List of early British railway companies

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The following list sets out to show all the railway companies set up by Acts of Parliament in the 19th century until the late 1850s. Most of them became constituent parts of the emerging main-line railway companies, often immediately after being built. Some continued as independent companies until the 1923 Grouping; a few retained that independence until 1947. They have been listed under Scottish; and English and Welsh early railways [1]; and under the later main line company which absorbed them.

Each of the main line companies after the Grouping has an article listing all companies who became part of, and jointly part of, individual companies. Many of those had been in separate existence since being set up in the 19th century, and were only in 1923 losing that individuality.

The list is by no means complete: in 1846 alone there were 272 railways agreed by Act of Parliament, although not all of those were built, since it was the time of the Railway Mania.

  • [1] Much of the information contained in this article is taken from The Railway Year Book, 1912 (The Railway Publishing Company Limited), which set out the railways in that order. At the time the term Scotch was in use.

Contents

[edit] Scottish early railways

[edit] English and Welsh early railways

This list of lines in England and Wales is ordered roughly by region, with the exception of the GWR which was a very large company even pre-1900.

[edit] North

[edit] Wales

[edit] Midlands

[edit] East

  • Great Eastern Railway
    • Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) opened 20 June 1839; original 5ft gauge converted to standard in 1845, absorbed into GER Aug 1862
      • Eastern Union Railway, incorporated 1844, opened 1846, absorbed 1847.
        • Eastern Union and Hadleigh Junction Railway
        • Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds Railway
      • Colchester, Stour Valley, Sudbury, & Halstead Railway, incorporated 1846, opened 1848
      • East Anglia Railway. absorbed into Eastern Counties Railway, Jan 1852
      • Saffron Walden Railway incorporated 1861, sponsored by ECR.
    • Northern & Eastern Railway incorporated 1836 gauge conversion as with ECR
    • London and Blackwall Railway, opened 1840, extended to Tilbury with ECR 1854 (authorised 1852 as London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LT&SR)), absorbed by GER 1866. Started with non-standard gauge, converted 1849.
    • Ely, Haddenham & Sutton Railway (later Ely and St Ives Railway), authorised 1864, opened 1866, leased by ECR since opening, absorbed by GER 1897
    • Norfolk Railway
    • Colne Valley & Halstead Railway, incorporated 1856
    • Harwich Railway
    • East Anglian Railways (the plural is correct!) formed by merger in 1847. Bankrupt in 1851, it was operated by arrangement by ECR until the takeover by GER.
      • Lynn and Dereham Railway
      • Lynn and Ely Railway
      • Ely and Huntingdon Railway
    • East Suffolk Railway (re-incorporation of the "Halesworth, Beccles and Hadiscoe Railway" in 1854), absorbed by ECR 1859
      • Yarmouth and Haddiscoe Railway absorbed 1858
      • Lowestoft and Beccles Railway absorbed 1858
  • Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway incorporated 1893

[edit] South

[edit] Great Western Railway

[edit] See also



The "Big Four" pre-nationalisation British railway companies
v • d • e

Great Western • London Midland & Scottish • London & North Eastern • Southern

GWR constituents: Great Western Railway • Cambrian Railways • Taff Vale Railway
Barry Railway • Rhymney Railway • (full list)
LNER constituents: Great Central • Great Eastern • Great Northern • Great North of Scotland
Hull & Barnsley • North British • North Eastern • (Full list)
LMS constituents: Caledonian • Furness • Lancashire & Yorkshire • Glasgow & South Western
London and North Western • Midland • North Staffordshire • (Full list)
SR constituents: London and South Western Railway • London, Brighton and South Coast Railway
South Eastern Railway • London, Chatham and Dover Railway • (Full list)

See also: History of rail transport in Great Britain 1923 - 1947 • List of companies involved in the grouping
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