Great Central Main Line

Great Central Main Line
GCML and connecting lines
Route length:	148 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Dual track :	whole route
Legend ↑ Derbyshire Lines (MS&LR) → Robin Hood Line Hollin Well and Annesley Annesley South ← ↓ Robin Hood Line Hucknall Hucknall Central Bulwell Hall Bulwell Common ↔ Friargate Line New Basford Carrington Nottingham Victoria → Friargate Line ↔ Midland Main Line Arkwright Street River Trent Ruddington Nottingham Transport Heritage Center Rushcliffe stop East Leake ↔ Midland Main Line Loughborough Central Quorn and Woodhouse → Mountsorrel Railway Rothley Belgrave and Birstall Leicester North Leicester Central Leicester freight yard ↔ Leicester – Burton upon Trent ↔ Birmingham – Peterborough M1 motorway Whetstone ↔ Midland Counties Railway Ashby Magna Lutterworth ↔ West Coast Main Line Rugby Central Braunston and Willoughby ↔ Weedon – Marton Junction Catesby Tunnel Charwelton Woodford jibe ↔ East and West Junction Railway Eydon Road stop Chalcombe Road stop ↕ Chiltern Main Line Culworth ↔ Towcester – Banbury Helmdon Brackley Central ↔ Banbury – Verney Junction Finmere ↔ Varsity Line (freight transport) Calvert Grendon Underwood junction ← after Brill Quainton Road Waddesdon Manor Aylesbury Vale Aylesbury ← after Princes Risborough Stoke Mandeville Wendover Great Missenden Amersham Chalfont & Latimer Chorleywood Rickmansworth Rickmansworth Church Street → Watford and Rickmansworth Railway Harrow-on-the-Hill ↔ West Coast Main Line / Watford DC Line ← Chiltern Main Line ↔ Dudding Hill Line ↔ North London Line → Metropolitan Line Hampstead Tunnel ↔ West Coast Main Line / Watford DC Line St. John's Wood Tunnel Lord's tunnel Marylebone freight yard London Marylebone

The Great Central Main Line (GCML), also known as the London Extension , is a former railway line in Great Britain . It opened in 1899 and ran from Sheffield via Nottingham and Leicester to Marylebone Station in London . The GCML was the main line of the Great Central Railway (GCR) and the last main line built in the Victorian era . It goes back to an idea by Edward Watkin , who wanted to connect the route network of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway with London.

Watkin sought a connection with the Metropolitan Railway, also controlled by him, and the South Eastern Railway , which should have led to a tunnel under the English Channel . This would have created a coherent rail network between the Midlands and Paris in the final stage . These plans quickly came to nothing; but the GCML was initially unsuccessful and the earnings situation improved only gradually. Although the GCML was primarily built for the needs of long-distance express trains, freight transport (especially coal deliveries) became the most important source of income.

Most of the route fell victim to the so-called Beeching ax between 1966 and 1969 and was shut down. A short section between Leicester and Loughborough is used by a museum railway.

route

Freight train at Braunston and Willoughby Station (1958)

The GCML was created out of business strategy considerations. In contrast to the Midland Main Line , it was not intended to connect numerous large population centers with one another, but rather connect the MS&LR route network in the Midlands directly to London, at the highest possible speed and with a minimum of stops and connections. For this reason, the route ran through relatively sparsely populated rural areas.

The northern terminus of the GCML was in Annesley in the county of Nottinghamshire . It then led directly south over a length of 148 km via Nottingham , Loughborough and Leicester . Past Wigston , it served Lutterworth , the only town that had not previously been served by another railway line. In rugby it crossed the West Coast Main Line of the London and North Western Railway , but was not connected to it.

At Woodford Halse there was a connection to the East and West Junction Railway (later merged into the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway ), a little south of it with a GCR branch line to the Great Western Railway at Banbury . From Woodford Halse the line led in a south-easterly direction via Brackley to Quainton Road , where the line met the Metropolitan Railway to Aylesbury and London (operated by the joint venture Metropolitan and Great Central Joint Railway ).

Due to disagreements with the Metropolitan Railway over shared use of their tracks at the southern end of the GCML, the GCR built the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway from Grendon Underwood to Ashendon in 1906, so the Metropolitan Railway network could be avoided for the most part. There was also a branch line for freight to Gotham between Nottingham and Loughborough .

North of Sheffield, GCR express trains used the existing main line of the MS&LR through the Pennines , the Woodhead Line (also closed today ) to gain access to Manchester London Road (now Manchester Piccadilly ).

history

Reasons to build

In 1864 Edward Watkin took over the chairmanship of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR). He had big plans and wanted to develop this medium-sized company into a railway company of national importance. Watkin no longer wanted to accept that the MS&LR had to leave the lucrative long-distance traffic to London to the competition. After several unsuccessful attempts in the 1870s to build a line to London together with other companies, he came to the conclusion that the MS&LR had to do this alone. The construction of the GCML should allow Watkins companies to offer their own direct express trains to London independently of and in competition with rival companies. At the time, many were skeptical about the project, as all of the major metropolitan areas along the route had already been developed by other railway companies. Watkin argued that the growth in traffic would justify building the route.

Watkin didn't want to just run an independent main line to London. He even strove to connect the route network he controlled with France . For this purpose he had founded the Submarine Railway Company in 1872 , which wanted to build a tunnel under the English Channel and from 1881 carried out test bores in Dover and Sangatte . The project had to be abandoned in May due to great political pressure. In particular, General Garnet Wolseley saw the tunnel as a possible invasion route for French troops and therefore viewed it as a threat to national security. The Great Central Main Line was planned with the clearance profile customary on mainland Europe , which is more generous than the British standard. Had the Channel Tunnel been built, ultimately only the companies controlled by Watkin would have been able to offer continuous trains to Paris .

Construction work

On March 28, 1893, the MS&LR received approval from the British Parliament to build the line. The law required for this almost never came through due to opposition from the Marylebone Cricket Club in London. Finally, it was agreed to cross the site in a tunnel. Construction work began in November 1894. The line was opened on March 15, 1899 for passenger traffic, and on April 11, 1899 for goods traffic. Shortly before the opening, the MS&LR changed its name to the more pompous sounding Great Central Railway to underline its national ambitions.

The London Extension was the last main line to be built in Great Britain until the opening of the first section of High Speed ​​One in 2003. The new 148 km stretch ran from Annesley in Nottinghamshire to Quainton Road in Buckinghamshire . From there, the trains used the existing tracks of the Metropolitan Railway to Harrow and then again their own tracks to Marylebone station .

Belgrave and Birstall station with the typical central platform

In addition to the route itself, three large light rail stations ( Nottingham Victoria, Leicester Central and Marylebone) and several smaller stations were built. Numerous viaducts had to be built, including the Brackley Viaduct with 21 arches, one over the River Soar , two over the Swithland Reservoir in Leicestershire and one over the River Trent near Nottingham. Several tunnels had to be dug, the longest of them being the Catesby Tunnel at 2,722 meters. Much of the route had been laid on embankments or in cuts. The construction cost was originally estimated at £ 3.1 million , but ended up being £ 11.5 million, almost four times as much.

The line had a high standard: maximum gradient of 5.7 ‰, minimum radius of one mile (except in inner-city areas), only one level crossing at the same level. The stations were built according to a uniform scheme and almost all had an island platform between the two tracks.

Traffic on the GCML

London – Manchester express train at Marylebone Station (May 1956)

The GCR's main competitor was the Midland Railway , which opened up the corridor between London, the East Midlands and Sheffield with the Midland Main Line since the 1860s . Traffic flows changed slowly, especially in passenger traffic. Attracting passengers from the established lines to London proved to be more difficult than the GCR had hoped. However, she has had some success in targeting business travelers with luxuriously appointed high-speed trains. The GCR also offered east-west cross connections and benefited from connections to crossing routes.

In the 1930s, the heyday of long-distance steam trains, there were six daily express trains between Marylebone and Sheffield (with stops in Leicester and Nottingham), which then continued to Manchester. In 1939 the shortest journey time from London to Sheffield was 3 hours 6 minutes, making the GCR competitive with the trains of the rival Midland (from St Pancras ).

Freight traffic grew steadily and became the main source of income for the route. Above all coal, iron ore, steel, fish and fruit were transported. The connection with the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway at Woodford Halse proved to be strategically important for freight traffic. Another focus of freight was Annesley.

Decline and shutdown

The First World War and the tense political climate that followed in Europe destroyed any possibility of building an English Channel tunnel. Timid attempts to revive Watkins' vision came to a quick end in the 1920s. With the entry into force of the Railways Act 1921 in 1923, the GCR became part of the London and North Eastern Railway , which in turn was nationalized in 1948. The GCML flourished in the first few years after nationalization. However, from the late 1950s, the freight traffic, on which the route was mainly based, began to decline and maintenance was increasingly neglected as other routes were classified as more important.

The remnant of the former Rugby Central station in 2005

In January 1960, British Rail stopped express train services from London to Sheffield and Manchester, leaving only three express trains a day between London and Nottingham. In May 1963, regional traffic was discontinued on large parts of the route and numerous rural train stations were closed. But there was still hope that the route could be upgraded through increased mail and freight traffic.

As part of his research into rationalizing the British railways, Richard Beeching found the GCML to be a largely redundant alternative to other routes that served the same cities, particularly the Midland Main Line and, to a lesser extent, the West Coast Main Line. The sections between Rugby and Aylesbury and between Nottingham and Sheffield were closed in 1966. This left only an unconnected remnant between Rugby and Nottingham, with a minimal range of shuttle trains. This section also fell victim to the so-called Beeching ax in May 1969 .

A railway company called Central Railway, founded in 1991, suggested reopening the GCML for freight traffic after the Eurotunnel went into operation . This proposal faced financial, environmental and social difficulties and was rejected twice by Parliament.

Infrastructure preserved

The track bed of the 64 km long section between Calvert and Rugby, which was closed in 1966, is still intact, with the exception of the missing viaducts at Brackley and Willoughby. Occasionally there are suggestions to reopen this section in one form or another.

Today there is only regular passenger service on the section between Marylebone and Aylesbury , which was once operated by the Metropolitan and Great Central Joint Railway , a joint venture with the Metropolitan Railway . On the other hand, passenger trains no longer run on the actual GCML. On December 14, 2008, a short section between Aylesbury and the newly constructed terminus Aylesbury Vale Parkway was put into operation. The UK government made funds available in November 2011 to reopen the sections between Bicester and Bletchley and between Aylesbury Vale Parkway and Claydon Junction as part of the East West Rail Link project . This would make it possible to run passenger trains from Reading via Oxford to Milton Keynes and from London-Marylebone via Aylesbury to Milton Keynes.

This section of the route is currently used by freight trains transporting household waste and excavated material to a landfill immediately south of Calvert station. Five container trains arrive there every day; four from Brentford and one from Bath and Bristol . The containers are reloaded onto trucks waiting there, which take the material to the landfill. Opened in 1977, the landfill is one of the largest in the country and covers an area of ​​106 hectares on the site of a former clay pit that was used by the Calvert brickworks until 1991.

In 1969 a group of enthusiasts volunteered to receive part of the GCML. She took over the section between Loughborough and the northern districts of Leicester. Since 1976 she has been operating a museum railway there, the Great Central Steam Railway . In addition, the Great Central Railway (Nottingham) occasionally runs a repaired, single-track section near Ruddington with nostalgic trains , under the auspices of the Nottingham Transport Heritage Center. There are plans to connect this section with the other heritage railway at Loughborough.

Planning

In March 2010, the government announced plans to build a high-speed line called High Speed ​​2 between London and Birmingham that would reuse approximately 19 km of the GCML line. The proposed route would run parallel to the corridor of the existing London – Aylesbury railway and then follow the GCML section between Quainton Road and Calvert. From there it would roughly follow the disused, but still existing track bed of the GCML to Mixbury, where it would turn onto a completely new route in the direction of Birmingham. Kelvin Hopkins, a Labor Party MP, proposed in 2013 that the GCML should reopen in full; compared to High Speed ​​2, this variant is significantly cheaper.

literature

• George Dow: Great Central. 2: Domination of Watkin, 1864-1899 . Ian Allan Publishing, Shepperton 1962, OCLC 655514941 .
• John Healy: Echoes of the Great Central . Greenwich Editions, London 1987, ISBN 0-86288-076-9 .

Web links

• Railway Archive: The Last Main Line (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Healey: Echoes of the Great Central. Pp. 24-25.
2. ^ ^{A b} Healey: Echoes of the Great Central. P. 27.
3. ^ Christian Wolmar : The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground was built and how it changed the city forever . Atlantic Books, London 2004, ISBN 1-84354-023-1 , pp. 94-95 .
4. ↑ David Brandon, Alan Brooke: Shadows in the steam: The haunted railways of Britain . History Press, Stroud 2010, ISBN 978-0-7524-6230-1 , pp. 49-50 .
5. ^ Healey: Echoes of the Great Central. Pp. 54-55.
6. ^ Healey: Echoes of the Great Central. Pp. 24-53.
7. ^ Healey: Echoes of the Great Central. Pp. 78-86.
8. ^ Cook''s Continental Timetable , August 1939, pp. 90, 108.
9. ^ Healey: Echoes of the Great Central. Pp. 90-105.
10. ^ The Great Central. In: Trains Illustrated, February 1960, p. 68.
11. ↑ Arryn Buggins: Bid To Reopen Central Railway To Passengers. Coventry and Warwickshire News, August 19, 2000, accessed April 6, 2016 . 
12. ↑ Bid To Reopen Central Railway To Passengers. The Bucks Herald, April 14, 2009, accessed April 6, 2016 . 
13. ↑ Autumn Statement backs investment in East West Rail Consortium. East West Rail, 2011, accessed April 6, 2016 . 
14. ^ Waste transfer station, Calvert Landfill Site, Calvert. geograph.org.uk, accessed on April 6, 2016 . 
15. ^ Calvert Landfill Site. geograph.org.uk, accessed on April 6, 2016 . 
16. ^ Ellie Cullen: Full steam ahead for £ 1million project to link Nottingham and Loughborough by steam train. (No longer available online.) Nottingham Post, January 11, 2015, archived from the original on April 6, 2016 ; accessed on April 6, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
17. ↑ Tim Ross, Andrew Gilligan: HS2: Labor to examine cheaper rival plan. The Daily Telegraph , October 27, 2013, accessed April 6, 2016 .