to go ahead without government intervention.

Penzance

While Falmouth with its important docks and ship repair facilities was the objective of the Cornwall Railway running from Plymouth, the West Cornwall Railway linked up with the Cornwall at Truro. The West Cornwall had come into existence by acquiring the Hayle Railway and extending its line to Penzance, with services to Truro opened in 1852, where the standard gauge line had an inconvenient break of gauge with the Cornwall Railway. In 1864, the Cornwall Railway demanded that the West Cornwall convert to mixed gauge track under legislation acquired in 1850, but the West Cornwall lacked the funds to carry out the work, and was compelled to transfer its assets to the Cornwall Railway, which was owned by the Associated Companies, the Great Western Railway, Bristol & Exeter and the South Devon, who between them had subscribed a fifth of the Cornwall’s capital.

Both Cornish railways were impoverished as the county’s mineral wealth was sent away by sea, and it was not until tourist traffic grew that either showed any potential. In later years, Penzance became both the interchange point for the ferry to the Isles of Scilly, and for early spring cut flowers from the islands on their way to London and other significant mainland markets.

Piccadilly Line/Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway

When opened as the Great Northern Piccadilly & Brompton Railway in 1906, this was the longest deep level tube line in London running 8½ miles from Finsbury Park to Hammersmith, with no less than 7¾ miles under ground. Its origins lay in a deep level scheme planned by the Metropolitan District, the Brompton & Piccadilly Circus and the Great Northern & Strand Railways, which were merged in 1902. Rolling stock was bought from France and from Hungary, believed to have been the only Hungarian stock used on Britain’s railways. One innovation that never saw public service was a double spiral escalator installed at Holloway Road in 1906, but the company provided London’s first railway escalator, in 1906 at Earl’s Court, linking the Piccadilly platforms with those of the Metropolitan District, while those installed later at Leicester Square remain the longest on the London underground system. The GNPM became the London Electric Railway in 1910 on acquiring both the Bakerloo and Hampstead tube railways. With the other tube lines, it became part of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.

The line was extended during 1932-33, running over line abandoned by the District to Hounslow and South Harrow, and over the Metropolitan Line to Upminster using a new stretch of tube, while surface sections took it to Southgate and Cockfosters, giving an Uxbridge to Cockfosters run of 32 miles. A short branch was provided from Holborn to Aldwych, which was closed in 1994, although it had its services suspended during the Second World War. The Hounslow branch was extended in 1977 to London Heathrow Airport, the first deep level tube link to any airport in the world, and in 1986, a loop was added to serve Terminal 4.

Pick, Frank, 1878-1941

After serving articles as a solicitor, Pick joined the North Eastern Railway in 1902, and became personal assistant to Sir George Gibb in 1904. When Gibb moved to the Underground Electric Railways in 1906, Pick followed, and from 1909 was in charge of marketing. When the UER acquired the London General Omnibus Company in 1912, he became commercial manager for the entire group, often known as the ‘Combine’. During the First World War, he was seconded to the Board of Trade, but returned to the UER in 1919 and was appointed managing director under Lord Ashfield in 1928. When the UER was absorbed into the new London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, he became vice-chairman, and took much of the credit for creating the world’s largest integrated passenger transport system. He was also notable for his emphasis on good design, be it in marketing material, buildings or bus and trains.

During the Second World War, he became director-general of the Ministry of Information.

Plymouth

An important naval base for many years with a less famous commercial port at Millbay, Plymouth was in fact three towns, Plymouth, Devonport (the naval base and dockyard) and Stonehouse.

Plymouth was reached by the broad gauge South Devon Railway running from Exeter in 1849, which the following year ran a short branch from its terminus at Millbay to the nearby commercial port. The SDR joined up with the Cornwall Railway in 1859, and stations were opened at Devonport and a branch to Tavistock was completed. In 1876, mixed gauge track was laid to allow the London & South Western Railway to reach Plymouth from Lydford, and much of the dockyard also had mixed gauge track. The LSWR was initially dependent on the GWR for access, but the opening of the Plymouth, Devonport & South Western Junction Railway in 1890 considerably improved matters.

In 1876, the GWR absorbed the South Devon Railway. Meanwhile, the Cornwall Railway had been authorised in 1846 to build a 66-mile line from Plymouth to Falmouth, with a connection to the West Cornwall Railway at Truro. The line was opened as far as Truro in 1859 and to Falmouth in 1863. The most significant engineering structure was Brunel’s Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash carrying the line from Devon into Cornwall, but there were many other structures along the route, although mostly originally built of timber to save money. The GWR took over the Cornwall Railway in 1889, at which time most of the line west of Plymouth was single track.

Pole, Sir Felix, 1877-1956

A protégée and great admirer of Sir James Inglis, Sir Felix Pole spent his entire working life with the Great Western Railway. At the age of just fourteen years, he joined the company as a telegraph clerk in 1891, and later worked under the civil engineer before moving to the general manager’s office in 1904. For many years while he was working in the general manager’s office, Pole edited The Great Western Railway Magazine, working on this part-time, while he had already gained a reputation as a writer on railway matters.

Appointed general manager in 1921, inevitably Pole spent most of the following year preparing for the grouping. In contrast to some of the other groupings, which were mergers of equals or near-equals, and there were two or three possible candidates for the general managership of the post-grouping company, there was no doubt that Pole of the GWR would run the new railway. His new responsibilities included taking over no less than twenty-one Welsh companies as well as a network of ports and docks, many of them in South Wales. He introduced the GWR to the concept of regular interval main line services out of Paddington in 1924, so that passengers did not have to carry a timetable. He was also very conscious of the importance of a good public image for the company, and in addition had also done much earlier in his career to improve communications with employees by revamping the Great Western Railway Magazine while working in the general manager’s office. He was knighted in 1924.

The railways were not the only industrial sector to undergo mergers in the 1920s (other companies emerging at this time included Imperial Chemical Industries, ICI), and in 1928 Pole was persuaded to leave the GWR and assume the chairmanship of another large industrial grouping, Associated Electrical Industries, AEI, where he remained. This type of move, commonplace today, was most unusual at the time.

In later life, Pole was afflicted by blindness, but even so he managed to write an autobiography, most of which was devoted to his time on the railways, clearly much more exciting to him than running factories.

Police

At the outset of the railway age, policing was largely in the hands of parish constables, a system that had not worked well in the fast growing industrial cities, but the Metropolitan Police itself only dated from 1829. In the case of disorder, which clearly overwhelmed the parish constables, the local magistrates swore citizens in as additional special constables, called in the military or, even as far north as Manchester, the Metropolitan Police, as happened during riots involving the Manchester & Leeds and North Midland Railways in 1838 and 1840. Under an Act of 1838, the railway companies were charged 5 shillings a day for special constables. For major events which required large numbers of policemen, railway companies would hire men from the Metropolitan Police. The Regulation Act, 1840, gave railwaymen powers of arrest for trespassers or those obstructing them in their duties.

The Liverpool & Manchester Railway was the first to have police of its own, but the first company to have the necessary statutory powers was the London & Birmingham in 1833, followed by the Great Western in 1835. In 1837, the LBR’s police were given authority up to half-a-mile from the company’s premises. In addition to the obvious duties of a police constable, the early railway police were also expected to patrol the line to ensure that it was clear and give hand signals to drivers, operate fixed signals if these were available, salute the train as it passed, and in some cases act as ticket inspectors and even as booking clerks. On some railways, the police were responsible to the stationmaster.

Many of these early duties passed to other railwaymen, especially signalmen, as signalling developed, but even as late as 1900, the North Eastern Railway expected its policemen to ring a bell to indicate the arrival or departure of a train, and to act as guards or ticket collectors when necessary.

During the early twentieth century, railway police began to belong to special departments within each company, and liaison with the new civic police forces became commonplace. There was even movement of senior officers between railway police forces and civic police forces. As early as 1863, the London & North Western Railway formed its own detective branch, and the following year the GWR did the same. As the railways expanded into running ferries and operating docks, their police forces were also deployed to these new operations. The NER was probably the first to have police dogs, at Hull in 1908.

On grouping, the ‘Big Four’ combined the police forces of their constituent companies and organised them on lines similar to those of a civic police force. In 1946, the railway companies established a joint police training school with cadet entry. It was not until 1946 that the first policewomen were appointed. Nationalisation in 1948 saw the police forces merged to form the British Transport Police, responsible to the British Transport Commission, and covering docks and canals as well as railways. The BTP survived the disbandment of the BTC and privatisation.

Pollitt, Sir William, 1842-1906

Pollitt joined the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway (see Great Central) in 1857 and by 1869 was chief clerk to the accountant. In 1885, he was appointed assistant general manager and became general manager in 1886. By this time, Edward Watkin was chairman, and it fell to Pollitt to handle Watkin’s expansive plans, including the expansion of the Great Central to London. He proved himself to be a diplomat, making peace with the Great Northern Railway, but found himself confronting the Metropolitan Railway. Knighted in 1899, he became a director in 1902.

Port Talbot Railway & Docks

Pressure for port space in South Wales during the nineteenth century saw the development of new dock facilities at a number of locations, including Port Talbot, where new docks were built from 1835 to serve the copper industry at nearby Cwmavon. Coal traffic did not become significant until 1870, and in 1894 to protect and encourage this traffic, the Port Talbot Railway was authorised and opened in 1897-98, with two lines from Maesteg and Tonmawr, to the north of Cwmavon. The railway also acquired the docks. The total route mileage was just 48 miles, but the dock and railway company was profitable, and the Great Western took over operation of the railway in 1908, although the docks operated separately.

Portpatrick & Wigtownshire Joint Railway

Completed as the Portpatrick Railway in 1862, it was designed to link the Castle Douglas & Dumfries Railway, completed in 1859, with Portpatrick, the Scottish port for the packet service to Donaghdee, shortest of all the sea crossings to Ireland. The line ran through Creetown and Newton Stewart to both Portpatrick and Stranraer, and the two railways combined became known as the ‘Port Road’. Despite its potential, the railway was cheaply built to minimise costs on the heavy civil engineering works needed because of the heavily undulating terrain traversed, with many tall viaducts. The Glasgow & South Western Railway ran to both Dumfries and Stranraer, but it was the Caledonian Railway that bought traffic rights for trains coming off the West Coast Main Line. Portpatrick lacked sufficient space for expansion either of the port or the railway terminus, so in 1874, the western terminus was moved to Stranraer, where a new port and long pier was constructed, with a branch line to the harbour, while the Irish ferry terminus became Larne. A branch to Garlieston and Whithorn, known as the Wigtownshire Railway, was opened in 1877, but neither this nor the line to Portpatrick prospered, and in 1885, the Caledonian, Glasgow & South Western, London & North Western and Midland Railways jointly acquired the line. A further branch was constructed from Tarff to Kircudbright.

Local traffic along the 80-mile line was never significant as the area was, and remains, thinly populated, but it did carry expresses with boat train traffic, although for passengers from London, the Midlands and the North West, the Lancashire ferry ports were far more convenient. The line passed to the London, Midland & Scottish on grouping, and in 1965 it was closed. Boat train traffic then travelled by the long diversion via Glasgow and Ayr, effectively two sides of a triangle.

Portsmouth

Portsmouth was already a substantial town and Britain’s major naval base before the railways arrived. Despite this, in 1842, the first railway in the area ran from Eastleigh on the Southampton main line via Fareham to Gosport, a short ferry trip across the harbour. The first line into Portsmouth did not arrive until 1847, with the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway extending its line from Brighton, and the following year the London & South Western Railway line arrived via Fareham. Both routes were about 95 miles from London, and the two companies operated a pooling agreement from 1848, the LSWR using its rival’s station in the town. The opening of the Portsmouth Direct line in 1859 cut the distance from London to 74 miles by extending the LSWR branch from Guildford and Godalming, while in 1867; the LBSCR provided an 87 mile route via Arundel.

While the services to the city were now much faster, passengers for the Isle of Wight still had to be conveyed by road between the train and the ferry as the Admiralty refused to allow the companies to extend their line to the harbour, although it had its own internal railway system. This eventually changed in 1876, when a high-level station with an island platform was built alongside the town station, later known as Portsmouth & Southsea, to carry the line to Portsmouth Harbour station, which was built on a pier with direct access to the Isle of Wight ferries across the concourse. The ferries themselves had been operated independently, but passed into railway control to be operated jointly by the LBSCR and LSWR in 1880.

The resort of Southsea was reached by an independently promoted branch line from Fratton from 1885 and worked by the two main line railways. It was never a success, being worked by railcars in competition with a comprehensive tramway system, and the Southern was allowed to close it in 1923 after it had been out of use for most of the First World War.

Portsmouth itself was the target for two pre-war electrification schemes when the ‘Direct’ route was electrified in 1937 and the Arundel line, with that from Brighton, the following year. The main service to Waterloo which had enjoyed just four fast trains a day before electrification, enjoyed as many in one hour on a summer Saturday afterwards.

Post Office Railway

Authorised in 1913, the Post Office Railway was an electric tube railway required to avoid delays to the mails on the already congested streets of London. It followed an earlier atmospheric tube railway authorised in 1859 when the Pneumatic Despatch Company was granted powers to build atmospheric tubes under any streets in Central London. Experiments with a 600-yard stretch resulted in a single line tunnel being built between Euston and Holborn, where there was a reverse to the General Post Office at St Martin’s-le-Grand, some 2½ miles overall. The track gauge was 3 ft 8½ ins, while the tunnel was 4ft 6in wide and 4ft 1in high. Opened in 1873, only a limited quantity of mail was carried and the line closed the following year. By contrast, the POR was built to carry mail from Paddington across the West End and City to Whitechapel, and had six intermediate stations. The tunnel was completed by 1917, but was used for storage by the British Museum during the First World War, and did not open for traffic until 1928. The route was in a 9ft diameter tunnel with two 2ft gauge lines using third rail electrification at 440 v dc, with the trains operating automatically without drivers, being controlled by track circuits. The original wagons were four-wheeled, but replaced by bogie wagons in 1930, although a four-wheeled power car was placed at each end. The ‘trains’ were replaced in 1980, but the line was closed in 2006. Similar operations exist in Chicago and Munich.

Preston

An important port and centre for the cotton trade before the arrival of the railway, Preston was boosted still further by the Lancaster Canal, and a horse-drawn tramway was built to link the northern and southern sections of the waterway. In 1836, a local railway, the Preston & Longridge, linked the town with nearby quarries, while in 1838, the North Union Railway connected Preston with the lines London, Liverpool and Manchester. A link with Carlisle and Scotland followed between 1840 and 1849, as well as lines to Fleetwood and Blackpool, while more direct lines were built to Manchester and Liverpool, while a branch was built to the docks on the River Ribble. Until restaurant cars appeared, Preston was a refreshment stop on the West Coast Main Line.

The various railway lines around Preston soon became part of either the London & North Western Railway or the Lancashire & Yorkshire, which shared the main station and also operated the Ribble branch jointly. Between 1836 and 1900, the population grew from 14,000 to 115,000. The railway station was extensively rebuilt and extended between 1873 and 1913, but a much needed avoiding line for holiday and excursion trains to Blackpool was never built. The most significant event during the twentieth century was West Coast electrification in 1972, while the WCML has been extensively rebuilt in recent years to allow high speed running by Pendolino tilting trains. Preston has been spared railway closures to a great extent, although the original Longridge line closed to passengers in 1930 and to goods from 1967.

Preston & Wyre Railway

Opened in 1840 between Preston and Fleetwood, the line was promoted by Sir Peter Hesketh Fleetwood as part of a scheme to build a town and port on his estate at the mouth of the River Wyre. Until the Caledonian Railway was completed in 1848, passengers for Glasgow would change to a steamer to travel to Ardrossan, on the west coast of Scotland, and hence by rail to Glasgow. The PWR was acquired jointly in 1849 by the London & North Western and Lancashire & Yorkshire Railways, which built branches to Blackpool and Lytham, planning to develop these towns as resorts. In 1871, they also acquired a line between the two towns that had been built by an independent company.

While Fleetwood had lost its Scottish traffic, the LYR developed Fleetwood for a packet service to Ireland and the Isle of Man, but even so, the business of Blackpool was such that this became the main line, and in 1903 a new direct line to Blackpool Central replaced the route to Blackpool North, which was closed in 1967, while passenger services between Poulton and Fleetwood were withdrawn in 1970.

Princetown Railway

The standard gauge Princetown Railway took over the abandoned Plymouth & Dartmoor Railway above Yelverton in 1883 as the latter company was having difficulty in finishing the work. The Plymouth & Dartmoor had been promoted primarily for quarry traffic and used the unusual gauge of 4ft 6in. The route of the Princetown Railway, a subsidiary of the Great Western Railway, was over the 10.5 miles from Yelverton to Horridge, much of it over former Plymouth & Dartmoor infrastructure, and while some traffic from the King Tor quarry was carried, in practice the main business was carrying prison officers and convicts, and supplies, to Dartmoor Prison. It also attracted some excursion traffic.