Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway

Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway network, wall mosaic in Manchester Victoria station

The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) was a British railroad company that existed from 1847 to 1921 . It was created through the merger of several companies, of which the Manchester and Leeds Railway was the largest. The company was the only one of its time whose traffic flow was from east to west and vice versa. The L&YR owned 1,650 locomotives and their stations were no more than five miles apart.

On January 1, 1922, the L&YR merged with the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). The chief executive officer, secretaries and chief mechanical engineer in the new company were mainly staffed by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. A year later, after the Railways Act 1921 came into force, the LNWR became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway .

The railway lines

The route network consisted of several sub-areas and alternative route sections, so that one could not clearly say which was the main route of the L&YR. The routes have been divided into three areas:

Western Division
- from Manchester to Blackpool and Fleetwood
- from Manchester to Bolton , Wigan , Southport and Liverpool ; and from Manchester directly to Liverpool

East Lancashire or Central Division
- from Manchester to Oldham , Bury , Rochdale , Todmorden , Accrington , Barnsley and Colne . This route also included a connection to the regular service to London .

Eastern Division
- from Todmorden to Halifax , Bradford , Leeds , Huddersfield , Wakefield , Normanton (West Yorkshire) , Goole and Doncaster

While there were different routes between the Central and Western Divisions, only one route existed between the Eastern and Central Divisions. Because of this, some routes crossed the Pennines between Lancashire and Yorkshire .

The locomotives

The locomotives were painted dark green (with an elaborate copper alloy ) and had copper-covered chimneys. The disguise was black and white. In 1876, dark green became light green and the freight cars were kept in plain black. In 1883 all locomotives were painted black. From now on, the cladding was red and white on the passenger cars and red on the freight cars.

shipping

The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway was the railway company with the largest fleet of ships in the period before the mergers in 1922. In 1913 the company owned 26 ships, and the merger with the London and North Western Railway added five more. The steamers brought goods from Liverpool to Drogheda in Ireland , from Hull to Bruges , and from Goole to larger European ports such as Amsterdam , Copenhagen , Hamburg or Rotterdam .

After the merger

Due to the financial problems after the First World War , around 160 railway companies in Great Britain were merged into four companies with the Railways Act 1921 , including L&YR. The following railway lines no longer exist today:

From Manchester to Bury
From Preston to Southport
from Bury and Accrington and back again
and the Nordschleife - from Blackburn to Burnley via Great Harwood and Padiham.

Most of the L&YR rail routes have been served by DB subsidiary Arriva under the Northern brand since 2016 . The former largest railway station in the country, Manchester Victoria , which was then owned by the company, has been modernized.

Others

The former football team from the Manchester - Newton Heath branch has become one of the most successful football clubs in the world, Manchester United .

literature

Noel Coates: 150 Years of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway . Hawkshill Publishing, 1997. ISBN 1-900349-11-6 .
Alan Earnshaw The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway - Then & Now . Ian Allan, 1992. ISBN 0-7110-2058-2 .

Web links

Commons : Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Society
Map of the route network ( Memento of July 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )