The York and North Midland Railway (Y&NMR) was an English railway company that opened in 1839 connecting York with the Leeds and Selby Railway, and in 1840, extended this line to meet the North Midland Railway at Normanton near Leeds. Its first chairman was the railway financier George Hudson, who had been called the railway king.
The railway expanded, by building new lines or buying or leasing already built ones, to serve Hull, Scarborough, Whitby, Market Weighton, and Harrogate. In 1849 Hudson resigned as chairman as an investigation found financial irregularities in his running of the company. The results of a price war in the early 1850s led to amalgamation and on 31 July 1854 the merged with the Leeds Northern Railway and the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway to form the North Eastern Railway.
Origins
Having seen the success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and, in 1833, acts of Parliament for lines to London from Lancashire – the Grand Junction and the London and Birmingham, the manufacturers of Yorkshire realised that they would be at a commercial disadvantage.
George Hudson, who was brought up in a farming community and started life as a draper's assistant in York until in 1827, when he was 27 years old, he inherited £30,000. He had no former interest in railways, but seeing them as a profitable investment arranged a public meeting in 1833 to discuss building a line from York to Leeds. While the route was being planned, the North Midland Railway was formed in 1835 to build a line from Derby to Leeds. This would connect with the Midland Counties Railway at Derby and therefore, via the London and Birmingham Railway, provide rail access to London. Later that year at a public meeting in York, the York and North Midlands Railway was formed to build a railway line to a junction with the North Midland Railway near Normanton.
George Stephenson was appointed engineer for the line, a private bill was presented to Parliament seeking permission to build the railway and royal assent was given to the (6 & 7 Will. 4. c. lxxxi) on 21 June 1836. The act confirmed Hudson as chairman.
The line opened the to the Leeds and Selby Railway, with a ceremony on 29 May 1839. After breakfast in York, a train with a steam locomotive at the front and back conveyed the guests in eighteen carriages to ; the train then returned to a dinner in York. The line to Burton Salmon was open on 11 May 1840 and the final section, with the junction at Altofts with the North Midland, opened at the end of June. After 1 July 1840, it was possible to travel to London in 14 hours by a service that left York at 7:30 am. The route taken by the line had required little in the way of earthworks, apart from a cutting at Fairburn, and gave a maximum gradient of 1 in 484 with broad curves. There were 31 bridges, the principal ones being over the Rivers Aire, Wharfe, and Calder. These were of stone, with those over the Calder and at Holdgate Lane built on the skew. The joint station with the Great North of England Railway, was within the city walls at York, and piercing of the walls was required to preserve the upper walkway; designs by G. T. Andrews and by Thomas Cabry ( engineer) were submitted to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society who chose Andrews' tudor arches. The track was of straight sided pattern at lb per yard supported either on stone blocks or kyanised wooden sleepers. The gauge was over blocks, or over sleepers. Locomotives were supplied by Robert Stephenson and Company and the first class carriages were lit with lamps at night, the second class were open at the sides, and in third class passengers seat on longitudinal benches without cover.
Expansion The Leeds and Hull Railroad Company had been formed in 1824 to build a railway from Leeds to the port of Hull, but had failed to raise the necessary funds. The Leeds and Selby Railway (L&SR) was formed in 1829 to build a railway as far as Selby, where goods could be conveyed onwards on barges on the Ouse and Humber to Hull. The line was to be less than with a maximum gradient of 1 in 135 so that horses or locomotives could be used, and the necessary permission was gained on 29 May 1830. A service started in September 1834 from a station in Leeds at Marsh Lane, just to the west of a tunnel through Richmond Hill, and Hull could be reached in about hours. The Hull and Selby Railway (H&SR) received permission in June 1836 to complete the line to Hull, and the line, which crossed the Ouse at Selby with a bascule bridge, opened on 1 July 1840.
On 27 July 1840, a curve opened connecting the North Midland Railway at Methley Junction and allowing the direct access to Leeds, in competition with the . From 9 November Hudson leased the line for £17,000 per year; from then all traffic between Leeds and Selby was diverted via Methley and over the North Midland Railway to its Wellington station. However, the management of the Hull and Selby Railway refused any offers from Hudson to lease or operate over their line and in 1844 formed an alliance with the Manchester and Leeds Railway, which was planning a route to Selby. Amalgamation was proposed early in 1845, but at two meetings shareholders overruled the directors, accepting instead a lease from Hudson at 10% of the original capital, with an option to purchase, and the H&SR became part of the from 1 July 1845.
A railway to the port of Whitby was proposed in 1826, George Stephenson recommended a route to Pickering in 1832 and the Whitby and Pickering Railway Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. 4. c. xxxv) received royal assent on 6 May 1833, which both permitted and prohibited steam locomotives. The River Esk was diverted a mile from Whitby but a number of bridges were needed, including a five span timber bridge at Ruswarp. A tunnel was dug at Grosmont and at Beck Hole a inclined plane was built at a gradient of 1 in 15. The line, worked by horses, opened to Grosmont on 8 June 1835 and to Pickering on 26 May 1836. At Beck Hole carriages were worked up or down the incline individually; each summer the landlord of a nearby inn erected a tent so as to supply refreshments to waiting passengers. The journey from Pickering to Whitby took an average hours.
The received permission in the (7 & 8 Vict. c. lxi) to build a line from York to Scarborough with a branch from to Pickering and to take over the Whitby and Pickering Railway. The line and branch were built in less than a year and opened on 7 July 1845. Following celebrations on the opening day, the railway offered free travel for the first five days. The line to Whitby was doubled, timber bridges replaced with ones built from iron and the tunnel at Grosmont rebuilt, although the incline at Beck Hole was not replaced until 1864. The first train hauled by a steam locomotive ran on 4 June 1847.
The received permission in the (8 & 9 Vict. c. lxxxiv) for a line to Harrogate and it opened to on 10 August 1847. After completing the long Prospect Hill tunnel and long Crimple Viaduct, on 20 July 1848 services started to the centrally sited Brunswick station. The Leeds and Thirsk Railway (later the Leeds Northern Railway) passed under the viaduct and opened its station at in September that year. The Leeds and Thirsk Railway was able to offer a shorter journey to Leeds after it had opened to Leeds in July 1849, although the station at Brunswick was more convenient. Both the and Hull and Selby Railway had permission for a line to , the in the (8 & 9 Vict. c. lviii) for a branch from Seamer, on the York to Scarborough Line; and the Hull and Selby Railway, a branch from Hull. The line was built and opened on 6 October 1846 as the Hull and Scarborough branch. The (9 & 10 Vict. c. lxvi), giving approval for two lines to Market Weighton was granted to the York and North Midland Railway on 18 June 1846. A double line York to Beverley Line was opened to Market Weighton on 4 October 1847, and a single line from Selby to Market Weighton opened on 1 August 1848.
George Hudson departs
During the railway mania of the mid-1840s, many people invested in railway companies, believing it a means of quickly getting rich. In the three years between 1844 and 1846, Parliament passed 438 acts giving permission for over of line, many in direct competition with existing railways. By the mid-1840s, Hudson was also chairman of the Midland Railway, Newcastle and Berwick Railway and Newcastle and Darlington Junction Railway. Called the "railway king" by the preacher Sydney Smith, he was said to have the favour of Albert, the Prince Consort. So as to better promote the bills submitted by the railway companies he controlled, in 1845 Hudson successfully stood as a Conservative Member of Parliament for Sunderland. In 1848 the Great Northern Railway (GNR) had a line to and the had authority for a branch from Burton Salmon to , about to the north. Hudson and Edmund Denison, the chairman of the , met at the end of 1848 and agreed terms for the to access York via Knottingley, the dropping plans for its own line to York via . As this plan diverted traffic between York and London away from the London and North Western and Midland railways, these two railways formed an alliance, attempting to divert whatever traffic they could via Leeds and handing it over to the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway (YN&BR) at . In response the and co-operated to lower prices to keep the traffic flowing via York.
At the end of 1848 the dividend paid by the dropped from ten per cent to six per cent and at a subsequent half-yearly shareholders meeting the very high cost of certain Great North shares bought during the merger was questioned. After Hudson admitted the company had purchased them from him, an investigating committee was set up and Hudson resigned as chairman in May 1849. The committee reported on a number of irregularities in the account such as inflating traffic figures and finding capital items that had been charged to the revenue account, thus paying dividends out of capital. No dividend was paid for the first half year of 1849, and Hudson was to pay £212,000 settling claims over share transactions.
The building of new branches was severely restricted in the years following Hudson's departure. Work was halted on a direct line between York and Leeds, the York and North Midland Railway (Leeds Extension) branch, although a stone viaduct had been built across the River Wharfe at Tadcaster (see Tadcaster Viaduct), and an extension of the line from York to Market Weighton onto Beverley was suspended. However, the independent East and West Yorkshire Junction Railway had been authorised on 16 July 1846 to build a railway from the main line just outside York to Knaresborough. When it opened to a temporary station at Hay Park Lane on 30 October 1848, the line was worked by the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway, but after 1849 this was switched to E. B. Wilson and Company, who was paid per mile plus a percentage of revenue. The railway was taken over by the York and North Midland Railway on 1 July 1851.
Locomotives