Grand Junction Railway

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The Grand Junction Railway (GJR) was an early railway company in the United Kingdom, which existed between 1833 and 1846. The line built by the company was one of the first railway lines to be built in England, and arguably the world's first long-distance railway.

It was on this railway that the sorting of mail en route was first done. Mail was first sorted in a converted horse-box, in January 1838, at the suggestion of Frederick Karstadt, a Post Office surveyor. Karstadt's son was one of two mail clerks who did the sorting.^[1]. Later, carriages had a net attached, for catching mail bags at interim stations without stopping the train.

Authorised by Parliament in 1833 and designed by George Stephenson and Joseph Locke, it opened for business on July 4, 1837, running for 82 miles from Birmingham through Wolverhampton (via Perry Barr and Bescot), Stafford, Crewe, and Warrington, then via the existing Warrington and Newton Railway to join the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at a triangular junction at Newton Junction. The GJR established its chief engineering works at Crewe, moving there from Edge Hill, near Liverpool.

Shortly after opening with a temporary Birmingham terminus at Vauxhall, services were routed to and from Curzon Street Station, which it shared with the London and Birmingham Railway (LBR) whose platforms were adjacent, providing a link between Liverpool, Manchester and London.

In 1840 the GJR absorbed the Chester and Crewe Railway shortly before it opened. Seeing itself as part of a grand railway network, it encouraged the development of the North Union Railway which took the tracks onward to Preston, and it also invested in the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway and the Caledonian Railway. In 1845 the GJR merged with the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and consolidated its position by buying the North Union Railway in association with the Manchester and Leeds Railway.

The GJR was very profitable, paying dividends of at least 10% from its opening and having a final capital value of over £5.75 million when it merged with the London and Birmingham Railway and Manchester and Birmingham Railway companies to became the London and North Western Railway in 1846, and the London Midland and Scottish Railway in 1922.

Today, the lines which made up the GJR form the central section of the West Coast Main Line.