Back Track
Much of East Anglia east of Cambridge and Peterborough was monopolised by the Great Eastern Railway. However, in the south the GE faced competition from the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway and in the north from the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway or ‘M&GN’.
The origins of the M&GN
What became the M&GN system grew out of local schemes to link towns either side of King's Lynn. To the west, the ambitiouslynamed Norwich & Spalding Railway opened its line from Spalding to Holbeach for goods on 9th August and passengers on 15th November 1858, going on to Sutton Bridge on 1st July 1862. This was complemented by the Lynn & Sutton Bridge Railway opened in November 1864 for freight, passenger traffic following from 1st March 1866, and the Peterborough, Wisbech and & Sutton Bridge and Spalding & Bourne companies’ lines opened on 1st August 1866. On 23rd July 1866 an Act was passed authorising the amalgamation of the L&SB and S&B to form the Midland & Eastern Railway, the new company in turn leasing the N&S. Both the Great Northern Railway and the Midland Railway had an interest in these lines, which gave them access to Norfolk. The GN worked the lines between Bourne and King's Lynn and the Midland the PW&SB; in 1867 joint operation of the M&E was sanctioned as the Bourne & Lynn Joint. The N&S was formally absorbed by the M&E in 1877.
Further east, the Great Yarmouth & Stalham Light Railway,1 later the Yarmouth & North Norfolk, opened in stages from 1877 to 1880 and ceased to be a light railway on extension to North Walsham on 13th June 1881. The Lynn & Fakenham Railway opened to Massingham in 1879 and on to Fakenham on 6th August 1880. The two companies promoted a line to join their two systems, opened from Fakenham to Melton Constable in 1882 and on to North Walsham on 5th April 1883. At Melton Constable a locomotive works was established and a branch from there to Norwich opened in stages during 1882, reaching its Norwich City terminus on 2nd December. Also in 1882, the Yarmouth Union Railway opened a tramway from the Y&NN Beach station in Yarmouth to the quay, linking to the GE's quay tramway. From 1st January 1883 the three companies amalgamated as the Eastern & Midlands Railway, which in turn took over the M&E and PW&SB from 1st July, although their lines continued to be worked by the GN and Midland respectively.
In January 1886 a 4½-mile loop eastwards from a new station at South Lynn, to join the original line at Bawsey Siding, eliminated reversal at King's Lynn for through trains between the two halves of the system. A line north from Melton Constable reached Holt in 1884 and Cromer Beach on 16th June 1887, but a proposed branch from Kelling on this line to Blakeney was abandoned. Melton Constable
