Midland Railway

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The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom, which existed from 1844 to 1922 when it became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.

Initially, the MR's main line, now known as the Midland Main Line, connected the East Midlands to London and to Leeds. Eventually the Midland (head office in Derby) owned a large network of railway lines centred on the East Midlands, and the main lines connecting the East Midlands to Birmingham and Bristol, and another to Manchester. In the end, they were the only railway of the time to own or share lines in all of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

Midland Railway coat of arms at Derby Station. The wyvern which surmounts it had been used by the Leicester and Swannington Railway. It was the emblem of the rulers of Mercia and was used extensively as an emblem by the Midland.

[edit] Origin

The Midland Railway Consolidation Bill was placed before Parliament and was passed in 1844 by the merger of the Midland Counties Railway, the North Midland Railway, and the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway.

Leading it was the dynamic but unscrupulous George Hudson from the North Midland, and John Ellis, from the Midland Counties, a careful businessman of impeccable integrity. From the Birmingham line, James Allport found a place elsewhere in Hudson's empire, with the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway, though he was later to return.

The line was in a commanding position having its Derby headquarters at the junctions of the two main routes from London to Scotland. This by virtue of its connections to the London and Birmingham Railway in the south, and, in the north, the lines from York.

[edit] Consolidation

Almost immediately, it took over the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway and the Erewash Valley Line in 1845, the latter giving access to the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire coalfields. It also absorbed the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway in 1847 building a connection of the latter between Chesterfield and Trent Junction at Long Eaton, finally completed to Chesterfield in 1862 giving access to the coalfields that would become its major source of income. Passengers from Sheffield continued to meet the train at Masborough until a through route was completed in 1870.

Meanwhile it extended its influence in the Leicestershire coalfields, firstly by buying the Leicester and Swannington Railway in 1846 , then extending it to Burton in 1849.

[edit] The South-West

After the merger, London trains were carried on the shorter Midland Counties route, leaving the former B&DJR with the traffic to Birmingham and for Bristol at that time still an important seaport. The original 1839 line from Derby had run to Hampton-in-Arden railway station, but the B&DJR built a terminus at Lawley Street in 1842. Passengers for Bristol would change trains at Camp Hill station, until 1851 when the Midland started to run into Curzon Street.

The line south was the Birmingham and Bristol Railway, which had been formed by the merger of the standard gauge Birmingham and Gloucester Railway and the broad gauge Bristol and Gloucester Railway.

These met at Gloucester via a short loop of the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway. The change of gauge at Gloucester meant that everything - goods, passengers and their luggage - had to be transferred between trains, creating chaos. Morever, the C&GWU was owned by the Great Western Railway who wished to extend their network by taking over the Bristol to Birmingham route. In 1845, while the two parties were bickering over the price, the Midland's John Ellis, while travelling on a London train, it is said, overheard two directors of the B&B discussing the business and took it on himself to pledge the Midland would match anything the Great Western would offer.

Since it would have brought broad gauge into Curzon Street, with the possibility of extending it to the Mersey, it was something that the other standard gauge lines wished to avoid, and they pledged to assist the Midland with any losses it might incur. In the event all that was necessary was for the later LNWR to share New Street with the Midland when it was opened in 1854. At this time Lawley Street became a goods depot.

[edit] Eastern Competition

As has been noted, the Midland controlled all the traffic to the North East and Scotland from London. The LNWR was progressing slowly through the Lake District. Meanwhile there was pressure for a direct line from London to York. Permission had been gained for the Northern and Eastern Railway to run through Peterborough and Lincoln but it had barely reached Cambridge.

Two obvious extensions of the Midland Counties line were from Nottingham to Lincoln and from Leicester to Peterborough. They had not been proceeded with, but Hudson saw that that they would make ideal "stoppers." In other words, if the cities concerned were provided with a rail service, it would make it more difficult to justify another line. They were approved while the bill for the direct line was still before Parliament, forming the present day Lincoln Branch and the Syston to Peterborough Line.

One other investment should be mentioned. The Leeds and Bradford Railway had been approved in 1844. By 1850 it was losing money but a number of railways offered to buy it out. Hudson made an offer more or less on his own account and the line gave the Midland an exit to the north which later became the Settle and Carlisle line. In addition it gave the Midland a much more convenient station at Leeds Wellington.

[edit] Hudson's defection

In spite of the objections of Hudson, for the Midland, and others, the new "London and York Railway", (later to become known as the Great Northern Railway) led by Edmund Denison persisted, and the bill passed through Parliament in 1846.

Hudson changed his allegiance and promoted a short line from his York and North Midland Railway, ostensibly as a quarry line, that would give the Great Northern an easy entry into York.

Apart, perhaps, from the canals, until the beginning of the century there had simply been no companies with the size and capitalisation of the railways. Company law was still in its infancy, something which many took advantage of. There is no doubt that Hudson had greatly encouraged railway development, but his financial practices had often been dubious. His defection had incensed the Midland's directors. Their rejection of him attracted the attention others and questions were asked. In the end he was discredited and retired to Paris in poverty.

After Hudson's departure, the Midland was in financial difficulties. Opposition to the Great Northern bill had cost a fortune, a great deal of maintenance was overdue, and the Lincoln and Peterborough lines were still to be paid for. Added to this, the Great Northern was taking much of the traffic from the North-East, particularly as the Midland was dependent on the LNWR from Rugby into London.

Thanks to the control that had been exercised by John Ellis, there was no impropriety in the company's accounts, and it was due to his business acumen that the Midland survived and prospered.

Rather than compete on the passenger front, he first set out to concentrate on the coal trade, for in this he had an advantage over both the GNR and the M&SLR. While a number of lines had access to the Yorkshire fields and resisted encroachment by others, the Midland had virtually sole access to the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire mines, which were thirty miles or more nearer London.

[edit] The Battle of Nottingham

In 1851 the Ambergate, Nottingham, Boston and Eastern Junction Railway completed its line from Grantham as far as Colwick from which a branch led to the Midland's Nottingham station. The Great Northern by then passed through Grantham and both railway companies paid court to the fledgling line. Meanwhile Nottingham had woken up to its branch line status and was keen to expand. The Midland made a takeover offer only to discover that a shareholder of the GN had already gathered a quantity of Ambergate shares. An attempt to amalgamate the line with the GN was foiled by Ellis who managed to obtain an Order in Chancery preventing the GN from running into Nottingham. However in 1881 it opened a new service to the north which, regardless of this, included Nottingham. The first of its trains to run into Nottingham in 1852 was preceded and followed by Midland locomotives which shepherded its loco into an old shed and the lines were pulled up.

[edit] The Euston Square Confederacy

The London and Birmingham Railway and its successor the London and North Western Railway had been under pressure from two directions. Firstly the Great Western Railway had been foiled in its attempt to enter Birmingham by the Midland, but it still had designs on Manchester. At the same time the LNWR was under threat from the Great Northern's attempts to enter Manchester by means of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway.

The LNWR was led by the brilliant but totally unscrupulous Mark Huish. At first, observing the poor state of the Midland finances, he had proposed at amalgamation which Ellis opposed seeking better terms. He then formed an alliance with the MS&LR and the Midland against the Great Northern, which became known as the Euston Square Confederacy.

An agreement was reached whereby passenger traffic was shared and the Midland would be compensated for passengers taken by the GN. Another problem which arose in 1851 coincided with the Great Exhibition. The GN had just opened and took most of the Midland's traffic. The Midland retaliated by cutting its fares, resulting in a price war in which journeys were virtually being given away. Gladstone, who was the minister responsible for railways at that time, imposed a traffic sharing scheme between the two lines for journeys from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. In time the Midland grew stronger and, when relationships were soured between Huish and the MS&LR, the Confederacy was virtually at an end.

[edit] To London

In 1850 the Midland, though much more secure, was still a provincial line. Ellis realised that if it were to fend off its competitors it must expand outwards. The first step was to appoint James Allport as Chief Engineer and the next was to shake off the dependence on the LNWR from Rugby into Euston.

Although a bill for running the line from Hitchin into Kings Cross, jointly with the Great Northern Railway, was passed in 1847 it had not been proceeded with.

The bill was resubmitted in 1853 with the support of the people of Bedford, whose branch to the LNWR was slow and unreliable, and with the knowledge of the Northamptonshire iron deposits.

The new line ran from Wigston toward Market Harborough, through Desborough, Kettering, Wellingborough and Bedford, joining the GNR at Hitchin to run into King's Cross.

While this took some of the pressure off the route through Rugby, the GN would not allow passengers into London on Midland trains. It insisted that they should alight at Hitchin, buying tickets in the short time available, to catch a GNR train to finish their journey. In the end Allport managed to arrange a seven-year deal with the GN to run into King's Cross for a guaranteed £20,000 a year

By 1860 Midland was in a much better position and was able to approach new ventures aggressively. Its carriage of coal and iron - and beer from Burton-on-Trent - had increased by three times and passenger numbers were rising, as they were on the GN. Since the GN trains took precedence on its own lines, Midland passengers were becoming more and more delayed. Finally in 1862 the decision was taken for the line have its own terminus in the Capital as befitted a national railway.

The new line would deviate at Bedford and would pass through a gap in the Chiltern Hills at Luton reaching London by curving around Hampstead Heath to a point between King's Cross and Euston.

The new station at St Pancras completed in 1868 has remained as a marvel of "Victorian Gothic" architecture, in the form of the enormous hotel by Gilbert Scott which faces Euston Road, and the massive wrought iron train shed designed by William Barlow. Its construction was not simple since it had to approach over an ancient abandoned graveyard. Below it would be the Fleet Sewer, while a branch from the main line was to be built, running underground with a steep gradient beneath the station to join the Metropolitan Railway which ran parallel to what is now called Euston Road.

[edit] To Manchester

From the 1820s proposals for lines from London and the East Midlands had been proposed, and that they had considered using the Cromford and High Peak Railway to reach Manchester. The ideas had never reached fruition since the practicality of using cable haulage for passenger trains was always in doubt.

Finally the Midland joined with the London and Birmingham Railway, which was also looking for its own access to Manchester, in a proposal for a line from Ambergate. To be known as The Manchester, Buxton, Matlock and Midlands Junction Railway it received the Royal Assent in 1846, in spite of opposition from the Sheffield, Ashton-Under-Lyne and Manchester Railway. It opened had been built in 1849 as far as Rowsley a few miles north of Matlock. However the London and Birmingham had become part of the LNWR in 1846, thus having an interest in thwarting the Midland.

In 1863 the Midland built its line into Buxton, just as the LNWR arrived from the other direction. In 1867 began an alternative line through Wirksworth (now known as the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway), to avoid the problem of the Ambergate line. It was not completed because the Midland gained control of the latter in 1871. It was still, however, blocked at Buxton. At length an agreement was made with the MS&LR to share lines, built from a branch at Millers Dale and almost alongside the LNWR, in what became known as the Sheffield and Midland Railway Companies' Committee.

Continuing friction with the LNWR caused the Midland to join the MS&LR and the GN in the Cheshire Lines Committee, which also gave scope for wider expansion into Lancashire and Cheshire, and finally a new station at Manchester Central.

In the meantime Sheffield had at last gained main line station. Following representations by the council in 1867 the Midland promised to build a through line within two years. To the Midland's surprise, the Sheffield councillors then backed an improbable speculation called the Sheffield Chesterfield Bakewell Ashbourne Stafford and Uttoxeter Railway. This was unsurprisingly rejected by Parliament and the Midland built its "New Road" into a station at Pond Street. Loathed by all who used it, it was rebuilt in 1905 as the present Sheffield Midland.

Among last of the major lines built by the Midland was a connection between Sheffield and Manchester, by means of a branch on this line at Dore to Chinley, opened in 1894, involving the construction of the Totley and Cowburn Tunnels, now known as the Hope Valley Line.

[edit] Competition for coal

The Great Western Railway seemed oblivious to the massive expansion in coal and mineral production that was occurring in South Wales during the second half of the 19th century. The LNWR had already penetrated the area by taking over various small local lines. The Midland followed suit and in 1867 took over the Swansea Vale Railway, followed by the Hereford Hay and Brecon Railway in 1886.

Meanwhile in the East Midlands, dominance along the Erewash Valley was being challenged by the Great Northern and the Great Central. In 1878 the GNR's "Derbyshire Extension" line through Derby Friargate opened. This cut directly through the coalfields north of the Midland line which ran along the Trent Valley, and in extending to Egginton, had access to Burton-on-Trent and its lucrative beer traffic.

Thus the Midland retaliated with lines from Ambergate to Pye Bridge, from Basford to Bennerley Junction, and Radford to Trowell. Later when mining became possible under the limestone to the east, more lines appeared around Mansfield

[edit] To Scotland

In the 1870s a dispute with the London and North Western Railway over access rights to the LNWR line to Scotland caused the MR to construct the Settle and Carlisle (S&C) line, the highest main line in England, in order to secure the company's access to Scotland; ironically the dispute with the LNWR was settled before the S&C was built, but Parliament refused to allow the MR to withdraw from the project, which was completed in 1876.

[edit] Later history

By 1870 the Midland straddled the country, lines from London and the South West meeting at Derby to travel to Scotland via the North West and the North-East. There were now four tracks from London as far as Trent Junction. In 1879 these were complemented by the Melton Line via Corby, which also carried the Northern trains via Nottingham through Old Dalby.

By the middle of the decade investment had been paid for, passenger travel was increasing with new comfortable trains, and goods traffic, the mainstay of the line, was increasing dramatically. In fact goods, particularly menial minerals, were its main business.

Allport retired in 1880, to be succeeded by John Noble and then by George Turner. By the new century the quantity of goods, particularly coal, was clogging the network. The Midland passenger service was acquiring a reputation for lateness. Lord Farrar reorganised, at least, the expresses but by 1905 the whole system was so overloaded that no one able to predict when many of the trains would reach their destinations and there were crews spending as much as a whole shift standing at a signal.

At this point Sir Guy Granet took over as General Manager. He introduced a centralised traffic control system, and the locomotive power classifications, which became the model for that used by British Rail to this day.

The Midland also acquired a number of other lines, including the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway in 1903 and the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway in 1912. In common with other railways, they shared running rights on some lines, but they also developed lines in partnership with other railways, and were involved in more such 'Joint' lines than any other railway. In partnership with the Great Northern Railway it owned the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway to provide connections from the Midlands to East Anglia; the M&GN was the UK's biggest joint railway system. The MR also provided motive power for the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway.

[edit] Grouping

In 1914 came the Great War. All the railways in the country were taken under the control of the Railway Executive Committee and were paid an amount based on their receipts during 1913. All excursion traffic was cancelled. Passenger service and the steamers across the Irish Sea were limited in order to cater for munitions and troops trains, which at times overwhelmed the system. By the end of the war overcrowded trains were running at only half the prewar mileage. The overworked locomotives had not had the benefit of the prewar standard of maintenance, while many of the staff had never returned from the battlefront.

The Midland had not recovered from this when in 1921 the Government passed the Railways Act, with those uncomfortable bedfellows the Midland and the LNWR joining the Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Caledonian and the Glasgow and South Western Railway, along with such lines as the Furness and the North Staffordshire to form the London Midland and Scottish Railway.

[edit] Innovation

The Midland pioneered the use of gas lighting for trains in Britain, put third-class carriages on all its trains in 1872, and abolished second class in 1875, giving third class passengers the level of comfort formerly afforded to second class passengers (elsewhere some third class passengers travelled in open wagons). This was an entirely pragmatic move - the second class seats were not well patronised - but controversial. Interestingly, there had been considerable resentment, on the part of the third class passengers, at the 'toffs' using it, at least for short journeys. Others saw it as promoting the working class above their social station. The railway also introduced the first British Pullman supplementary-fare cars. The non-contiguous numbering of classes, with 1st and 3rd class only, continued until 1956, when third class was renamed second.

The company was grouped into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) on January 1, 1923 and was the most influential of the pre-grouping companies that formed the LMS.

[edit] See also

• Locomotives of the Midland Railway.

[edit] References

• Truman, P. and Hunt, D. (1989) Midland Railway Portrait, Sheffield : Platform 5, ISBN 0-906579-72-4

[edit] Further reading

• Williams, Frederick Smeeton (1876) The Midland railway: its rise and progress, Strahan & Co.
• Stretton, Clement Edwin (1901) The History of the Midland Railway available from Microsoft Live Search Books

[edit] External links

• Midland Railway Society
• Midland Railway Study Centre at Derby