“TO anyone who has even a superficial knowledge of English railways, it is scarcely a matter for surprise that continual additions are being made to them,” wrote Bertram Fletcher-Robinson. His article for the very first Railway Magazine in July 1897 drew attention to what he called the “senseless opposition” to new railways and “the errors of landowners in our fathers’ and grandfathers’ time” which had made modern additions necessary.
But while Mr Fletcher-Robinson, a respected author who counted literary contemporaries Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and P G Wodehouse among his friends, said this meant the majority of new railways were being built for “the shortening of circuitous routes and the opening-up of populous districts often carefully avoided by the main line”, he explained the decision by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway to build a route to London was due to it having no line of its own south of Nottingham.
The MSLR (which would officially become known as the Great Central Railway from August 1, 1897 to reflect its expansion) had hitherto depended on agreements with its competitors for traffic to the capital. For a number of years, the London & North Western Railway’s relationship with the MSLR was a hostile one. The LNWR managed to use contracts for traffic and operational arrangements to its advantage, to frustrate the MSLR’s expansion plans and also its dealings with the Great Northern Railway, with which the MSLR had a more amicable partnership.
Determined to achieve greater autonomy and retain the proportion of profits that it would otherwise pass on to other companies for carriage of its traffic southwards, it continued to pursue options for a London extension, despite setbacks.
Chairman Sir Edward Watkin (who, for most of his tenure, also held the same position at the South Eastern Railway and Metropolitan Railway) saw the potential of using all
