GREAT
CENTRAL RAILWAY
HISTORY
The Great Central Railway had its beginnings in a much smaller railway, the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, which was incorporated in 1846 from three yet smaller companies. The MS&LR would have remained a modest east-west provincial line had it not been for Edward Watkin, who became its General Manager in 1854 and Chairman in 1864. Watkin was a man of great foresight, whose ambition was to link by rail the industrial centres of Manchester and Sheffield with the expanding markets of Continental Europe. This was not as impossible as it sounds, as he proposed to build a Channel Tunnel, and became not only Chairman of the South Eastern Railway connecting London with Dover, but also the Metropolitan Railway, then extending its suburban line north-westwards from London through Rickmansworth.
Watkin worked for years trying to achieve his dream, haggling with other companies to provide the links between the MS&L lines and London. But as the working arrangements were always to his advantage, the other companies would have none of it, and Watkin was driven to constructing his own line southward from Sheffield to link up with the Metropolitan. The "London Extension", as it was known, branched out from the already established MS&L system. It was not opened until 1899, well after most other lines were built; two years earlier, the directors changed the company name to Great Central Railway, to befit its new trunk line status. However, Watkin retired through ill health before the rest of his ambition could be fulfilled.
The cost of construction was high - £11.5 million as opposed to a estimated £6 million - and the company never paid a normal dividend afterwards, but it certainly lived up to its slogan "Rapid Travel in Luxury". It became noted for its handsome locomotives and trains, and its provision of cross-country through trains in conjunction with other railways. In the company grouping of 1923 it became part of the London & North Eastern Railway, and on nationalisation in 1948 part of British Railways (Eastern Region).
Private motor competition began to have a serious effect on the railways in the 1950s and in a climate of reduction of services, the "London Extension" was a natural target as it cut across new administrative boundaries, and all its major centres were served by other lines. The run-down began in 1960, following transfer to the Midland region, with the withdrawal of the daytime Manchester-London expresses. Long stretches were closed altogether in 1966, and the remaining Nottingham-Rugby section in 1969.
Many railway enthusiasts lamented this closure, the reasons for which were far from universally accepted. However it did provide an opportunity for a major new step in railway preservation. Today's Great Central Railway represents a wider spectrum, in terms of preservation, than the original Great Central, but many reminders of the old company are to be found along the line, and in the small exhibits museum at Loughborough.
Although the Great Central never paid a dividend, the competitive stimulus it provided by its enterprise did much to improve facilities in the golden age of railways.
