The Great Central Main Line (GCML), also known as the London Extension, is a former main line railway in the United Kingdom. The line was opened in 1899, built by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR), which had been renamed the Great Central Railway (GCR) in August 1897, prior to the line's opening. It ran from Sheffield in the North of England, southwards through Nottingham and Leicester to Marylebone in London.
The GCML was the last main line railway to be built in Britain during the Victorian period. It was built by the railway entrepreneur Edward Watkin with the aim to run as a fast trunk route from the North and the East Midlands to London and the south of England. Initially not a financial success, it recovered under the leadership of Sam Fay. Although initially planned for long-distance passenger services, in practice the line's most important function became to carry goods traffic, notably coal.
In the 1960s, British Railways chairman Richard Beeching considered it an unnecessary duplication of other lines that served the same places, especially the Midland Main Line and to a lesser extent the West Coast Main Line. Most of the route was closed between 1966 and 1969 under the Beeching axe.
Parts of the former main line have been preserved as the Great Central Railway between Leicester and Loughborough, and the Great Central Railway (Nottingham) between Loughborough South Junction and Ruddington's former GCR station site.
At the end of the 20th century and in the 21st century, the line has been subject to a range of proposals for its use and reuse.
Route
The GCML was very much a strategic line in concept. It was not intended to duplicate the Midland line by serving a great many centres of population. Instead it was intended to link the MS&LR's system stretching across northern England directly to London at as high a speed as possible and with a minimum of stops and connections: thus much of its route ran through sparsely populated countryside.
The new construction started at north of Nottingham, running for in a relatively direct southward route ending at Quainton Road north of Aylesbury. The line left the crowded corridor through Nottingham (and ), which was also used by the Great Northern Railway (GNR), then struck off to its new railway station at , passing Loughborough en route, where it crossed the Midland main line. Four railway companies served Leicester: GCR, Midland, GNR, and LNWR. Avoiding Wigston, the GCR served (the only town on the GCR not to be served by another railway company) before reaching the town of Rugby (at ), where it crossed at right-angles over, and did not connect with, the LNWR's West Coast Main Line.
It continued southwards to , where there was a connection with the East and West Junction Railway (later incorporated into the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway), and slightly further south the GCR branch to the Great Western Railway station at diverged. From Woodford Halse the route continued approximately south-east via to and , where Great Central trains joined the Metropolitan Railway (later Metropolitan and Great Central Joint Railway) via into London.
Partly because of disagreements with the Metropolitan Railway (MetR) over use of their tracks at the southern end of the route, the company built the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway joint line (1906) from Grendon Underwood to Ashendon Junction, by-passing the greater part of the MetR's tracks.
Apart from a small freight branch to Gotham between Nottingham and Loughborough, and the "Alternative Route" link added later (1906), these were the only branch lines from the London extension. The line crossed several other railways but had few junctions with them.
North of Sheffield, express trains on the London extension made use of the pre-existing MS&LR trans-Pennine main line, the Woodhead Line (now also closed) to give access to (now named Manchester Piccadilly).
History
Reasons for construction In 1864 Sir Edward Watkin took over directorship of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR). He had grand ambitions for the company: he had plans to transform it from a provincial middle-of-the-road railway company into a major national player. He grew tired of handing over potentially lucrative London-bound traffic to rivals, and, after several unsuccessful attempts in the 1870s to co-build a line to London with other companies, decided that the MS&LR needed to create its own route to the capital. Construction of the GCML was commissioned to enable Watkin's railway company to operate its own direct express route to London independently of – and in competition with – rival railway companies.
At the time many people questioned the wisdom of building the line, as all the significant population centres which the line traversed were already served by other companies. However, Watkin defended it by arguing that growth in traffic would justify the new line.
Watkin was an ambitious visionary; as well as running an independent trunk route into London, where he was chairman of the Metropolitan Railway, he was also involved in a project to dig a channel tunnel under the English Channel to connect with the rail network of France, a scheme vetoed several times by the British Parliament for fear of military invasion by France; however, this project was effectively moribund by the time work on the GCML commenced, and historians who have examined the available primary sources have found no contemporaneous statement by Watkin that he envisaged through workings over the lines he controlled from Manchester to France.
Misconceptions over loading gauge Although it is frequently claimed that Watkin's Great Central Main Line was designed to the larger continental European loading gauge with the aim of accommodating mainland rolling stock should the line could be connected via a future channel tunnel, this is untrue. It was built to the standard Great Central loading gauge of the time, which was in fact slightly more restrictive than some other British railways; and it was certainly not to Berne gauge, which is some 8 in. (200 mm) taller and was not agreed and adopted until 1912/13.
The Derbyshire Lines
Prior to the construction of the London Extension proper, the MS&LR had extended its reach southwards from its main trans-Pennine axis. On 26 July 1889 the company obtained an Act of Parliament to construct a line from Woodhouse Junction on its original Sheffield to Lincoln main line to Annesley in Nottinghamshire. The 'Derbyshire Lines' also included a branch from Staveley to Chesterfield; an extension of this to Heath, converting the branch into a loop line, was authorised on 25 July 1890. The primary purpose of the Derbyshire Lines was to give the MS&LR access to the collieries of Nottinghamshire, but it also served as the first phase in the company's plan to construct an independent route to London. At Annesley the line from Woodhouse ran into the northern end of the marshalling yard built and operated by the Great Northern Railway (GNR) since 1882. This yard was adjacent to Newstead colliery and also had a connection with the Midland Railway. Thus MS&LR trains could run through onto the GNR's Leen Valley line and so southwards onto the rest of the GNR network via Nottingham and Grantham to the terminus of the GNR at King's Cross. This gave the MS&LR a more convenient route to send both freight and passenger traffic (the latter by through-coaches and ticketing agreements with the GNR) to London from its main line. Annesley was also only a little more than from London.
The Derbyshire Lines opened in stages. Passenger services began as follows: Beighton – Staveley Town on 1 June 1892; Staveley Town – Chesterfield on 4 June 1892; Staveley Town – Heath – Annesley on 2 January 1893; and Chesterfield – Heath on 3 July 1893. In some cases, goods services began earlier. By the time these routes were in full operation the MS&LR was already seeking approval in Parliament for their bill to authorise the London Extension. Once the London Extension was opened (and the MS&LR had become the Great Central Railway) the Derbyshire Lines were, for all practical purposes, treated as a continuation of the new main line to London, with the entire route from Sheffield Victoria to London Marylebone (via the original MS&LR main line, the Derbyshire Lines and the London Extension) being considered as the Great Central Main Line.
Construction of the line
In the 1890s the MS&LR set about building its own line, having received powers in the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (Extension to London, &c.) Act 1893 (56 & 57 Vict. c. i) on 28 March 1893, for the London extension. The bill nearly failed due to opposition from cricketers at the Marylebone Cricket Club in London through which the line would pass, but it was agreed to put the line through a tunnel under the grounds. The first sod of the new railway was cut at Alpha Road, St John's Wood, London, on 13 November 1894 by Countess Wharncliffe, wife of 1st Earl of Wharncliffe, the chairman of the board.
The new line, long, started at Annesley, being in effect an extension of the newly completed Derbyshire Lines. The new London-bound line started at the northern entrance to the Annesley marshalling yard (this point becoming the new Annesley North Junction) from where it passed to the east of the sidings and the GNR Leen Valley line before bridging over both the GNR and Midland lines at Linby and heading to Nottingham. The southern end of the London Extension was at Quainton Road in Buckinghamshire. From here, the route followed the existing Metropolitan Railway (MetR) extension which became joint MetR/GCR owned as far as Harrow and thence along the (GCR owned) final section to Marylebone station.
Construction of the route involved some major engineering works, including three new major city-centre stations (, and Marylebone) along with many smaller ones. A number of new viaducts were constructed for the line including the 21-arch Brackley Viaduct, and viaducts at Braunston, Staverton and Catesby in Northamptonshire, a steel lattice viaduct known as the 'bird cage' bridge carried the GCML over the West Coast Main Line at Rugby, while another viaduct was built over the River Soar, along with two over Swithland Reservoir in Leicestershire, and one over the River Trent near Nottingham. Several tunnels had to be built, the longest of which was the Catesby Tunnel. Many miles of cuttings and embankments were also built.
The construction of the railway through Nottingham and the station involved heavy earthworks with of tunnelling and almost of viaduct. The site for Nottingham Victoria railway station required the demolition of 1,300 houses, 20 public houses and the clearing of a cutting from which of sandstone were removed. The purchase of the land cost £473,000 (), and the construction of the station brought the sum to over £1,000,000.
The original estimated cost for the construction of the line was £3,132,155, however in the event it cost £11,500,000 (), nearly four times the original estimate.
Features of the line were: The line was engineered to very high standards: a ruling gradient of 1 in 176 ( ‰) (exceeded in only a few locations on the London extension) was employed; curves of a minimum radius of (except in city areas) were used; and there was only one level crossing between Sheffield Victoria and London Marylebone (at , still in use). The standardised design of stations, almost all of which were built to an "island platform" design with one platform between the two tracks instead of two at each side. This would aid any future plans to add extra tracks (as was done in several locations).