London and North Western Railway
The London and North Western Railway ( LNWR ) was a British railway company that existed from 1846 to 1922 . It emerged from the merger of the three companies Grand Junction Railway , London and Birmingham Railway and Manchester and Birmingham Railway and also took over the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway . The length of the route network was 4293 km in the last year of operation.
It was also called Premier Line (first line), even if numerous other companies claimed this title for themselves. The name goes back to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway , the world's first railway company with passenger services, which later became the Grand Junction Railway.
As the largest public company in the UK, the LNWR was more profitable than any other rail company in the country. It opened up some of the largest cities along the West Coast Main Line : Birmingham , Leeds , Liverpool , London , Manchester and, through cooperation with the Caledonian Railway , Edinburgh and Glasgow . The route network also extended into Wales and led to Holyhead , Swansea and Newport , among others .
On January 1, 1922, it merged with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway . With the entry into force of the Railways Act 1921 , the LNWR became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) on January 1, 1923 . The main workshops of the LNWR were in Crewe (locomotives) and Wolverton (wagons).
