The Act was concerned with one measure above all others, the grouping of the railways as an alternative to nationalisation. Wartime coordination of the railways had been viewed by many as a success, and the mood of the time was in favour of coordination rather than competition. Despite the growing losses of the railways at the end of government control, it still seems that memories of the high rates of return earned at one time by many railway companies remained strong amongst politicians. The feeling was that the railways needed firm regulation to avoid making excessive profits, and the mood of the time did not trust competition to do this. Inevitably, grouping was to extend the size and depth of the monopolies and reduce the opportunities for competition at the fringes. Originally, Britain’s railways were to be grouped into seven companies, but in the end, this was reduced to just four.
First, there was the need to ensure that the nation’s transport got back to operating on a peacetime basis as quickly as possible. The military’s use of so many B-class buses had left the capital chronically short of road transport apart from the trams, and more than a hundred B-type lorries, still in Army markings, were pressed into service after being fitted with seats and a ladder at the back, operating routes such as that between Barnes and Charing Cross. It was to be another year or two before new buses started to appear in sufficient numbers, and while the first of these from the Associated Equipment Company, AEC, was the K-class and still open top, the driver was moved forward to the appropriately-known forward control position, and sat beside the engine over the front offside wheel. A stretched version followed, but a big step forward in 1923 was the NS, which had a much lower chassis, so getting on and off was much easier. The lower height meant that canvas top covers were used in wet weather from 1925, and the vehicles were later fitted with pneumatic tyres and windscreens for the driver.
In wartime, the state had failed to keep its promise of maintaining revenues at 1913 levels and protecting the equity of the railway companies, who were no longer seen as desirable stocks by many investors. A sum of £60 million (£1,164 million today) was eventually offered to the railway companies in compensation for the impact of wartime and state control on their finances. The problem was that Parliament would neither set the post-war railways free nor nationalise them. Not content with enforcing the grouping, it was also considered necessary to apply other controls as well.
The grouping was intended to ensure that the railway shareholders would receive what was described as the ‘standard’ revenue of £51.4 million (£997.2 million today) annually spread across all four companies and based on the 1913 figure, which, fortunately, had been a remarkably good year for the railways. Despite the efforts of a Railway Rates Tribunal, this figure was never realised in practice because of the changes that occurred post-war and in particular the depressed state of the economy for most of the time. It seems limiting enough given the economic conditions prevailing between the wars, although deflation meant that costs actually fell, but it would have been impossible given the often high levels of inflation encountered in the four decades following the end of the Second World War.
ARCHITECT OF RAILWAY GROUPING:
Sir Eric Campbell Geddes, 1875-1937
Indian-born Eric Geddes joined the North Eastern Railway in 1904, specialising in management techniques and by 1914 was general manager. He became a civil servant during the First World War, holding a succession of posts including munitions production, transport organisation and naval supply, eventually entering politics to become the first post-war Minister of Transport. The concept of grouping was his idea, and he had similar plans for the electricity supply industry. As Minister, he pushed the Railways Act 1921 through Parliament, but before it could take effect, he left politics and joined Dunlop, the tyre and rubber manufacturer, becoming chairman.
His final task in politics was to push through dramatic cuts in national expenditure, known to this day as the ‘Geddes Axe’. In 1924, he was made part-time chairman of the new state-sponsored airline, Imperial Airways, whilst retaining his position at Dunlop. His final service to the state was to organise the delivery of essential supplies during the 1926 General Strike.
Geddes could be described as a meddler, seldom staying in any one position long enough to see new initiatives to their conclusion. Perhaps he complied with the cynical description of a whizz kid as being ‘someone who moves on before the consequences of his actions come home to roost’.
Grouping
The Railways Act 1921 forced 120 companies, listed in Appendix I, of varying size into four large mainline groups. Not every railway was included, and a number of independent railways did survive, including a number of narrow gauge and light railways. Ireland was left alone, as Home Rule had occurred the year before the grouping.
For almost all of London’s termini, the grouping meant a change of railway company with one notable exception, Paddington, where the Great Western Railway continued to hold sway, as not only by far the largest of the companies in what the legislation had termed the ‘Western group of companies’, but the only one of the group to operate to London. At Marylebone, ownership passed from the Great Central to the London & North Eastern, which also gained King’s Cross from the Great Northern and Liverpool Street from the Great Eastern. At Euston, the London Midland & Scottish Railway took over from the London & North Western, while the LMS also replaced the Midland Railway at St Pancras and the London Tilbury & Southend at Fenchurch Street, as well as taking over the North London Railway at Broad Street. The Southern Railway came out of grouping with the largest number of termini, with the London & South Western Railway’s Waterloo, Victoria shared by the London, Brighton & South Coast and the South Eastern & Chatham Railway group, as was London Bridge, while the SECR also had Blackfriars, Holborn, Charing Cross and Cannon Street.
Viewed with hindsight and the post-nationalisation structures of British Railways, the grouping did seem slightly illogical. If competition was to be removed, why leave such great opportunities for competition on many routes? Within the London commuter area, defying logic and most unexpected was the decision to leave the London Tilbury & Southend line with the London Midland Scottish as successor to the Midland Railway rather than transfer it along with the services from Liverpool Street to the London & North Eastern Railway, leaving two companies operating between Southend and the City of London.
Certainly, the grouping was not without its defects. The most obvious one was the failure to separate out the LNER services from London’s Liverpool Street and Marylebone termini from those from King’s Cross. Its boat trains to Harwich and its services through sparsely-populated East Anglia to King’s Lynn and Norwich notwithstanding, there is no doubt that Liverpool Street was primarily a commuter railway with a secondary continental traffic and agricultural traffic, while King’s Cross was at the end of a number of longer distance main line services in addition to serving the large industrial and mining areas of South Yorkshire and the North East of England, as well as the east of Scotland. This mattered for another reason. The LNER soon became a railway very much along the lines of the SNCF in France in that it cared very much for its prestigious main line traffic and produced fine expresses with motive power and carriages to be proud of, but it didn’t care so much for its suburban and branch line services, which were often slow, drab and dirty. Despite promises, it never introduced electrification on its suburban network, confining itself to some electrification of its freight lines in the North East. No doubt, confined to King’s Cross, the LNER, which was extremely short of money and had to struggle to finance modernisation from revenue since an approach to the shareholders would have been a miserable failure, could have been a more affluent railway, although severely affected by the miners’ strike and by the downturn in the coal trade that followed it. There is the sneaking suspicion that the London suburban network would have been accorded a much higher priority had the Great Eastern remained independent. On the other hand, we should not forget that while the old GER had been amongst the first to suffer from electric tramway competition as early as 1901, it had failed to electrify, although railway historians accord it great praise for its successful and very efficient operation of a completely steam-hauled high density suburban service. Compared to this, leaving the London Tilbury & Southend line in different hands was a small matter indeed.
It is not just the combining of such disparate operations into one company that suggests that the grouping was a merger or two too far. The evidence suggests that managements struggled to make the grouping work. The Great Western fared best of all, as the only company to emerge intact from the grouping by simply bolting on the smaller companies to its own well-established structures, so that it was able to boast in 1937 of being the first and only British railway company to celebrate its centenary. Perhaps as a sign of the GWR’s confidence, it abandoned the then current lake or all-over brown and reverted to chocolate and cream, usually with white roofs for passenger carriages. The London Midland Scottish was almost rent asunder by factional infighting between the old Midland Railway and the old London & North Western, with Euston versus St Pancras, to which the answer was seen as introducing a highly centralised structure. The London & North Eastern decentralised, which may have done much for local community relations, but one feels that opportunities were missed. As for the Southern, it almost immediately perpetuated the old pre-grouping set up by having Eastern, Central and Western sections almost equating to the former South Eastern & Chatham, London Brighton & South Coast and London & South Western railways. There was a fourth section, the London Section, but this was less prominent.
It seems that many opportunities to rationalise the network and operations were missed. It took the Southern some time to open up passageways between the Brighton and South Eastern sides of Victoria Station, which did not occur until 1924, while it took until 1928 for similar improvements to take place at London Bridge. There was delay too in appointing a single stationmaster for Victoria. There was some rationalisation of lines in the Thanet area to improve operations, but these should have been carried out by the SECR when it had been formed in 1899. Many stations were renamed to avoid confusion throughout Britain, but even so, old definitions were allowed to continue, such as Bedford Midland.
The grouping pushed the question of nationalisation into the background between the wars, largely because most of the inter-war governments were Conservative and opposed in principle. The Labour government of 1924 lasted but briefly while that of 1929 came at a time of financial crisis, and in 1931 was eventually forced to seek a coalition of national unity. Many Labour Party supporters saw this as a betrayal, but it simply underlined the fact that the governments of the day had so much more to worry about, and with large scale unemployment, the demands on the exchequer were huge at a time when tax revenues were adversely affected by recession. It was soon clear that the railways were themselves not an inviting prospect for any government, as the revenues predicted on grouping were not being realised. The idea of taking the railways into public ownership so that the country could enjoy the profits was a nonstarter: there weren’t any.
Electrifying the suburban lines
As we have already seen, the period before the First World War, while the railways were still fragmented, saw the start of electrification. Not all of this was in the London area. London was, as now, Britain’s largest, busiest and most prosperous city, but one value of the old railway companies was that they were mainly not centred on London, and the local traffic of, say, Liverpool, was important to them. In fact, the London & North Western Railway electrified both on Merseyside and that part of its London suburban network acquired when it took over the North London Railway in 1909, approving NLR electrification in 1911. Between 1914 and 1922, the NLR lines were electrified, first between Broad Street and Richmond, completed in 1916, using the third and fourth rail system favoured by the Underground Group of Companies, and then between Broad Street and Watford in 1922, using the same rail system, with these extended to Rickmansworth after grouping. What is interesting about the North London electrification was that the railway was small in route mileage, but an important link for other railways wishing to reach the different dock systems along the north banks of the River Thames, and so much of its revenue was from freight, yet attention was still paid to passenger traffic.
That electrification was important and worthwhile can be demonstrated by the fact that, between 1913 and 1923, the number of suburban passengers carried by the London & South Western and the London Brighton & South Coast had grown by 26 per cent. In addition, after the war, working hours were shortened, so that the morning and evening peaks became more concentrated than had been the case pre-war or during the war years. This made steam working extremely difficult over the congested approaches to the London termini, and left electrification of suburban services as the only viable solution since widening the lines would have been hopelessly uneconomic given the dense residential and commercial development that had taken place alongside the tracks.
One problem with the LSWR system of direct current, dc, electrification was that it required a substantial number of sub-stations, and at first these had to be manned, and the cost of this was a marked disadvantage. However, railway grouping more or less coincided with the advent of the automatic substation, remotely controlled and requiring no manning. Electric trains needed a crew of two, a motorman and a guard, compared with the two enginemen and the guard of a steam train, did not have to have fires lit hours before being ready for service, required less maintenance and dispensed with stops for coaling and taking on water, and on stop-start suburban working were considerably faster than steam trains, all of which marked a considerable improvement in productivity. In addition, there was the inestimable benefit of dispensing with the shunting run to and from the sidings and turntables, with the almost constant demand for paths for light engines over already congested tracks.
The Southern Railway must have been sorely tempted to press ahead with the LSWR system of third-rail electrification, especially since the LBSC overhead system differed from that planned by the SECR, but delayed by the war. Nevertheless, in 1923, a consultant engineer was asked to consider all three systems and report on the best one, and meanwhile, work went ahead so that even after grouping, a new overhead, or in LBSC terms, ‘elevated’, electric scheme was introduced.
In 1924, the Southern announced that the Western Section electrification would be extended from Surbiton to Effingham Junction and Guildford, Raynes Park to Leatherhead, and from Effingham Junction and Leatherhead to Dorking North. This electrification scheme was the largest ever on a suburban system. Plans to open the ‘elevated’ extension to Coulsdon North and Sutton on 1 March 1925 were delayed by a month because of electricity supply problems. However, the other extensions to Guildford and Dorking North followed in July, while the Eastern Section was being electrified within a fifteen mile radius of London. At the same time several suburban stations were being re-arranged or having their platforms extended and new stations were built at Motspur Park and Carshalton Beeches, while those at Wimbledon and Sutton were being rebuilt.
The first electric services on the Eastern Section, the old South Eastern & Chatham territory, also started on 12 July 1925. Little incidental work had been needed for the extensions to Guildford and Dorking, but the same could not be said for the initial Eastern Section electrification, where the poor state of the SECR and its constituent companies had meant that there were disused stations to be removed and platform lengthening sometimes involved extra work on bridges as well as the approaches at St Pauls (today’s Blackfriars) and Holborn Viaduct. The lines covered by the initial scheme included Victoria-Orpington via Herne Hill and Shortlands as well as Holborn Viaduct to Herne Hill, the Catford Loop between Loughborough Junction and Shortlands, and Nunhead to Crystal Palace High Level. The shortage of running roads also dictated some less than satisfactory timings, with the section of double track between Herne Hill and Shortlands dictating that services from Victoria and Holborn Viaduct ran just five minutes apart, leaving a gap of fifteen minutes to accommodate the many steam trains, including continental boat trains, using the same route. The new services started on a Sunday and worked well on the first day, but a number of breakdowns on the second day, some of which may well have been due to staff inexperience, led to serious disruption and it was to be well into the first week before everything was working smoothly. Problems with major timetable changes were to occur time and time again with electrification, largely because operating staff had to constantly refer to new timetables rather than simply working by experience and memory. This has been a problem that has persisted over the years, and even when the entire timetable for the South Western Division of what had become British Rail Southern Region changed in 1967 to coincide with the Bournemouth electrification, weeks, not days, of chaos followed.
The initial electrification was followed by a much needed rearrangement and simplification during the second half of 1925 of the approaches to Cannon Street, which had been originally designed to allow all trains to and from Charing Cross to work in and out of the station. There was also extensive work at Charing Cross, where the platform numbering sequence was reversed.
Plans to introduce a second group of electric services on the Eastern Section, from 1 December 1925, had to be postponed until 28 February 1926, again because of power supply problems. These were the services from Cannon Street and Charing Cross to Bromley North, Orpington, Beckenham Junction, Hayes and Addiscombe, although trains on the Hayes to Elmers End branch switched to electric operation on 21 September 1925 to allow for staff training. Sufficient electric rolling stock and track mileage was available during the General Strike of 1926 for a service of electric trains to operate between Charing Cross and Dartford from 10 May until 16 May, but steam returned to the route afterwards. Electric trains returned to this route, but again on a temporary basis, from 6 June during the closure of Cannon Street for reconstruction to cope with traffic diverted to London Bridge and Charing Cross. The work at the two old SER termini also saw further colour light signalling installed.
RAILWAYS OR ROADS?
The idea arose during the early years of the twentieth century that the Hungerford Bridge, carrying what were then the South Eastern & Chatham lines into Charing Cross, should be converted into a road bridge. There were objections to the SECR’s plans to improve the bridge, and widen the station, but it was not until 1925 that serious problems with subsidence were discovered on one of the piers for Waterloo Bridge that the question of converting the Hungerford Bridge and transferring Charing Cross station to the south side of the river became a major issue. By this time, the debate had extended to converting the bridges running to Blackfriars, then known as St Paul’s, and to Holborn Viaduct, to road bridges as well, with the London County Council’s planners proving to be no friend of the railways.
The isolation of Waterloo and, before the Cannon Street and Charing Cross extensions, of London Bridge, has been mentioned earlier, so it seems strange that a return to this situation should have been seriously considered. True, tube lines had eased the isolation, and trams had made inroads into the suburban traffic, but adding the cross-river traffic of three stations, even though admittedly not large, to the existing tube network would have called for the costly construction of new lines as well as inconveniencing many travellers, especially commuters.
Nevertheless, a Royal Commission on Cross-River Traffic in London was set up in the summer of 1926, chaired by Lord Lee of Fareham. It reported in just four months, which must have been something of a record. The report called for a compromise. After rejecting the transfer of Charing Cross to the south side of the Thames as an unwanted disturbance to the railways ‘which now serve many thousands of passengers daily’, they recommended a new double-deck bridge to be built downstream of the Hungerford Bridge. The bridge would have a roadway on the upper level, with six railway tracks on the lower, and would be 60 feet wide. At the northern end, land would be acquired, although much of it was already in railway ownership as the SECR had long hoped to enlarge Charing Cross, for a new and larger site for the station, and once the bridge and new station were completed the railways would switch, leaving the disused Charing Cross station to be demolished and the land used for other purposes, with a hotel being suggested.
The LCC sought government support in the form of a 75 per cent grant, and also turned its attention to building a new bridge to replace those carrying the railway into Blackfriars and Holborn Viaduct. At this point, Sir Herbert Walker, general manager of the Southern railway, had to intervene. He pointed out that while to the ‘ordinary man in the street it may appear that the Southern Railway has a superabundance of terminal stations on both sides of the river in London, but….under present conditions each one of these stations is essential to our traffic requirements…In fact, during the rush hours…we have at the present time very great difficulty at these various termini in dealing with the very large number of trains which have to run.’
Initially, this logic was to no avail, as the massive cost of relocating stations and building double-deck bridges caused the LCC engineers to call again for the station to be moved to the south side of the river. The Ministry of Transport supported this proposal, despite the Southern showing that more than 90 per cent of the 16,000-18,000 passengers arriving at Charing Cross between 7am and 10am each day needing to be on the north side, and hence likely to be faced with delay and inconvenience. Since those who did not need to be on the north side could have alighted at London Bridge or Waterloo, one wonders why the figure was not 100 per cent.
Both Westminster City Council and Lambeth Borough Council supported the Southern Railway’s case. The question was decided when, during the financial crisis of 1931, the government warned the LCC that it could not continue its offer to meet 75 per cent of the cost. But the question cropped up again in 1935, by which time the SR’s arguments were that the new bridges over the Thames at Lambeth and the replacement for Waterloo Bridge should be adequate for road traffic growth for many years to come.
The General Strike and the much longer lasting miners’ lock-out associated with it, resulted in the temporary closure of the South London Line between 18 May and 20 September 1926. Closure, plus the extension of the City and South London tube line meant that traffic on the route was found to have fallen away considerably when the line re-opened. A major re-organisation of services associated with further electrification that came into effect in 1928 saw the South London Line service cut back, probably the only time in the history of Southern electrification that this action was taken. This instance of defeat simply reflected the fact that the line really was the wrong type of route to be operated by a main line railway, and could only have prospered in the longer term as a link in an urban railway, an above ground section of an underground line, otherwise it was extremely vulnerable to competition from the modern tramway. The route ran through a less prosperous neighbourhood, where the impact of recession was more heavily felt.
Once again a major launch of electric services had to be postponed, but only from 11 July to 18 July 1926, when electric services were introduced from Charing Cross and Cannon Street to Plumstead, and Dartford, permanently at last, via Blackheath and Woolwich, Bexleyheath and Sidcup.
The massive investment in electrification at this time was accompanied, as far as the Southern’s management was concerned, by the distraction of the London County Council wanting to relocate Charing Cross to the south side of the Thames so that the Hungerford Bridge could be replaced by a road bridge. Similar plans existed for the bridges carrying the lines to Blackfriars and Holborn Viaduct, with a proposed Ludgate road bridge.
In addition to the conversion of the overhead electrics to third rail, the needs of the Central Section were not being ignored. The announcement of the conversion in August 1926, following the recommendation that third rail was the best and most economical way forward, also mentioned that third-rail electrification would cover the sections between London Bridge and Norwood Junction, Crystal Palace Low Level to both Beckenham Junction and Sydenham, from Purley to Caterham and Tattenham Corner, from Streatham North Junction to Sutton and Epsom, and from Sutton to Epsom Downs, as well as Wimbledon to Herne Hill, Tulse Hill and Haydons Road. A little more than a year later, further colour light signalling was announced, with another nine manual boxes replaced by power-worked cabins at Borough Market Junction and London Bridge. The speed at which these improvements were implemented was astonishing enough, although it no doubt also vindicated the decision to stick with third rail, but what was even more impressive was that a number of services were ready to be operated by electric trains using the steam train timings by 25 March 1928, when the services between Cannon Street, Charing Cross and London Bridge to Caterham and Tadworth changed, as did London Bridge to Crystal Palace Low Level through Sydenham. The new services, with accelerated timings and improved frequencies, were introduced on Sunday, 17 June 1928. Once again, the initial service went smoothly, but on Tuesday, 19 June, a points failure disrupted services during the evening peak, and while delays were not too long, mainly less than fifteen minutes, it took until 4 July for a full train service to be reinstated.
The next stage in the Central Section electrification followed on 3 March 1929, with Dorking North and Effingham Junction having electric trains to London Bridge as well as to Waterloo, with the former operating via Tulse Hill and Mitcham Junction. On the same day, electric services were introduced on Victoria to Epsom via Mitcham Junction and from Holborn Viaduct to Wimbledon via Tulse Hill and Haydons Road, while the Victoria to Crystal Palace Low Level service was converted from ac to dc operation and extended to West Croydon and Beckenham Junction, with the latter requiring considerable work as the line between Bromley Junction and Beckenham Junction had not been used by passenger trains for fourteen years, and peak period services were introduced between Streatham Hill and Victoria.
As a general rule, the pattern of services was three trains an hour at peak periods and half-hourly at other times. It was usual for frequencies to be higher than with the previous steam working, but this was most marked on the services from Holborn Viaduct to Wimbledon, which had enjoyed a rush hour service only previously, but the electric trains attracted passengers from the trams. The improvements were not without some rationalisation of services and stations, with Ludgate Hill and, on the southern loop from Tooting Junction to Wimbledon, the stations at Merton Abbey and Merton Park all closed on 3 March 1929. A new station was built at Epsom, replacing separate LSWR and LBSCR stations, while goods trains were concentrated on the former LBSCR sidings. Colour light signalling was also extended, with considerable rationalisation of signal boxes, providing a welcome economy in staff to offset the heavy capital costs being incurred.
By this time, all that was needed to complete suburban electrification was a degree of tidying up and infilling, and this was achieved on 6 July 1930 when electric services commenced to Windsor, from Wimbledon to West Croydon, and to Gravesend Central from Dartford. The Gravesend services were simply an extension of trains that would otherwise have terminated at Dartford. That same day, Cannon Street re-opened on Sundays. Earlier, on 4 May, trains from Victoria to Sutton were extended to Epsom Downs. By this time, the Southern Railway had almost 800 track miles electrified, which equated to just under 300 route miles.
End of the levy
There were four major political moves between the wars that were of significance to the railways. The first of these was the abolition of the tax on passenger travel, and followed soon afterwards by the first steps in the regulation of road transport; and then by the creation of the London Passenger Transport Board as the first transport nationalisation, while the Guarantees and Loans Act 1934 was a further stimulus to modernisation.
In his budget in 1929, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin’s Conservative administration, the then Mr Winston Churchill, announced the abolition of the Railway Passenger Duty that had first been introduced in 1832 and by the late 1920s was levied on all passenger fares above 1d per mile, on condition that the sums realised were capitalised and used for railway modernisation. While this was one of the few occasions when political interference with the railways proved beneficial, it is only fair to add that Churchill had not the interests of the long-suffering passenger in mind, but instead was concerned to reduce unemployment by encouraging investment through this form of ‘pump-priming’. The measure didn’t work politically as in the ensuing general election, a Labour government was elected.
On the Southern Railway it was easy to draw a direct connection between ending the duty and further expansion of electrification. The Southern’s share of the capitalised duty was £2 million (around £100-120 million today), and it was estimated that extending electrification to Brighton and West Worthing would cost £2.7 million, including the provision of a much enhanced frequency with the number of departures more than doubled. To achieve a satisfactory return, an increase in revenue of 6 per cent would be needed. The company was not to be disappointed. The other companies spread the money around between passenger services and freight.
Accidents in commuter land
The Southern Railway inherited not only rolling stock from its predecessor companies, but also the infrastructure. The former South Eastern & Chatham Railway lines were often ballasted with shingle from the beach at Dungeness, which were round and smooth and did not offer stability, especially when wet; and when combined with the use of a K-class 2-6-4 tank locomotive, a type known to roll dangerously, the scene was set for a serious accident. This took place at Sevenoaks on 24 August 1927, when the locomotive of an express from Cannon Street to Dover started to roll and then derailed on the curve between Dunton Green and Sevenoaks. A Pullman car struck the central pier of a bridge and jammed itself across the track, so that the rest of the carriages piled up against it, with thirteen killed and another sixty-one injured.
By 1935, Welwyn Garden City was a new suburb and already had some of its population commuting daily to London. The major accident on the London & North Eastern Railway, on 15 June 1935, did not involve a commuter train, but would have seriously affected commuter services for some days afterwards. The signal box controlled no less than six tracks, four of them for the mainline but with branch lines on either side. Three expresses left King’s Cross heading north at 10.45 pm for Newcastle, 10.53 pm also for Newcastle, followed by a 10.58 for Leeds. The 10.45 passed through without any problem, but the inexperienced signalman did not clear the signals promptly, so the driver of the following train, the 10.53, seeing the distant signal at caution began to reduce speed so that he could stop at the home signal, which he expected to find at stop. In fact, the home signal was cleared before he reached it and he started to accelerate, but as his train steamed ahead, it was rammed behind by the 10.58, which completely destroyed the end carriage of the 10.53, while two of its own carriages telescoped into one another. In all, thirteen passengers were killed and another eighty-one injured. The signalman had clearly forgotten about the 10.53 when he cleared the 10.58. Despite the line having a manual block system of signalling, the inspector recommended the provision of a new block instrument and signal interlocking system, which became known as the Welwyn control.
By this time such basic measures such as the lock and block system were in use, but on the busy Southern Railway suburban lines, the system was modified so that a signalman could override it to avoid delaying trains should there be a failure in the system. At Battersea Park on 2 April 1937, the signalman at Battersea found himself in difficulty, and in the confusion he cleared his instrument on the up local line, allowing a train to come forward into a section already occupied. In the resulting collision between two electric multiple unit trains, ten people were killed and another eighty injured.
Road competition
The post-war period also saw competition from road transport that had no precedent. Before the war, this renaissance in road transport had really resulted in competition from the electric tramways which had been confined to the urban areas and their suburbs, and to passenger traffic, but competition from the motor vehicle seemed to know no bounds. Rural branch lines faced competition from the country bus, able to handle comfortably and profitably passenger loads that would not have filled more than a couple of compartments on the local train, and without the massive overhead costs of the railway. The main lines faced competition from the motor coach. Both branch and main lines faced competition from the motor lorry. It was not just a case of the greater flexibility and economy of the motor vehicle, their routes could be more direct. It was also the case that while road haulage contractors could pick and choose their traffic, and even specialise on a particular business; the railways were saddled with the burden of the common carrier obligation, a throw-back to the days when their rule of inland transport was unchallenged.
The seeming reluctance of many of the managers in the big four grouped companies to address the questions of integration and rationalisation had its counterpart in the reluctance of many railwaymen to countenance shedding uneconomic lines and uneconomic traffic. Even post-war, one company envisaged electric traction for most of its lines, including through goods trains, with diesel for the less busy lines and for stopping goods trains.
Regulation of road transport
Faced with a serious challenge from road transport, the railway companies tried to assess just how much business they were losing to road and lobbied for the government to do something about it. They were being tightly regulated themselves, so why shouldn’t road transport be tightly regulated seems to have been the attitude. There was no question of ‘setting the railways free’, instead the lobby was for a ‘fair deal for the railways’. The result was the first of a succession of road traffic acts, the first being the Road Traffic Act 1930, which established a system of licensing road haulage. It was to be another three years before a further Act of 1933 regulated bus services.
It is debatable whether the restrictions on freight or passenger transport were the more burdensome. The passenger operator would be tied to certain routes with either a general ‘stage’ road service licence or an ‘express’ road service licence with a minimum adult single fare, or, in the case of excursions and tours, certain departure points. Initially, bus and coach operators had what might be termed ‘grandfather rights’, enabling them to register their existing services, but new routes had to face the traffic commissioners, where the railways had a right to object to the granting of a road service licence. Potential customers had to be dragged off to the commissioners to testify that existing services did not meet their needs, although the bus operator could also seek support for its case from a local authority or a local employer who could also attend the hearing to support the bus or coach operator in his application.
To be fair, there was some need for legislation in the interests of the road transport industry and of its customers as much as anything else. Safety was one issue, with annual inspections of vehicles, and in the case of passenger vehicles the imposition of certain minimum standards through a certificate of fitness. Service reliability was another point, and bus and coach operators had to abide by the timetable attached to the road service licence for each route. Before the act, some operators had made a point of undercutting rival operators and forcing them out of business, after which fares were increased, so fares were also controlled, with operators having to seek permission to raise fares. All of this indicated some legislation was necessary to protect both the honest and reliable operator and the customer, but what emerged was little short of rationing. This was a period when the state started to assume more powers, and ironically it was in London, home of the ‘City’, the bastion of capitalism, where the process started.
Birth of London Transport
The main line railways retained their own lines within London when, on 1 July 1933, the London Passenger Transport Board came into existence under its own legislation promoted by the government earlier that year. Bus operators were not so fortunate, and many had to transfer depots, vehicles and routes to the new organisation, while those operating entirely within the 2,000 square mile area of the LTPB were taken over completely, including the municipal operators, of which the largest was the London County Council Tramways with 167 miles (269 kilometres) of route and 1,700 tramcars, by this time all electric. Despite an attempt to be left in private hands because of its largely rural routes, the Metropolitan was included in the new LPTB as it acquired most of the London underground network, including the District Line that used some of the Southern Railway’s metals, while the Bakerloo and the District used those of the LMS to reach Watford and Barking respectively. The few exceptions to the take-over by London Transport were the Hammersmith & City Line operated jointly with the Great Western until it passed completely to London Transport in 1948, while the Southern Railway was able to hang on to the Waterloo & City Line, the ‘Drain’, until nationalisation, after which it remained with British Railways until 1994. It also seems strange that the lines of the North London Railway, at least those between Richmond and Broad Street, also remained in railway company hands, and only passed to London Transport’s successor, Transport for London, in 2008.
Intended from the outset as an integrated road and rail transport organisation for London, the London Passenger Transport Area stretched out as far as Windsor, Guildford, Horsham, Gravesend, Tilbury, Hertford, Luton and Dunstable. The area did not tally with that of the London County Council or even the still wider area covered by the Metropolitan Police. Within this area, all suburban railway services were to be coordinated by a Standing Joint Committee consisting of four LPTB members and the four main line railway general managers, and all receipts from the area, less operating costs were to be apportioned between the LPTB and the railways. The apportioning was decided by the London Passenger Transport Arbitration Tribunal, which announced its findings on 11 June 1935. The Southern Railway’s share of these receipts was fixed at 25½ per cent, a tribute to the traffic growth generated by its investment in suburban electrification, by this time completed. By contrast, the GWR’s share, with the lowest suburban traffic of any of London’s railways, was just 1.3 per cent. Naturally, the London Passenger Transport Board had the lion’s share of the revenue pool, but even including its road transport operations, this amounted to 62 per cent, which seems low and puts the massive Southern contribution to London’s transport into perspective. The London & North Eastern Railway, which its extensive network of suburban lines, mainly but not entirely from Liverpool Street, got 6 per cent, while the London Midland Scottish, with the North London Line and the London, Tilbury & Southern line, got 5.1 per cent.
Within the London Passenger Transport Area, no one could operate a bus service without the permission of the London Passenger Transport Board, or London Transport as it chose to call itself, so that a monopoly could perpetuate itself for all time. Even post-war when some local authorities attempted to operate services, London Transport simply asked them to pay for buses which it then operated. The LPTB also had the right to examine its own drivers, who were then not able to leave and work for another bus company without first taking a fresh driving test.
The influence of Yerkes and his successors on the London Underground ensured that there was a high degree of standardisation, with the main difference being between the sub-surface lines, known to London Transport for many years as ‘surface’ lines, and the deep level tubes. On the roads, however, there was little standardisation. The large fleets of the London General Omnibus Company and its subsidiaries, as such as East Surrey, were completely undermined by the host of different vehicles acquired from the municipalities and other companies, such as Thomas Tilling, taken over, and even more so by the large number of small independent operators, often with just a handful of vehicles, some very old, others very small. It was to take most of the period up to the outbreak of the Second World War for any real standardisation to be achieved, with the development of a substantial trolleybus fleet and the introduction of first the ST-class motor bus, based on the AEC Regent, then the STL, which was longer and had the staircase completely enclosed, and which was based on an improved AEC Regent.
London Transport did experiment, so there were unusual vehicles amongst its increasingly standardised buses. Between 1931 and 1937, AEC produced the ‘Q’, available as a single-deck bus or double-deck, with an engine mounted behind the front axle on the offside, so the door could be anywhere the operator specified and these vehicles were fully-fronted, that is they did not have the half-cab typical of buses of this period. Later, a rear-engined variant of the Leyland Cub single deck bus was produced, yet still with a half-cab and a streamlined bonnet where the engine should have been, and the larger Leyland TF-class, with an underfloor engine, and again a half cab.
Profitability
In addition to the ending of the levy on railway travel, the Guarantees and Loans Act 1934 was also intended to provide work, easing unemployment and lifting the country out of recession in what would today be regarded as an example of Keynesian economics and ‘pump priming’. Here was yet another new incentive for the railways to modernise. In November 1935, the government agreed with the four main line railway companies to provide funds for major improvement schemes, at an interest rate of 2.5 per cent, lower than that generally available on the money markets at the time, through a Railway Finance Corporation, that would have its initial capital of £30m (£1,800 million today) guaranteed by the Treasury. Once again, the Southern, despite being by far the smallest of the railway companies, took an ambitious approach, with a loan of £6 million to fund further electrification and improvements at a number of stations, as well as construction of a new branch line to Chessington, mentioned later.
The failure of the railway companies to reach their standard revenues between the wars has already been mentioned. The reasons were varied, and included the recession that soon struck manufacturing industry within a few years of World War I ending, and although attention always focuses on the years of the great depression, British industry remained in recession for far longer. The country certainly was not helped by the General Strike of 1926 and the miner’s lock-out that accompanied it and continued for long after the General Strike ended. The Great Western suffered a strike of its own at some depots in 1924. A consequence of the absence of mineworkers was that many markets for British coal, including export markets, were lost for good, resulting in lower traffic levels for the railways and for the ports, many of which were in railway ownership. The transport operators made much of the fact that volunteers from the population as a whole were quickly trained to take over jobs on the railways and the buses, but the General Strike itself did not last for long. It was violent at times, and in London a bus driven by a volunteer was stopped by protestors and set on fire.
A Railways Rates Tribunal existed to authorise any change in rates, although the railways, facing intense road competition, were free to charge ‘exceptional rates’ to retain traffic of as much as 40 per cent below the standard rate. They also tried to stimulate passenger traffic, or at least win some of this back from the coach operators, with the Southern, for example, introducing special ‘summer fares’ of a penny a mile. On London’s buses, the fare of a penny per mile was also reintroduced, with the slogan, ‘Mr Penny Mile is Back!’
Some idea of the discount afforded the purchasers of workmen’s tickets can be gathered from that, even in 1947, the return workman’s fare on the Waterloo & City Line, available to anyone travelling before 08.00 and which could be used on any return train, was just 3d, compared to a standard 3½ d single or 7d return.
Of course, there are those complete ‘free market’ supporters who would argue that transport shouldn’t be regulated in this way. But the bus company or railway, or even the airline, is not like the butcher, baker or candlestick maker. As mentioned earlier, nothing is more perishable than the seat on any form of transport, for once it departs, if not sold it is lost forever.
If the railways couldn’t defeat the road transport operators, then they could join them. They had for many years operated their own buses as feeders to their stations, but legislation in 1929 allowed them to operate other bus services or buy existing bus companies, but not within the London Passenger Transport Area once the LPTB came into existence. Later, they were to be allowed to buy road haulage companies and to operate air services as well.
Despite the effects of the Road Traffic Act 1930, the railways continued to suffer during the rest of the decade. In 1938, a ‘Square Deal’ campaign was launched to ease the restrictions under which they operated, but it received a poor press and aroused public hostility, the latter largely due to fears of increased fares and other charges. The road transport lobby that had done so well from the restrictions on the railways happily played on the fears of the public. Yet, a look at the results for the main railway companies in 1912 and for the big four during the mid to late 1930s tells its own story.
Taking the Southern Railway as an example, in 1912, the four companies that were to make up the Southern were mainly in profit, with the London & South Western paying a dividend of 5.62 per cent on its ordinary shares, while the London Brighton & South Coast paid 5 per cent, and of the two companies operated by the South Eastern & Chatham Managing Committee, the South Eastern paid 3.87 per cent leaving just the poor London Chatham & Dover to pay nothing. Yet, by 1935, after extensive investment in successful electrification schemes, the Southern Railway could only pay 4 per cent on its preference stock while the ordinary, or deferred, shares received nothing in 1935, while in 1936 the preference shares continued to attract 4 per cent and the ordinary stock received just 0.5 per cent. In 1937, the preference shares received 3 per cent and the ordinary 1.5 per cent, but this was a high point, because in 1938, although the preference shares received 4 per cent, once again the ordinary shares received nothing. Modernisation came at a high price if you were a holder of ordinary shares!
The Great Western Railway had also managed to pay 5.62 per cent in 1912, but the railway that gave the world what was for a short period the world’s fastest scheduled daily service, The Cheltenham Flyer, could only pay 2.75 per cent by 1935, and this was maintained in 1936, and then actually rose to 3.5 per cent the following year before collapsing to 0.5 per cent in 1938. For the ordinary railway shareholder, a Post Office savings account must have seemed very attractive at times like this.
Of the companies that combined to form the London & North Eastern Railway, in 1912, the Great Eastern managed to pay 2.5 per cent and the Great Northern 4.37 per cent, with 6 per cent on the North Eastern, but the North British had struggled to pay 3 per cent on its preference stock and 1 per cent on its deferred stock, while the Great Central paid nothing. At least the latter’s shareholders were prepared for what happened in the years 1935-38, when the LNER could not pay a dividend.
On the other side of the Pennines, of the companies that amalgamated to form the giant London Midland Scottish Railway, in 1912 the London & North Western paid a healthy 6.5 per cent, while the Midland, famous for the comfort of its trains, was not too well rewarded for its care with just 2.5 per cent on its preference stock and 3.87 per cent on its deferred stock. The LMS was renowned for its adoption of modern American management practices, and it also sorted out some of the sillier practices of its predecessor companies, amongst which the Midland, for example, had tended to build only smaller locomotives, so that double heading was frequently required, which, lacking the means of remote control usual on electric and diesel double or multiple-headed locomotives, also doubled labour costs and did not make the best use of coal. Despite this, the LMS failed to pay a dividend in 1935 and could only manage 1.25 per cent in 1936, and although this rose to 1.5 per cent in 1937, it disappeared once again in 1938!
It would be unfair to describe railway stock in 1938 as junk bonds, but it took an act of faith, even of blind optimism, for anyone to consider investing in the railways. The directors and managers of the grouped companies had maintained their railways to the best of their abilities, and had invested as heavily as they could, especially after the incentives of 1929 and later. This was most obvious on the Southern Railway, but the introduction of more powerful steam locomotives necessary for the longer distance services had taken second place to electrification. Even so, the Southern had tried its best to spread modernisation around its system. The Great Western as well had not simply been content to concentrate on its expresses, but had thought about the problems of rural branch lines with its diesel railcars. Given the picture of poor returns, one can have some sympathy for the other two companies, running a limited number of fine expresses but not doing much for the rural and suburban lines. The LMS did at least have a substantial number of fine mixed traffic locomotives, the handsome and rightly famous Stanier 4-6-0s, or ‘Black Fives’, that were to be largely copied by the post-war nationalised railway, and which were equally happy on the lighter expresses, suburban trains or on goods work.
The failure to rationalise
The railway companies had also been slow to rationalise, other than in their locomotive and carriage works, which many would suggest should have concentrated on overall and heavy maintenance and abandoned new construction in favour of using independent builders and competitive bidding. Only the Southern bought the products of independent builders to any great extent, although the GWR’s diesel railcars were largely ‘bought in’. There was also a very real reluctance to consider closing stations or branch lines.