Introducing the History of Britain's Railways

Introduction

RETURN TO THE HOMEPAGE RAILWAY BRITAIN

Britain gave the railways to the world. What was to become the world's standard gauge for railways - the distance between the rails of 4ft 8.5 inches (1435 mm) - was first established at Willington Colliery in County Durham in 1764. Britain was to lead the world in the key technological advances in iron (and later steel) rails and in the development of steam locomotives. This allowed the railway to become developed as a complete transport system, with British engineers playing a crucial part in the development of railways throughout the world. The coming of the railways also gave rise to many industrial and social benefits, including the establishment of uniform time across the UK, the development of seaside resorts, and of course commuting to work. Railway companies were the giant corporations of their day, with their own networks of hotels, bus and road haulage services, shipping lines and later even air and hovercraft services. For more than 200 years the railway has played a central role in the life of Great Britain.

Britain has probably the richest railway heritage of any country in the world and is home to the National Railway Museum in York which is probably the finest railway museum in the world. Britain's railways were unusual in that they were developed not by government intervention but by private entrepreneurs. Gradually as time went on the numerous early railway companies merged to form larger companies.

From the early years of this century, railway companies were already seeing the advantages of working together and began to enter into closer working arrangements. During the First World War there was a high degree of government control. This period exhausted the railways, and after the war was over it was clear that a new approach was needed. In 1923, 150 or so of the main railway companies were grouped into the ‘Big Four’: the Great Western, the London Midland & Scottish, the London & North Eastern, and the Southern. The LMS became the Empire’s largest joint stock company.

Then in 1948, following the further exhaustion of the Second World War, the Big Four were finally nationalised and combined into one organisation: British Railways, part of a new British Transport Commission. In 1962, a self-standing British Railways Board was formed. In the mid 1960s there was a major rationalisation of Britain's railways with the "Beeching Cuts". These resulted in the closure of many less well used secondary and rural lines. Thus from the earliest times, Britain has frequently been at the leading edge of railway organisational, or business organisational, change.

From the late 1960s to the 1990s there was a gradual privatisation of all of the ancillary services once associated with the railways. These included public corporations such as National Freight Corporation (NFC), British Transport Docks Board, Atlantic Steam Navigation, Sealink UK Ltd, BR Hovercraft Ltd, British Transport Advertising, British Rail Workshops and British Transport Hotels.

In the 1970s the railways enjoyed a passenger renaissance with the introduction of high speed intercity trains with the advent of the pioneering and iconic Intercity 125 high speed train. Since then passenger numbers have fluctuated with changing economic circumstances. In the early 1990s the five geographical Regions were replaced by a Sector organisation, where passenger services were organised into Inter City, Network SouthEast, and Other Provincial Services sectors. This new organisation showed promise of being a more efficient organisation of the railways.

Finally between 1994 and 1997 the railway itself was privatised and things came full circle although this time with significant governmental controls. However the unification of a main railway company like British Rail was lost forever as the entire structure was broken up into individual companies. Sadly the option to give the private sector a 25% share in BR with the state retaining 75% like has been done elsewhere in Europe with examples such as Deutsche Bahn and SNCF was not taken. However instead the entire network was split into a myriad of individual private companies. Today's private rail companies are dominated by the major players in the transport industry such as National Express Group plc, Stagecoach Group plc, Arriva plc, First Group plc, Go-Ahead Group plc, and Virgin Group plc. There is even involvement of other European state rail companies in Britain's railways such as SNCF (via Keolis), Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) and most recently Deutsche Bahn (DB).

However today Britain's railways are experiencing significant investment and very rapid growth. Indeed our railways are the fastest growing in Europe and more investment is likely in the future to keep pace with further growth. In 2007 the final section of High Speed 1 from the Channel Tunnel to London opened taking Britain into the TGV style High Speed Rail era. Discussions are underway about potentially expanding the high speed rail network in the future.

Britain now has the fastest growing railway network in Europe, with passenger kilometres rising by 44.8% in 2006/07 and journeys by 45.5% compared to ten years earlier. Freight tonne kilometres have increased by 49.6% over the same period. In 2006/07 one billion and 164 million journeys were made and a total of 46.5 billion passenger kilometres achieved.

In this Story of Britain's Railways we provide a brief overview of their history from the early Railway Pioneers through the Pre-Grouping Era, the Big Four and Nationalisation and on to today's Privatisation era. We hope you enjoy our celebration of Britain's railways and their history and future.