The Great Northern Railway in Yorkshire

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.

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.

[1] 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.

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.

[3][4] 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.

[5]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.

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.

[16] 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.

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.

[17]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.

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.

[21][22] On 8 August 1850, GNR trains first began to run through to York from London Kings Cross (Maiden Lane), a distance of 210 miles.

[27] The GNR's access to West Yorkshire was further enhanced by the opening to the public on 5 October 1857 of the Bradford, Wakefield and Leeds Railway.

[27][30][32] In the 1863 session of Parliament the BW&LR sought powers to change its name to the West Yorkshire Railway, and this was sanctioned by an Act of 21 July 1863.

[35][36] The carriage of coal to London was a prime business for the Great Northern Railway, and the principal source was the South Yorkshire Coalfield.

[38] The Great Northern Railway now, in 1866, had a direct route under its own (partly joint) control between Doncaster and Leeds and Bradford, and by running powers to Halifax.

[39] The NER opened the line on 2 January 1871, and the GNR transferred its expresses and some slower trains to the new route, with a significant saving in journey time.

The terrain was exceptionally difficult, and because of concerns about practicality, the project was drastically cut back in Parliament to a short line from Halifax to Ovenden.

In 1884 another very ambitious scheme was put forward for a line from Huddersfield to join a planned Hull and Barnsley Railway station in Halifax, and to run to the St Paul's district of the town.

The terrain was hilly and exceptionally difficult for railways, but there was industry in the districts, originally attracted by the availability of coal deposits that were now nearing exhaustion.

[44] When the Leeds, Bradford and Halifax Junction Railway had built its main line, it ran north of Pudsey, to avoid the difficult topography there.

This was still unsatisfactory to local people, and in 1882 there was a rapprochement with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, which encouraged thoughts of establishing a new connection to Low Moor.

At the east end the connection near Stanningley was to be reversed to allow direct running from Bramley through Pudsey to Bradford or Low Moor.

In fact the company never raised enough money, and its network was confined to colliery and quarry connections in the area around Rothwell, south-east of Leeds.

When these became available, they needed rail access to transport the mineral to market, and after an initial period of disagreement, it emerged that a single jointly owned and operated railway was appropriate to serve the district.

As roads were improved, partly funded by local authority rates levied on the railways, motor lorries would also abstract business from goods trains.

The East Coast Main Line is a busy passenger and freight railway using the GNR route from London to Shaftholme Junction, and to Leeds.