Origins The Midland Railway originated from 1832 in
Leicestershire /
Nottinghamshire, with the purpose of serving the needs of local coal owners. The company was formed on 10 May 1844 by the '''''' (
7 & 8 Vict. c. xviii) which merged the
Midland Counties Railway, the
North Midland Railway, and the
Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway, the
Birmingham and Gloucester Railway joined two years later. These met at the
Tri-Junct station at Derby, where the MR established its
locomotive and later its
carriage and wagon works. Leading it were
George Hudson from the North Midland, and
John Ellis from the Midland Counties.
James Allport from the
Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway found a place elsewhere in Hudson's empire with the
York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway, though he later returned. and extending it to Burton in 1849.
The South-West After the merger, London trains were carried on the shorter Midland Counties route. The former
Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway was left with the traffic to Birmingham and
Bristol, an important seaport. The original 1839 line from Derby had run to
Hampton-in-Arden: the
Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway had built a terminus at
Lawley Street in 1842, and on 1 May 1851 the MR started to run into
Curzon Street. The line south was the
Birmingham and Bristol Railway, which reached Curzon Street via
Camp Hill. These two lines had been formed by the merger of the
standard gauge Birmingham and Gloucester Railway and the
broad gauge Bristol and Gloucester Railway. They met at
Gloucester via a short loop of the
Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway. The change of gauge at Gloucester meant that everything had to be transferred between trains, creating chaos, and the C&GWU was owned by the
Great Western Railway, which wished to extend its network by taking over the Bristol to Birmingham route. While the two parties were bickering over the price, the MR's John Ellis overheard two directors of the
Birmingham and Bristol Railway on a London train discussing the business, and pledged that the MR would match anything the Great Western would offer. Since it would have brought broad gauge into Curzon Street with the possibility of extending it to the Mersey, it was something that the other standard gauge lines wished to avoid, and they pledged to assist the MR with any losses it might incur.
Eastern competition The MR controlled all the traffic to the North East and Scotland from London. The LNWR was progressing slowly through the Lake District, and there was pressure for a direct line from London to York. Permission had been gained for the
Northern and Eastern Railway to run through
Peterborough and
Lincoln but it had barely reached
Cambridge. Two obvious extensions of the Midland Counties line were from
Nottingham to Lincoln and from
Leicester to Peterborough. They had not been proceeded with, but Hudson saw that they would make ideal "stoppers": if the cities concerned were provided with a rail service, it would make it more difficult to justify another line. They were approved while the bill for the direct line was still before Parliament, forming the present day
Lincoln Branch and the
Syston to Peterborough Line. The
Leeds and Bradford Railway had been approved in 1844. By 1850 it was losing money but a number of railways offered to buy it. Hudson made an offer more or less on his own account and the line gave the MR an exit to the north, which became the start of the Settle and Carlisle line, and it gave the MR a much more convenient station at
Leeds Wellington. In spite of the objections of Hudson, for the MR and others, the "London and York Railway" (later the
Great Northern Railway) led by
Edmund Denison persisted, and the bill passed through Parliament in 1846.
The Battle of Nottingham In 1851 the
Ambergate, Nottingham, Boston and Eastern Junction Railway completed its line from
Grantham as far as
Colwick, from where a branch led to the MR Nottingham station. The
Great Northern Railway by then passed through Grantham and both railway companies paid court to the fledgling line. Meanwhile, Nottingham had woken up to its branch line status and was keen to expand. The MR made a takeover offer only to discover that a shareholder of the
GN had already gathered a quantity of Ambergate shares. An attempt to amalgamate the line with the
GN was foiled by Ellis, who managed to obtain an
Order in Chancery preventing the GN from running into Nottingham. However, in 1851 it opened a new service to the north that included Nottingham. In 1852 an
ANB&EJR train arrived in Nottingham with a
GN locomotive at its head. When it uncoupled and went to run round the train, it found its way blocked by a MR engine while another blocked its retreat. The engine was shepherded to a nearby shed and the tracks were lifted. This episode became known as the "Battle of Nottingham" and, with the action moved to the courtroom, it was seven months before the locomotive was released.
The Euston Square Confederacy The
London and Birmingham Railway and its successor the
London and North Western Railway had been under pressure from two directions. Firstly the Great Western Railway had been foiled in its attempt to enter Birmingham by the Midland, but it still had designs on Manchester. At the same time the LNWR was under threat from the GN's attempts to enter Manchester by the
Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway.
To London King's Cross 1857–1868 In 1850 the MR, though much more secure, was still a provincial line. Ellis realised that if it were to fend off its competitors it must expand outwards. The first step, in 1853, was to appoint
James Allport as general manager, and the next was to shake off the dependence on the LNWR to
London. Although a bill for a line from
Hitchin into
King's Cross jointly with the
GN, was passed in 1847 it had not been proceeded with. The bill was resubmitted in 1853 with the support of the people of Bedford, whose branch to the LNWR was slow and unreliable, and with the knowledge of the Northamptonshire iron deposits. The
Leicester and Hitchin Railway ran from
Wigston to
Market Harborough, through
Desborough,
Kettering,
Wellingborough and
Bedford, then on the
Bedford to Hitchin Line, joining the GN at
Hitchin for King's Cross. The line began its life in a proposition presented for the shareholders by George Hudson on 2 May 1842 as: "To vest £600,000 in the South Midland Railway Company in their line from Wigston to Hitchin." a full decade before realisation. The delay was partly due to the withdrawal of GN's interest in the competing scheme, the Bedford and Leicester Railway, after Midland purchased the Leicester and Swannington Railway and the Ashby Canal and Tramway, which were to have been the feeder lines. With the competition thwarted there was less rush to have this line as well as its branch lines to Huntingdon (from Kettering) and Northampton (from Bedford) finished. Both these branches were subsequently built by independent companies. While this took some of the pressure off the route through Rugby, the GNR insisted that passengers for London alight at Hitchin, buying tickets in the short time available, to catch a GNR train to finish their journey.
James Allport arranged a seven-year deal with the
GN to run into King's Cross for a guaranteed £20,000 a year (),. Through services to London were introduced in February 1858. The construction of the Leicester and Hitchin railway cost £1,750,000 ().
St Pancras 1868 By 1860 the MR was in a much better position and was able to approach new ventures aggressively. Its carriage of coal and iron – and beer from
Burton-on-Trent – had increased by three times and passenger numbers were rising, as they were on the GN. Since GN trains took precedence on its own lines, MR passengers were becoming more and more delayed. Finally in 1862 the decision was taken for the MR to have its own terminus in the capital, as befitted a national railway. On 22 June 1863, the '''''' (
26 & 27 Vict. c. lxxiv) was passed: "An Act for the Construction by the Midland Railway Company of a new Line of Railway between London and Bedford, with Branches therefrom; and for other Purposes". The new line deviated at Bedford, through a gap in the
Chiltern Hills at
Luton, reaching London by curving around
Hampstead Heath to a point between King's Cross and Euston. The line from
Bedford to
Moorgate opened for passenger services on 13 July 1868 with services into
St Pancras station starting on 1 October 1868.
St Pancras station is a strong example of
Gothic Revival architecture, in the form of the
Midland Grand Hotel by
Gilbert Scott, which faces
Euston Road, and the wrought-iron train shed designed by
William Barlow. Its construction was not simple, since it had to approach through the ancient
St Pancras Old Church graveyard. Below was the Fleet Sewer, while a branch from the main line ran underground with a steep gradient beneath the station to join the
Metropolitan Railway, which ran parallel to what is now Euston Road. The construction of the London Extension railway cost £9 million In the meantime Sheffield had at last gained a main-line station. Following representations by the council in 1867 the MR promised to build a through line within two years. To the MR's surprise, the Sheffield councillors then backed an improbable speculation called the Sheffield, Chesterfield, Bakewell, Ashbourne, Stafford and Uttoxeter Railway. This was unsurprisingly rejected by Parliament and the Midland built its "New Road" into a station at Pond Street. Among the last of the major lines built by the MR was a connection between Sheffield and Manchester, by a branch at
Dore to
Chinley, opened in 1894 through the
Totley and
Cowburn Tunnels, now the
Hope Valley Line.
To Scotland , a recognisable feature of the
Settle-Carlisle Railway in April 2006 In the 1870s a dispute with the
London and North Western Railway (LNWR) over access rights to the LNWR line to Scotland caused the MR to construct the
Settle and Carlisle line, the highest main line in England, to secure access to Scotland. The dispute with the LNWR was settled before the Settle and Carlisle was built, but
Parliament refused to allow the MR to withdraw from the project. The MR was also under pressure from Scottish railway companies, which were eagerly awaiting the Midland traffic reaching Carlisle as it would allow them to challenge the
Caledonian Railway's dominance on the West Coast traffic to Glasgow and Edinburgh. The
Glasgow and South Western Railway had its own route from Carlisle to Glasgow via Dumfries and Kilmarnock, whilst the
North British Railway had built the
Waverley Line through the Scottish Borders from Carlisle to Edinburgh. The MR was obliged to go ahead and the Settle to Carlisle opened in 1876. and for passenger traffic on 1 March 1880. By the middle of the decade investment had been paid for; passenger travel was increasing, with new comfortable trains; and the mainstay of the line – goods, particularly minerals – was increasing dramatically. Allport retired in 1880, to be succeeded by John Noble and then by George Turner. By the new century the quantity of goods, particularly coal, was clogging the network. The passenger service was acquiring a reputation for lateness. Lord Farrar reorganised the expresses, but by 1905 the whole system was so overloaded that no one was able to predict when many of the trains would reach their destinations. At this point Sir
Guy Granet took over as general manager. He introduced a centralised traffic control system, and the locomotive power classifications that became the model for those used by British Railways. The MR acquired other lines, including the
Belfast and Northern Counties Railway in 1903 and the
London, Tilbury and Southend Railway in 1912. It had running rights on some lines, and it developed lines in partnership with other railways, being involved in more 'Joint' lines than any other. In partnership with the GN it owned the
Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway to provide connections from the Midlands to East Anglia, the UK's biggest joint railway. The MR provided motive power for the
Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway, and was a one-third partner in the
Cheshire Lines Committee. In 1913, the company achieved a total revenue of £15,129,136 () with working expenses of £9,416,981 (). ==First World War and the Grouping==