The Great Northern Railway developed an extensive network over time, having started in 1846 with the intention of connecting London and York, as well as other major Yorkshire towns. The Great Northern Railway in Yorkshire was a major part of that, although the GNR did not succeed in reaching York as it originally intended. By acquiring running powers it reached Leeds, Bradford and Halifax over other companies' lines, as well as Barnsley Sheffield and Grimsby, and then York too. After acquiring local companies it developed a network, chiefly in West Yorkshire. Later it built lines north and west of Bradford into hilly terrain, and these were very expensive to build, and never repaid the initial cost.
Carrying coal to the southern counties was its primary business: huge volumes were conveyed; however fast passenger express trains memorably caught the public imagination. Passenger express operation within West Yorkshire was important too, especially as residential travel developed. The St Leger race meetings at Doncaster attracted huge volumes of excursions, 1,149 excursion trains over four days in 1888.Philipp L Scowcroft, Lines to Doncaster: A Concise History, published by Central Library, Doncaster, 1986, Towards the end of the nineteenth century the earlier raw competition softened, and some co-operation with other major companies became possible, especially with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.
The Great Northern Railway was a constituent of the London and North Eastern Railway from the Grouping of the railways in 1923, and the LNER itself formed part of the nationally owned British Railways from 1948. As mineral extraction declined in the areas originally served, the fortunes of many branch lines declined too, and in the 1960s many lines closed. Many of the former GNR lines were closed, and the remaining GNR Yorkshire routes are Doncaster to Shaftholme Junction (towards York), Doncaster to Leeds, and Leeds to Bradford via New Pudsey.
Authorisation of the Great Northern Railway The Great Northern Railway got its authorising Act of Parliament on 26 June 1846. It was a huge project: its authorised share capital was £5.6 million.Donald J Grant, Directory of the Railway Companies of Great Britain, Matador Publishers, Kibworth Beauchamp, 2017, , pages 236 and 237 At first it had named itself the London and York Railway, and York was to be its northern destination. There were to be branch lines to Sheffield and Leeds. However, Parliament reduced the scope of the project, and the Sheffield and Wakefield branches were removed from the scheme; the name was changed to the Great Northern Railway. The authorised network was therefore to be a main line to York: 186 miles, and a loop line from Peterborough to Bawtry via Boston and Lincoln: 86 miles; in addition there were some short branches in the south.Charles H Grinling, History of the Great Northern Railway, 1845 – 1895, Methuen and Co, London, 1898, pages 21, 56 and 57John Wrottesley, The Great Northern Railway: volume I: Origins and Development, B T Batsford Limited, London, 1979, , page 14
The directors were elated to have received authorisation for their line after a considerable Parliamentary struggle, but were dismayed to have lost the Yorkshire branches, which they considered commercially important. They set about securing alternative means of serving the lost areas.
Wrottesley elaborates: The GN itself failed to gain independent access to Leeds only because of an error in the levels, as the [Parliamentary] Committee felt the GN should have its line, and rejected competing schemes of the Midland and the Leeds & Dewsbury. This disappointment was somewhat offset by the assured success of the Leeds Central station Bill, which [became] an Act until 22 July 1848, to which was scheduled the running power agreement between the GN and M&L [Manchester and Leeds Railway]. The capital was £320,000, equally provided by the four companies [that were to build the station jointly]... The M&L had just changed its name to the Lancashire & Yorkshire.Wrottesley, volume I, page 27
The Board decided to concentrate actual construction at first on the East Lincolnshire section of its future network, so that the early beginnings in Yorkshire were, for some time, remote from the rest of the emerging GNR system.Wrottesley volume I, page 21
Doncaster to Leeds Wakefield, and from there Leeds, had been lost, but there were ways that GNR Trains could reach them. Those centres were so important that urgent efforts were made to get access to them. In October 1846 the Great Northern Railway joined with the Leeds and Thirsk Railway, the Leeds and Dewsbury Railway, and the Manchester and Leeds Railway, to deposit a Parliamentary Bill for a joint Leeds Central station, to be built on the north side of the River Aire. The Bill was passed after a delay, on 22 July 1848, with capital of £320,000. By this means the GNR secured a share in a Leeds terminal.Wrottesley volume I, pages 24 and 27
To reach Leeds from Doncaster, the GNR negotiated with the Manchester and Leeds Railway, (which was soon to be joined with others to form the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway), for running powers for GNR trains over part of its proposed line. An agreement was made on 1 May 1847 giving the GNR running powers from Askern (north of Doncaster) to Wakefield via Knottingley, and to Methley, where the M&LR line would make a junction with the Midland Railway. In return, the agreement gave the M&LR powers from Askern to Doncaster. The arrangement was ratified in the Leeds Central Act of 22 July 1848.David Joy, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: volume VIII: South and West Yorkshire, David & Charles Publishers, Newton Abbot, 1984, , page 208
Shaftholme Junction is where the present-day Knottingley line diverges from the East Coast Main Line. Edmund Denison is supposed to have stated in 1850 that the GNR ended "in a ploughed field" thereGrinling, page 96Grinling, page 141 However Shaftholme Junction did not exist until a later time, and the location of the end-on junction was Askern Junction, 264 yards further on, towards Knottingley.W J Scott, The Northern Termini of the Great Northern Railway, in the Railway Magazine January 1906
The GNR now negotiated with the Midland Railway for running powers over their line from Methley Junction to Leeds. The Midland Railway was controlled by George Hudson, the so-called Railway King. Hudson was a skilled financier, who used extremely underhand methods to get his way, and was later exposed and cast out of his positions of power. At this stage, however, Hudson was still reigning, and when Hudson signed an undertaking granting the GNR the running powers they sought, the GNR took him at his word. In exchange for the running powers, the GNR agreed not to lodge its intended Parliamentary Bill for a Leeds line.Wrottesley volume I, page 28Joy, page 41
Early in June 1848 the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway opened its Wakefield-Knottingley-Goole line, and it was ready to open the Knottingley-Askern junction section. The GNR line between Askern junction and Stockbridge (a short distance north of Doncaster) was ready, so the formal opening from Knottingley to Stockbridge was on 5 June 1848; public traffic commenced on the next day between Knottingley and Askern, and on the following day, over the GNR between Askern and Stockbridge, a distance of 2 miles 45 chains. The remainder, 2 miles 4 chains, from the Bentley road to a temporary station east of the Great North Road at Doncaster was opened on the following 5 August in time for the St Leger race meeting.Grinling, page 79Wrottesley, volume I, page 36
The L&YR provided a service of five trains each way on weekdays and two each way on Sundays. The carrier Pickfords dealt with some goods traffic for the time being. This was a remote and disconnected section of the GNR, but the GNR started to operate some of the trains on the Doncaster to Knottingley line from August 1849. The Doncaster station had been makeshift, and a proper station, about a half mile north, was in use from mid-1851.Wrottesley, volume I, pages 43 and 44
Doncaster to Leeds operation started As construction proceeded further south, the GNR thought it was now in a position to start running trains between Peterborough and Leeds. The route as far north as Doncaster was very roundabout, via Boston and Lincoln. From Doncaster it was to be over the L&YR between Askern junction and Methley junction, then over the Midland Railway to Gelderd RoadThe location is sometimes spelt Geldard Road. junction just outside Leeds; trains reversed there over a short section of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway to reach the Leeds Central station. The date set for the commencement of through running was 4 September 1849, once again because of the St Leger racing meeting at Doncaster.
However, there was a setback; notwithstanding George Hudson's October 1847 agreement, the Midland Railway authorities now demanded that the GNR undertake to abandon forever any rights to apply for an independent line to Leeds. The GNR refused this extraordinary demand, and the Midland Railway authorities severed the junction at Methley on 3 September 1849 to prevent the running of the GNR trains. As a contemporary newspaper recorded,
The Superintendent at Doncaster, having heard it whispered that something was going on at the junction of the Doncaster line with the Midland Railway at Methley, sent over a special engine before the [planned excursion] trains and found the servants of the Midland Company had removed the points at the junction, so that had the train proceeded thither it would have inevitably run off the road.Atrocious Conduct in a Railway Company, article in the Doncaster Chronicle newspaper, recorded in Joy, page 113
Grinling's account of the event is much more prosaic:
some over-zealous officers of the former [Midland Railway] Company took the high-handed action of pulling up the junction rails at Methley to prevent these trains from running, and it was only by producing their agreement with King Hudson and threatening legal proceedings that the Great Northern authorities got them replaced in time. This done, however, the Company was able to profit considerably by the race-going excursionists.Grinling, page 86
It was not until 1 October that the Midland Railway relented, and GNR trains ran to Leeds by their route.
In 1849 the GNR decided to use a separate station at Leeds to save money, and it told the three other companies in the joint Central Station scheme that it would withdraw. In March 1850 a contract for building the separate station and an engine shed was let. The transfer to the new "Low Level" station took place on 14 May 1850.
Barnsley over the South Yorkshire Railway The South Yorkshire Railway (formally known as the South Yorkshire, Doncaster and Goole Railway) was authorised on 22 July 1847 to build from Doncaster to Barnsley. The GNR were given running powers over it.Wrottesley volume I, page 27 It opened its line from Swinton to a triangular junction south of Doncaster station on 10 November 1849, and later extended its line to Barnsley on 1 January 1851. Taking advantage of the running powers, the GNR ran a passenger service between Doncaster and Barnsley; there were four trains each way on weekdays only.Wrottesley, volume I, page 45
Reaching York