Great Central Main Line
Encyclopedia
The Great Central Main Line (GCML), also known as the London Extension of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway
(MS&LR), is a former railway line which opened in 1899
linking Sheffield with Marylebone Station
in London via Nottingham
and Leicester
.
The GCML was the last main line railway built in Britain during the Victorian period
, and it was not initially a financial success, only recovering under the leadership of Sam Fay
. Though initially planned largely with long-distance passenger services in mind, in practice the line's most important function became to carry goods traffic, notably coal.
In the 1960s, the line was viewed by Doctor Beeching
as an unnecessary duplication of other lines which served the same places, especially the Midland Main Line
and to a lesser extent the West Coast Main Line
. Most of the route was closed between 1966 and 1969 under the Beeching axe
.
Starting at Annesley
in Nottinghamshire
, and running for 92 miles (147 km) in a relatively direct southward route, it left the crowded corridor through Nottingham
(and Nottingham Victoria railway station
), which was also used by the Midland and the London and North Western Railway
(LNWR), then struck off to its new railway station at Leicester Central
, passing Loughborough
en route, where it crossed the Midland main line. Four railway companies served Leicester: GCR, Midland, GNR, and LNWR. Avoiding Wigston, the GCR served the town of Lutterworth
(the only town on the GC not to be served by another railway company) before reaching the town of Rugby
(at Rugby Central Station), where it crossed at right-angles over, and did not connect with, the West Coast Main Line
.
It continued southwards to Woodford Halse
, where there was a connection with the East and West Junction Railway (later incorporated into the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway
), and slightly further south the GCR branch to the Great Western Railway
station at Banbury
. From Woodford Halse the route continued in a roughly south-easterly direction via Brackley
to Calvert
and Quainton Road
, where Great Central trains joined the Metropolitan
(later joint Metropolitan and Great Central) route via Aylesbury
into London.
Partly because of disagreements with the Metropolitan Railway
(MetR) over use of their tracks at the southern end of the route, the company built the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway
joint line (1906) from Grendon Underwood
to Ashendon Junction
, by-passing the greater part of the MetR's tracks.
Apart from a small freight branch to Gotham
between Nottingham and Loughborough, and the "Alternative Route
" link added later (1906), these were the only branch lines from the London extension. Although the line crossed several other railways, there were few physical connections.
North of Sheffield, express trains on the London extension made use of the pre-existing MS&LR trans-Pennine
main line, the Woodhead Line
(now also closed) to give access to Manchester.
took over directorship of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway. He had grand ambitions for the company: he had plans to transform it from a provincial middle-of-the-road railway company into a major national player. Watkin was a visionary who wanted to build a new railway line that would not only link his network to London, but which one day would be expanded and link to a future Channel Tunnel
(although this ultimate ambition was never realised). He grew tired of handing over potentially lucrative London-bound traffic to rivals, and, after several attempts to co-build a line to London with other companies, decided that the MS&LR needed to create its own route to the capital. At the time many people questioned the wisdom of building the line, as all the significant population centres which the line traversed were already served by other companies. In 1897 The MS&LR changed its name to the grander sounding Great Central Railway
to reflect its new-found national ambitions.
in Nottinghamshire
to join the existing Metropolitan Railway
(MetR) Extension at Quainton Road where the line became joint MetR/GCR owned and returned to GCR metals at Harrow
for the final section to Marylebone.
Features of the line were:
The cost of building the line was huge and overran its original budget of £3.5 million by a factor of three. In order to get permission to build the line the Company had to agree to put parts of the line through tunnels to avoid upsetting the local land owners, this was especially true of Catesby Tunnel in Northamptonshire
and St. John's Wood Tunnel in London. It was so expensive that the original plans for their London terminus at Marylebone had to be scaled back drastically.
which had served the route between London, the East Midlands and Sheffield since the 1860s on a different route
. Traffic was slow to establish itself on the new line, passenger traffic especially so. Enticing customers away from the established lines into London was more difficult than the GCR's builders had hoped. However, there was some success in appealing to higher-class 'business' travellers in providing high-speed luxurious trains. These were in a way the first long-distance commuter trains. Passenger traffic was never heavy throughout the line's existence, but freight traffic grew healthily and became the lifeblood of the line, the staples being coal, iron ore, and fish and banana trains.
Nevertheless, in the late-1930s heyday of fast long-distance passenger steam trains, there were six crack expresses a day from Marylebone to Sheffield, calling at Leicester and Nottingham, and going forward to Manchester. Some of these achieved a London-Sheffied timing of 3 hours and 6 minutes in 1939, making them fully competitive with the rival Midland service out of St Pancras as far as journey time was concerned.
The First World War
, and the hostile European political climate which followed, ended any possibility of a Channel Tunnel
being constructed within the GCR's lifetime. The various Channel Tunnel schemes, including one in 1883 which prompted Sir Edward Watkin
and the MS&LR to construct the London extension, foundered on the fear of French invasion. Further work in the 1920s was again vetoed for similar reasons. The extension was therefore seen has having lost some of its original raison d'etre.
In the 1923 Grouping the Great Central Railway was merged into the London and North Eastern Railway
, which in 1948 was nationalised
along with the rest of Britain's railway network.
and in 1958 transferred from the management of the Eastern Region
to the London Midland Region, whose management still had loyalties to former companies (Midland/LMS) and against their rivals GCR/LNER.
In January 1960, express passenger services from London to Sheffield and Manchester were discontinued, leaving only three "semi-fast" London-Nottingham trains per day. In March 1963 local trains on many parts of the route were cancelled and many rural local stations were closed. However, at this time it was still hoped that better use of the route could be made for parcels and goods traffic.
In the 1960s Beeching
era, Dr Beeching decided that the London to northern England route was already well served by other lines, to which most of the traffic on the GCR could be diverted. Closure came to be seen as inevitable.
The sections between Rugby and Aylesbury and between Nottingham and Sheffield were closed in 1966
, leaving only an unconnected stub between Rugby and Nottingham, on which a skeleton shuttle service operated. This last stretch was closed in May 1969
.
The closure of the GCR was the largest single closure of the Beeching era, and one of the most controversial. In a letter published in the Daily Telegraph on 28 September 1965, Denis Anthony Brian Butler, 9th Earl of Lanesborough, a peer and railway supporter, wrote:
, proposed to re-open the GCR largely as a freight link following completion of the Channel Tunnel
rail link. These proposals face financial, environmental and social difficulties and were rejected by Parliament twice.
The trackbed of the 40-mile stretch of main line between Calvert and Rugby, closed in 1966, is still intact except for a missing viaduct at Brackley. Proposals for its reopening as part of one scheme or another are made from time to time.
Frequent passenger services run over the joint line between London Marylebone and , and also between Marylebone
and High Wycombe
(continuing northwards to Princes Risborough
, Bicester North
, Banbury
and Birmingham Snow Hill). Currently, both these groups of services are operated by Chiltern Railways
. Strictly speaking, neither of these routes is specifically of GCR heritage, although the line between Neasden South Junction
and Northolt Junction
was built, maintained and run by the GCR and is still in use today for all Chiltern services.
A short extension of Chiltern passenger services to a new Aylesbury Vale Parkway railway station
on the Aylesbury-Bicester main road opened on 14 December 2008.
There are proposals to open the section from Aylesbury Parkway to Claydon Junction as part of the East West Rail Link scheme, which would see passenger services operating between London (Marylebone) and Milton Keynes
.
Currently, this stretch of route is used for freight consisting of binliner (containerised domestic waste) and spoil trains going to the Calvert Waste Facility (landfill
) site at Calvert
just south of Calvert station
. Five container trains each day use the site: four from Brentford
(known as the "Calvert Binliner") and one from Bath and Bristol
(known as the "Avon Binliner"). The containers, each of which contains 14 tons of waste, are unloaded at the transfer station onto lorries awaiting alongside which then transport the waste to the landfill site. The site, dating from 1977 and now one of the largest in the country, stretches to 106 hectares and partly reuses the clay pits dug out by Calvert Brickworks which closed in 1991.
In 1969, a group of enthusiasts volunteered to help preserve part of the Great Central. The group took over a stretch of the main line between Loughborough and the northern outskirts of Leicester, and in 1976 started operating as a heritage railway line known as the Great Central Steam Railway
. The heritage group remains active to this day. Additionally, a preserved single-track section under the auspices of the Nottingham Transport Heritage Centre at Ruddington is operated with occasional services run by the Great Central Railway (Nottingham). There are plans to relink this section to the adjacent mainline section.
Sections around Rotherham
are open for passenger and freight traffic, indeed a new station was built there in the 1980s using the Great Central lines which were closer to the town centre than the former Midland Railway
station. Commuter EMU trains run from Hadfield to Manchester
via Glossop
. These are modern trains using 25 kV overhead wires that were installed to replace the 1500 V system. Daily steel
trains run from Sheffield
to Deepcar where they feed the nearby Stocksbridge
Steelworks owned by Corus Group
.
that would re-use about 12 miles of the GCR route. The proposed line would parallel the current Aylesbury line
(former Met/GCR joint) corridor and then continue alongside the GCR line between Quainton Road and Calvert. From there it would follow the disused but still extant GCR trackbed via Finmere as far as Brackley before diverging on a new alignment towards Birmingham.
as part of the proposed East West Rail Link.
has a long-term plan to reopen the Great Central Main Line north of Aylesbury as far as Rugby and onward at a later stage to Leicester.
Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway
The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway was formed by amalgamation in 1847. The MS&LR changed its name to the Great Central Railway in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension.-Origin:...
(MS&LR), is a former railway line which opened in 1899
1899 in rail transport
- February events :* February 9 – Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway purchases the Minneapolis, New Ulm and Southern.- March events :* March 12 – Southern Railway in the United States inaugurates the Piedmont Limited passenger train service....
linking Sheffield with Marylebone Station
Marylebone station
Marylebone station , also known as London Marylebone, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. It stands midway between the mainline stations at Euston and Paddington, about 1 mile from each...
in London via Nottingham
Nottingham Victoria railway station
Nottingham Victoria railway station was a Great Central Railway and Great Northern Railway railway station in Nottingham, England. It was designed by the architect Albert Edward Lambert....
and Leicester
Leicester Central railway station
Leicester Central was a railway station in Leicester. It was situated to the west of the city centre, on Great Central Street which is today just off the inner ring road. It was closed in 1969.- Construction :...
.
The GCML was the last main line railway built in Britain during the Victorian period
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
, and it was not initially a financial success, only recovering under the leadership of Sam Fay
Sam Fay
Sir Sam Fay , born in Hamble-le-Rice, Hampshire, England, was a career railwayman who joined the London and South Western Railway as a clerk in 1872 and rose to become the last General Manager of the Great Central Railway after a successful stint in charge of the almost bankrupt Midland and South...
. Though initially planned largely with long-distance passenger services in mind, in practice the line's most important function became to carry goods traffic, notably coal.
In the 1960s, the line was viewed by Doctor Beeching
Richard Beeching
Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching , commonly known as Doctor Beeching, was chairman of British Railways and a physicist and engineer...
as an unnecessary duplication of other lines which served the same places, especially the Midland Main Line
Midland Main Line
The Midland Main Line is a major railway route in the United Kingdom, part of the British railway system.The present-day line links London St...
and to a lesser extent the West Coast Main Line
West Coast Main Line
The West Coast Main Line is the busiest mixed-traffic railway route in Britain, being the country's most important rail backbone in terms of population served. Fast, long-distance inter-city passenger services are provided between London, the West Midlands, the North West, North Wales and the...
. Most of the route was closed between 1966 and 1969 under the Beeching axe
Beeching Axe
The Beeching Axe or the Beeching Cuts are informal names for the British Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running British Railways, the nationalised railway system in the United Kingdom. The name is that of the main author of The Reshaping of British Railways, Dr Richard...
.
Route
The GCML was very much a strategic line in concept. It was not intended to duplicate the Midland line by serving a great many centres of population. Instead it was intended to link the MS&LR's system stretching across northern England directly to London at as high a speed as possible and with a minimum of stops and connections: thus much of its route ran through sparsely populated countryside.Starting at Annesley
Annesley
Annesley is a village and civil parish in the District of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, England, located between Hucknall and Kirkby-in-Ashfield. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 1,096. Nearby to the west is Annesley Woodhouse...
in Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...
, and running for 92 miles (147 km) in a relatively direct southward route, it left the crowded corridor through Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
(and Nottingham Victoria railway station
Nottingham Victoria railway station
Nottingham Victoria railway station was a Great Central Railway and Great Northern Railway railway station in Nottingham, England. It was designed by the architect Albert Edward Lambert....
), which was also used by the Midland and the London and North Western Railway
London and North Western Railway
The London and North Western Railway was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. It was created by the merger of three companies – the Grand Junction Railway, the London and Birmingham Railway and the Manchester and Birmingham Railway...
(LNWR), then struck off to its new railway station at Leicester Central
Leicester Central railway station
Leicester Central was a railway station in Leicester. It was situated to the west of the city centre, on Great Central Street which is today just off the inner ring road. It was closed in 1969.- Construction :...
, passing Loughborough
Loughborough
Loughborough is a town within the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England. It is the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and is home to Loughborough University...
en route, where it crossed the Midland main line. Four railway companies served Leicester: GCR, Midland, GNR, and LNWR. Avoiding Wigston, the GCR served the town of Lutterworth
Lutterworth
Lutterworth is a market town and civil parish in the Harborough district of Leicestershire, England. The town is located in southern Leicestershire, north of Rugby, in Warwickshire and south of Leicester. It had a population of 8,293 in the 2001 UK census....
(the only town on the GC not to be served by another railway company) before reaching the town of Rugby
Rugby, Warwickshire
Rugby is a market town in Warwickshire, England, located on the River Avon. The town has a population of 61,988 making it the second largest town in the county...
(at Rugby Central Station), where it crossed at right-angles over, and did not connect with, the West Coast Main Line
West Coast Main Line
The West Coast Main Line is the busiest mixed-traffic railway route in Britain, being the country's most important rail backbone in terms of population served. Fast, long-distance inter-city passenger services are provided between London, the West Midlands, the North West, North Wales and the...
.
It continued southwards to Woodford Halse
Woodford Halse
Woodford Halse is a village about south of Daventry in Northamptonshire. It is in the civil parish of Woodford cum Membris, which includes also village of Hinton and hamlet of West Farndon...
, where there was a connection with the East and West Junction Railway (later incorporated into the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway
Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway
The Stratford Upon Avon & Midland Junction Railway was a small independent railway company which ran a line across the empty, untouched centre of England. It visited the counties of Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and a little of Buckinghamshire, only existing as the SMJR from 1909 to...
), and slightly further south the GCR branch to the Great Western Railway
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...
station at Banbury
Banbury railway station
Banbury railway station serves the town of Banbury in Oxfordshire, England. The station is currently operated by Chiltern Railways, on the Chiltern Main Line, and has four platforms in use.-History:...
. From Woodford Halse the route continued in a roughly south-easterly direction via Brackley
Brackley railway station
- History :From 1899 until 1963, Brackley was served by two railway stations on different lines. Brackley Central - opened by the Great Central Railway - was the second, the Buckinghamshire Railway having already connected the town to the railway in 1850...
to Calvert
Calvert railway station
Calvert was a railway station at Calvert, Buckinghamshire on the former Great Central Main Line between Manchester Piccadilly and London Marylebone. The station was opened in 1899 and closed in 1964...
and Quainton Road
Quainton Road railway station
Quainton Road railway station was opened in 1868 in undeveloped countryside near Quainton, Buckinghamshire, from London. Built by the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, it was the result of pressure from the 3rd Duke of Buckingham to route the railway near his home at Wotton House and to open a...
, where Great Central trains joined the Metropolitan
Metropolitan railway
Metropolitan Railway can refer to:* Metropolitan line, part of the London Underground* Metropolitan Railway, the first underground railway to be built in London...
(later joint Metropolitan and Great Central) route via Aylesbury
Aylesbury railway station
Aylesbury railway station is a railway station in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England and is a major stop on the London to Aylesbury Line from Marylebone station via Amersham. It is 37.75 miles from Aylesbury Station to Marylebone Station...
into London.
Partly because of disagreements with the Metropolitan Railway
Metropolitan railway
Metropolitan Railway can refer to:* Metropolitan line, part of the London Underground* Metropolitan Railway, the first underground railway to be built in London...
(MetR) over use of their tracks at the southern end of the route, the company built the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway
Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway
The Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway was a joint venture supported by the Great Western Railway and Great Central Railway and run by the Great Western and Great Central Joint Committee. The original arrangement was agreed between the two companies in September 1898...
joint line (1906) from Grendon Underwood
Grendon Underwood
Grendon Underwood is a village and civil parish in Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the west of the county, close to the boundary with Oxfordshire and near the Roman road Akeman Street....
to Ashendon Junction
Ashendon Junction
Ashendon Junction in Buckinghamshire, England, was a major mainline railway junction where, from July 1910, the Great Western Railway's London-Birmingham direct route diverged from the Great Central Railway's main London-Sheffield route....
, by-passing the greater part of the MetR's tracks.
Apart from a small freight branch to Gotham
Gotham, Nottinghamshire
Gotham is a village in Nottinghamshire, England, south of Nottingham and north-east of Kegworth. Gotham has a population of about 1,600. It is administered as part of the Rushcliffe district of Nottingham, and has a parish council....
between Nottingham and Loughborough, and the "Alternative Route
Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway
The Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway was a joint venture supported by the Great Western Railway and Great Central Railway and run by the Great Western and Great Central Joint Committee. The original arrangement was agreed between the two companies in September 1898...
" link added later (1906), these were the only branch lines from the London extension. Although the line crossed several other railways, there were few physical connections.
North of Sheffield, express trains on the London extension made use of the pre-existing MS&LR trans-Pennine
Pennines
The Pennines are a low-rising mountain range, separating the North West of England from Yorkshire and the North East.Often described as the "backbone of England", they form a more-or-less continuous range stretching from the Peak District in Derbyshire, around the northern and eastern edges of...
main line, the Woodhead Line
Woodhead Line
The Woodhead Line was a railway line linking Sheffield, Penistone and Manchester in the north of England. A key feature of the route is the passage under the high moorlands of the northern Peak District through the Woodhead Tunnels...
(now also closed) to give access to Manchester.
Reasons for construction
In 1864 Sir Edward WatkinEdward Watkin
Sir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet was an English railway chairman and politician.- Biography :Watkin was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of a wealthy cotton merchant, Absalom Watkin who was noted for his involvement in the Anti-corn Law League.After a private education, he returned to...
took over directorship of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway. He had grand ambitions for the company: he had plans to transform it from a provincial middle-of-the-road railway company into a major national player. Watkin was a visionary who wanted to build a new railway line that would not only link his network to London, but which one day would be expanded and link to a future Channel Tunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...
(although this ultimate ambition was never realised). He grew tired of handing over potentially lucrative London-bound traffic to rivals, and, after several attempts to co-build a line to London with other companies, decided that the MS&LR needed to create its own route to the capital. At the time many people questioned the wisdom of building the line, as all the significant population centres which the line traversed were already served by other companies. In 1897 The MS&LR changed its name to the grander sounding Great Central Railway
Great Central Railway
The Great Central Railway was a railway company in England which came into being when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension . On 1 January 1923, it was grouped into the London and North Eastern...
to reflect its new-found national ambitions.
Construction of the line
In the 1890s the MS&LR set about building its own line, having received Parliamentary approval on 28 March 1893, for the London Extension. Building work started in 1895: the line opened for passenger traffic on 15 March 1899, and for goods traffic on 11 April 1899. The London extension was the last mainline railway line to be built in Britain until section one of High Speed 1 opened in 2003. It was also the shortest-lived intercity railway line. The new line, 92 miles (147 km) in length, was built from AnnesleyAnnesley
Annesley is a village and civil parish in the District of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, England, located between Hucknall and Kirkby-in-Ashfield. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 1,096. Nearby to the west is Annesley Woodhouse...
in Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...
to join the existing Metropolitan Railway
Metropolitan railway
Metropolitan Railway can refer to:* Metropolitan line, part of the London Underground* Metropolitan Railway, the first underground railway to be built in London...
(MetR) Extension at Quainton Road where the line became joint MetR/GCR owned and returned to GCR metals at Harrow
Harrow, London
Harrow is an area in the London Borough of Harrow, northwest London, United Kingdom. It is a suburban area and is situated 12.2 miles northwest of Charing Cross...
for the final section to Marylebone.
Features of the line were:
- Unlike other railway lines in Britain, the line was built to an expanded continental loading gaugeLoading gaugeA loading gauge defines the maximum height and width for railway vehicles and their loads to ensure safe passage through bridges, tunnels and other structures...
which meant it could accommodate larger sized continental trains, in anticipation of traffic to a future Channel Tunnel. There is, however, a popular myth that the GCR was built to the standard continental Berne loading gaugeBerne gaugeThe Berne Gauge or Berne Convention Gauge is an informal but widely-used term for the railway loading gauge considered the standard gauge in continental Europe. The term arises from the international railway conference held and consequent convention signed in Berne, Switzerland in 1912...
- impossible, since the Berne gauge convention was not held until 1912. - The line was engineered to very high standards: a ruling gradient of 1 in 176 (5.7 ‰) (exceeded in only a few locations on the London extension) was employed; curves of a minimum radius of 1 mile (except in city areas) were used; and there was only one level crossing between Sheffield Victoria and London Marylebone (at , still in use).
- The standardised design of stations, almost all of which were built to an "island platformIsland platformAn island platform is a station layout arrangement where a single platform is positioned between two tracks within a railway station, tram stop or transitway interchange...
" design with one platform between the two tracks instead of two at each side. This was so that the tracks only needed to be moved further away from the platform if continental trains were to traverse the line, rather than wholesale redesign of stations. It would also aid any future plans to add extra tracks (as was done in several locations).
The cost of building the line was huge and overran its original budget of £3.5 million by a factor of three. In order to get permission to build the line the Company had to agree to put parts of the line through tunnels to avoid upsetting the local land owners, this was especially true of Catesby Tunnel in Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...
and St. John's Wood Tunnel in London. It was so expensive that the original plans for their London terminus at Marylebone had to be scaled back drastically.
Traffic on the London extension
The London Extension's main competitor was the Midland RailwayMidland Railway
The Midland Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844 to 1922, when it became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway....
which had served the route between London, the East Midlands and Sheffield since the 1860s on a different route
Midland Main Line
The Midland Main Line is a major railway route in the United Kingdom, part of the British railway system.The present-day line links London St...
. Traffic was slow to establish itself on the new line, passenger traffic especially so. Enticing customers away from the established lines into London was more difficult than the GCR's builders had hoped. However, there was some success in appealing to higher-class 'business' travellers in providing high-speed luxurious trains. These were in a way the first long-distance commuter trains. Passenger traffic was never heavy throughout the line's existence, but freight traffic grew healthily and became the lifeblood of the line, the staples being coal, iron ore, and fish and banana trains.
Nevertheless, in the late-1930s heyday of fast long-distance passenger steam trains, there were six crack expresses a day from Marylebone to Sheffield, calling at Leicester and Nottingham, and going forward to Manchester. Some of these achieved a London-Sheffied timing of 3 hours and 6 minutes in 1939, making them fully competitive with the rival Midland service out of St Pancras as far as journey time was concerned.
The First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and the hostile European political climate which followed, ended any possibility of a Channel Tunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...
being constructed within the GCR's lifetime. The various Channel Tunnel schemes, including one in 1883 which prompted Sir Edward Watkin
Edward Watkin
Sir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet was an English railway chairman and politician.- Biography :Watkin was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of a wealthy cotton merchant, Absalom Watkin who was noted for his involvement in the Anti-corn Law League.After a private education, he returned to...
and the MS&LR to construct the London extension, foundered on the fear of French invasion. Further work in the 1920s was again vetoed for similar reasons. The extension was therefore seen has having lost some of its original raison d'etre.
In the 1923 Grouping the Great Central Railway was merged into the London and North Eastern Railway
London and North Eastern Railway
The London and North Eastern Railway was the second-largest of the "Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain...
, which in 1948 was nationalised
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
along with the rest of Britain's railway network.
Rundown and closure
From the late 1950s onwards the freight traffic upon which the line relied started to decline, and the GCR route was largely neglected as other railway lines were thought to be more important. It was designated a duplicate of the Midland Main LineMidland Main Line
The Midland Main Line is a major railway route in the United Kingdom, part of the British railway system.The present-day line links London St...
and in 1958 transferred from the management of the Eastern Region
Eastern Region of British Railways
The Eastern Region was a region of British Railways from 1948. The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s and was wound up at the end of 1992...
to the London Midland Region, whose management still had loyalties to former companies (Midland/LMS) and against their rivals GCR/LNER.
In January 1960, express passenger services from London to Sheffield and Manchester were discontinued, leaving only three "semi-fast" London-Nottingham trains per day. In March 1963 local trains on many parts of the route were cancelled and many rural local stations were closed. However, at this time it was still hoped that better use of the route could be made for parcels and goods traffic.
In the 1960s Beeching
Beeching Axe
The Beeching Axe or the Beeching Cuts are informal names for the British Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running British Railways, the nationalised railway system in the United Kingdom. The name is that of the main author of The Reshaping of British Railways, Dr Richard...
era, Dr Beeching decided that the London to northern England route was already well served by other lines, to which most of the traffic on the GCR could be diverted. Closure came to be seen as inevitable.
1966 in rail transport
-January events:* January - GM introduces the EMD SD40.* January - GE introduces the GE U28B.* January 3 - British Rail begins full electric passenger services over the West Coast Main Line from Euston to Manchester and Liverpool with 100 mph operation from London to Rugby...
, leaving only an unconnected stub between Rugby and Nottingham, on which a skeleton shuttle service operated. This last stretch was closed in May 1969
1969 in rail transport
-January events:* January – The PATCO Hi-Speedline, in southeastern Pennsylvania, opens.* January 5 – Last trains over the Waverley Route from Edinburgh in Scotland to Carlisle in England.- February events :...
.
The closure of the GCR was the largest single closure of the Beeching era, and one of the most controversial. In a letter published in the Daily Telegraph on 28 September 1965, Denis Anthony Brian Butler, 9th Earl of Lanesborough, a peer and railway supporter, wrote:
Recent history
A new company founded in 1991, Central Railway LtdCentral Railway (UK)
Central Railway is a British company which proposes to build a new intermodal freight railway line, with a generous loading gauge, connecting the Channel Tunnel with the north of England, using much of the trackbed of the former Great Central Railway....
, proposed to re-open the GCR largely as a freight link following completion of the Channel Tunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...
rail link. These proposals face financial, environmental and social difficulties and were rejected by Parliament twice.
Remaining infrastructure
Frequent passenger services run over the joint line between London Marylebone and , and also between Marylebone
Marylebone
Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London, located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone or Mary-le-bone....
and High Wycombe
High Wycombe
High Wycombe , commonly known as Wycombe and formally called Chepping Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe until 1946,is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is west-north-west of Charing Cross in London; this figure is engraved on the Corn Market building in the centre of the town...
(continuing northwards to Princes Risborough
Princes Risborough
Princes Risborough is a small town in Buckinghamshire, England, about 9 miles south of Aylesbury and 8 miles north west of High Wycombe. Bledlow lies to the west and Monks Risborough to the east. It lies at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, at the north end of a gap or pass through the Chilterns,...
, Bicester North
Bicester
Bicester is a town and civil parish in the Cherwell district of northeastern Oxfordshire in England.This historic market centre is one of the fastest growing towns in Oxfordshire Development has been favoured by its proximity to junction 9 of the M40 motorway linking it to London, Birmingham and...
, Banbury
Banbury
Banbury is a market town and civil parish on the River Cherwell in the Cherwell District of Oxfordshire. It is northwest of London, southeast of Birmingham, south of Coventry and north northwest of the county town of Oxford...
and Birmingham Snow Hill). Currently, both these groups of services are operated by Chiltern Railways
Chiltern Railways
Chiltern Railways is a British train operating company. It was set up at the privatisation of British Rail in 1996, and operates local passenger trains from Marylebone station in London to Aylesbury and main-line trains on the Chiltern Main Line to Birmingham Snow Hill with its associated branches...
. Strictly speaking, neither of these routes is specifically of GCR heritage, although the line between Neasden South Junction
Neasden Junction
Neasden Junction is a railway junction in Neasden, London. This is where the mainline from Marylebone diverges into two main lines: the Chiltern Main Line, which runs towards and Birmingham, and the London to Aylesbury Line....
and Northolt Junction
South Ruislip station
South Ruislip is a station served by London Underground and Chiltern Railways in South Ruislip in west London. The station is owned, managed and staffed by London Underground. The station is in Travelcard Zone 5.-History:...
was built, maintained and run by the GCR and is still in use today for all Chiltern services.
A short extension of Chiltern passenger services to a new Aylesbury Vale Parkway railway station
Aylesbury Vale Parkway railway station
Aylesbury Vale Parkway railway station is a railway station serving villages to the northwest of Aylesbury. It will also serve the Berryfields and Weedon Hill housing developments to the north of the town when these are completed. The station is served by Chiltern Railways and opened on 14 December...
on the Aylesbury-Bicester main road opened on 14 December 2008.
There are proposals to open the section from Aylesbury Parkway to Claydon Junction as part of the East West Rail Link scheme, which would see passenger services operating between London (Marylebone) and Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes Central railway station
Milton Keynes Central railway station serves Central Milton Keynes and the surrounding area of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. The station is located on the West Coast Main Line between the stations of Bletchley and Wolverton, both of which are also within Milton Keynes. The station is served by...
.
Currently, this stretch of route is used for freight consisting of binliner (containerised domestic waste) and spoil trains going to the Calvert Waste Facility (landfill
Landfill
A landfill site , is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment...
) site at Calvert
Calvert, Buckinghamshire
Calvert is a village in Buckinghamshire, England, near the village of Steeple Claydon.Originally named after a wealthy local family, the village was founded as a hamlet in the Victorian era to house workers for the brick works that were constructed in the area. The works have since been closed and...
just south of Calvert station
Calvert railway station
Calvert was a railway station at Calvert, Buckinghamshire on the former Great Central Main Line between Manchester Piccadilly and London Marylebone. The station was opened in 1899 and closed in 1964...
. Five container trains each day use the site: four from Brentford
Brentford
Brentford is a suburban town in west London, England, and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It is located at the confluence of the River Thames and the River Brent, west-southwest of Charing Cross. Its former ceremonial county was Middlesex.-Toponymy:...
(known as the "Calvert Binliner") and one from Bath and Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
(known as the "Avon Binliner"). The containers, each of which contains 14 tons of waste, are unloaded at the transfer station onto lorries awaiting alongside which then transport the waste to the landfill site. The site, dating from 1977 and now one of the largest in the country, stretches to 106 hectares and partly reuses the clay pits dug out by Calvert Brickworks which closed in 1991.
In 1969, a group of enthusiasts volunteered to help preserve part of the Great Central. The group took over a stretch of the main line between Loughborough and the northern outskirts of Leicester, and in 1976 started operating as a heritage railway line known as the Great Central Steam Railway
Great Central Railway (preserved)
The Great Central Railway is a heritage railway split into two adjacent sections, one in Leicestershire and the other Nottinghamshire.The Leicestershire section is currently Britain's only double track mainline heritage railway, with of working double track, period signalling, locomotives and...
. The heritage group remains active to this day. Additionally, a preserved single-track section under the auspices of the Nottingham Transport Heritage Centre at Ruddington is operated with occasional services run by the Great Central Railway (Nottingham). There are plans to relink this section to the adjacent mainline section.
Sections around Rotherham
Rotherham
Rotherham is a town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Don, at its confluence with the River Rother, between Sheffield and Doncaster. Rotherham, at from Sheffield City Centre, is surrounded by several smaller settlements, which together form the wider Metropolitan Borough of...
are open for passenger and freight traffic, indeed a new station was built there in the 1980s using the Great Central lines which were closer to the town centre than the former Midland Railway
Midland Railway
The Midland Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844 to 1922, when it became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway....
station. Commuter EMU trains run from Hadfield to Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
via Glossop
Glossop
Glossop is a market town within the Borough of High Peak in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the Glossop Brook, a tributary of the River Etherow, about east of the city of Manchester, west of the city of Sheffield. Glossop is situated near Derbyshire's county borders with Cheshire, Greater...
. These are modern trains using 25 kV overhead wires that were installed to replace the 1500 V system. Daily steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
trains run from Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
to Deepcar where they feed the nearby Stocksbridge
Stocksbridge
Stocksbridge is a small town and civil parish in the City of Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, England, with a population of 13,663. It lies just to the east of the Peak District....
Steelworks owned by Corus Group
Corus Group
Tata Steel Europe is a multinational steel-making company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the second-largest steel-maker in Europe and is a subsidiary of Tata Steel of India, one of the ten largest steel producers in the world.Corus Group was formed through the merger of Koninklijke...
.
High Speed 2
In March 2010 the government announced plans for a future high-speed railway between London and BirminghamBirmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
that would re-use about 12 miles of the GCR route. The proposed line would parallel the current Aylesbury line
London to Aylesbury Line
The London to Aylesbury Line is the main railway line between London and Aylesbury, going via the Chiltern Hills; it is operated by Chiltern Railways. The line includes the only route where National Rail trains use track that is utilized by London Underground services...
(former Met/GCR joint) corridor and then continue alongside the GCR line between Quainton Road and Calvert. From there it would follow the disused but still extant GCR trackbed via Finmere as far as Brackley before diverging on a new alignment towards Birmingham.
East West Rail Link
There is an unfunded proposal to re-open the section of track from Aylesbury Parkway to a potentially re-opened Varsity LineVarsity Line
The Varsity Line is an informal name for the railway route that formerly linked the English university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, operated successively by the London and North Western Railway, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, and British Railways...
as part of the proposed East West Rail Link.
Aylesbury to Rugby
Chiltern RailwaysChiltern Railways
Chiltern Railways is a British train operating company. It was set up at the privatisation of British Rail in 1996, and operates local passenger trains from Marylebone station in London to Aylesbury and main-line trains on the Chiltern Main Line to Birmingham Snow Hill with its associated branches...
has a long-term plan to reopen the Great Central Main Line north of Aylesbury as far as Rugby and onward at a later stage to Leicester.
Sources
- Dow, George (1962). Great Central, Vol 2: Domination of Watkin, 1864-1899. London: Ian Allan.
- Healy, John M.C. (1987). Echoes of the Great Central. Greenwich Editions. ISBN 0-86288-076-9