The Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway (LD&ECR) was built to connect coalfields in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire with Warrington and a new port on the Lincolnshire coast. It was a huge undertaking, and the company was unable to raise the money to build its line. With the financial help of the Great Eastern Railway it managed to open between Chesterfield and Lincoln with a branch towards Sheffield from 1896. Despite efforts to promote tourist travel, the passenger business was never buoyant, but collieries were connected to the line, at first and in succeeding years. The Great Eastern Railway, and other main line companies, transported coal to the southern counties, and the company's engines took coal to Immingham in great quantities. The company had a fleet of tank engines.
The Sheffield branch was not completed, but interests in Sheffield encouraged its extension which was built by a nominally independent company, the Sheffield District Railway, sponsored by the LD&ECR and the Great Eastern Railway with the support of the Midland Railway. It opened in 1900.
Hopes of reaching the Lincolnshire coast were never fulfilled and the LD&ECR's dependency on other lines limited its future. It agreed a merger with the Great Central Railway and was absorbed by the GCR in 1907. The Nottinghamshire coalfield continued to develop throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and several new connections to the former LD&ECR line were made.
Between 1939 and 1955 the passenger service was successively curtailed and while some collieries became exhausted, most continued to be productive to the final decade of the twentieth century and beyond. Tuxford Rail Innovation & Development Centre and its connecting line are the only remaining parts of the line still in use.
Conception
In 1882 Francis Arkwright, the proprietor of the Sutton Scarsdale Hall estate, emigrated to New Zealand, leaving the estate in the care of his cousin William Arkwright. William inherited the property in his own right in 1915. Sutton Scarsdale is about four miles east of Chesterfield, and there were rich coal seams beneath the property. There were plans to exploit the mineral deposits, but local transport links were unsatisfactory at the time, and Arkwright realised that he needed better railway connections to his property. Finding the nearby Midland Railway and the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway unresponsive, he decided that an independent railway was the solution.Cupit, J and Taylor, W, The Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, Oakwood Press, 1966, reprint 1988, , pages 1 to 5
The was authorised by the (50 & 51 Vict. c. lxix); it was to connect mineral-bearing lands near Ollerton with the Great Northern Railway main line. Arkwright suggested to the Great Northern Railway that it should adopt the unbuilt line and extend it to his own estate, but the GNR was not interested. This confirmed Arkwright's view that an independent railway was needed. He saw that the obstruction of the existing railways meant that he would need to connect to a coastal port; his railway could then convey the coal to its own docks for export. Sutton Scarsdale lay in the centre of the country, and Arkwright conceived that a port on both sides, to west as well as to east, was desirable. He enlisted the support of neighbours, the Duke of Portland, the Duke of Newcastle and Earl Manvers, whose position was similar.
An engineer, Robert Elliott-Cooper, was engaged and he investigated what routes such an ambitious railway might adopt. In fact several minor railways had been authorised in the past: in most cases their powers had long since lapsed, but the routes had been surveyed and were therefore presumably practicable. As well as the Newark and Ollerton Railway, there were two currently authorised schemes, the Macclesfield and Warrington Railway and the Lincoln and East Coast Railway. Others which had been discussed were lines from Macclesfield to Buxton and, crossing the Pennines, from Buxton to Sheffield, while a railway from Chesterfield to Buxton had been planned in 1845. Moreover, in 1884 powers had been granted, but not implemented, for the building of docks at Sutton-on-Sea on the Lincolnshire coast. There were iron ore deposits to the east of Lincoln which might encourage the establishment of an iron smelting industry there.Perkins, T R, Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, Railway Magazine, February and March 1907
Elliott-Cooper and Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge, an eminent Engineer and the largest lessee of the North Derbyshire coalfield collaborated in the task of formulating a practicable scheme for the line. They planned a route adopting the course of ten formerly proposed railways for the main line, as well as 17 shorter branches connecting collieries and nearby routes, and the line was fully surveyed by November 1890. The plans were published and the scheme submitted for the 1891 session of Parliament. It was to be named the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, often referred to then as the East to West Railway. The capital of the company was fixed at £5,000,000, in £10 shares, and the promoters declared their belief that a dividend of 11 per cent might be expected. In spite of the difficult nature of the country through which the central section of the railway would pass, the cost of the construction was estimated at not more than £42,857 per mile, a sum considerably less than that incurred by most other cross-country railways.David Joy, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: volume VIII: South and West Yorkshire, David & Charles Publishers, Newton Abbot, 1984, , pages 176 to 178
The parliamentary bill, and authorisation
The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway opposed the bill in Parliament, seeing that much of its route paralleled its own lines; the Midland Railway too opposed it, chiefly due to proposed running powers in the Manchester area. Conversely the Great Eastern Railway supported it; the GER had access to Lincoln over the Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Railway, and saw that the new route would give it better access to collieries. During the parliamentary stages the GER indicated that it would give financial support to the line in exchange for running powers over the entire system. The (54 & 55 Vict. c. clxxxix) was passed on 5 August.Grant, Donald J, Directory of the Railway Companies of Great Britain, Matador Publishers, Kibworth Beauchamp, 2017, , page 302 It was the largest railway scheme ever approved by Parliament in a single session; the main line from Warrington to Sutton-on-Sea amounted to 170 miles of railway with branches, as well as extensive dock installations. The estimated cost of the construction alone was £4,542,522. The docks at Sutton-on-Sea would cost £700,000.Robin Leleux, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: volume IX: The East Midlands, David & Charles Publishers, Newton Abbot, 1976, , pages 152 to 156Booth, Chris, The Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway: Chesterfield to Langwith Junction, the Beighton Branch and Sheffield District Railway, Fonthill Media, 2017, , pages 9 and 10Dow, George, Great Central: volume III: Fay Sets the Pace, 1900–1922, Ian Allan, Shepperton, , pages 152 to 185
Raising finance for construction The authorised capital of the new company was £5 million, but it was immediately obvious that subscriptions for such a large sum would not easily be found. In November 1891 the GER examined the plans for the scheme and agreed to subscribe £250,000. In the circumstances, the GER became the dominant force in the company, and it insisted on the first construction being limited to the main line between Chesterfield and Lincoln, with a branch to Beighton, which it was hoped would give access to Sheffield by running powers over the MS&LR. (In fact Parliament authorised the Beighton line but refused the running powers.)Cupit and Taylor, page 12 The first sod was cut by Mrs Arkwright at Chesterfield on 7 June 1892. In a speech she looked forward to travelling throughout on the line in three years' time, in 1895.Cupit and Taylor, pages 7 and 8
Construction was started, but subscription for shares was extremely slow. In February 1894 the company asked the main contractor to accept shares instead of cash; he refused, and stated that he would stop work if not paid in cash promptly. At the beginning of May 1894 public subscriptions amounted to about £400,000. The LD&ECR directors and their friends had made themselves responsible for a further £850,000, and a new director (Robert William Perks) and his associates, were to put up £250,000. After protracted negotiations the Great Eastern Railway confirmed their earlier offer to subscribe a quarter of a million. The condition was the separation of the central section from the eastern section and their constitution as separate concerns; the GER was not prepared to see their money expended on the line to Sutton-on-Sea.Dow, page 157
The LD&ECR accepted this condition on 3 May 1894. A separate company called the Lincoln and East Coast Railway and Dock Company was eventually incorporated by the Lincoln and East Coast Railway and Dock Act 1897 (60 & 61 Vict. c. ccxxxiv) on 6 August 1897: it adopted the powers of the LD&ECR to build east of Lincoln, and with them the still unfulfilled North Sea Fisheries (East Lincolnshire) Harbour & Dock Company. The Lincoln and East Coast Railway and Dock was destined never to materialise. The LD&ECR authorised lines west of Chesterfield were abandoned by the (58 & 59 Vict. c. cxli) of 6 July 1895.
First openings On 15 May 1895 Harry Willmott was appointed as General Manager. He proved an energetic and able force in carrying the affairs of the new company forward.
The first section of the line was opened for goods traffic from Barlborough Colliery on the Beighton line, via Langwith to Pyewipe Junction, near Lincoln on the GN and GE Joint Line, on 16 November 1896. Barlborough, immediately west of Clowne, was for the time being the northern extremity of the authorised Beighton branch, because of the colliery there. A junction with the Midland Railway at Clowne, and branches to Creswell, Langwith and Warsop Main collieries, as well as the north curve to the Great Northern at Tuxford were brought into use on the same date.Dow, page 159
Difficulties in the construction of Bolsover Tunnel delayed opening of the Chesterfield main line, but passenger traffic was started on the line from Edwinstowe to Lincoln GNR station on 15 December 1896. There were intermediate stations at Ollerton, Tuxford, Fledborough, Clifton-on-Trent, and Skellingthorpe. The GER were quick to make use of their running powers, soon conveying coal from the line. On 8 February 1897 the line was opened from Chesterfield to Langwith to goods and mineral traffic, followed by passenger opening on 8 March 1897. Further stations at Doddington & Harby, Boughton and Dukeries Junction were added during 1897. Dukeries Junction was originally to be called Tuxford Junction; it was situated at the point where the LD&ECR passed over the GNR main line and platforms serving the two railways were connected by stairs. Intermediate stations were provided at Bolsover and Arkwright Town (originally to be named Duckmanton) between Langwith Junction and Chesterfield, and at Warsop between Langwith Junction and Edwinstowe. There were no stations between Langwith Junction and Clowne until the opening of Creswell & Welbeck on 1 June 1897. Scarcliffe, between Langwith Junction and Bolsover, first appeared in Bradshaw in January 1898.Cupit and Taylor, pages 9 and 10Dow, pages 159, 160 and 161
The passenger service on the main line was six trains a day from Chesterfield to Langwith Junction, and three from there to Lincoln.
Business development