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Midland Railway
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{{dablink|This article is about the historical British railway company. For other uses see
Midland Railway (disambiguation)}}
The '''Midland Railway''' (MR) was a
railway company in the
United Kingdom, which existed from
1844 to
1922. It was formed in
1844 by the merger of the
Midland Counties Railway, the
North Midland Railway, and the
Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway.
The Midland owned a large network of railway lines centred on the
East Midlands, and its head office was in
Derby. The MR's main line, known unsurprisingly as the
Midland Main Line, connected the East Midlands to
London St Pancras station and to
Sheffield Midland station. The company also owned the main lines connecting the East Midlands to
Birmingham and
Bristol, and to
Manchester. In the
1870s a dispute with the
London and North Western Railway over access rights to the LNWR line to Scotland caused the MR to construct the
Settle-Carlisle Railway Settle and Carlisle (S&C) line, the highest main line in England, in order to secure the company's access to Scotland; ironically the dispute with the LNWR was settled before the S&C was built, but
Parliament refused to allow the MR to withdraw from the project. It also owned a number of less important lines, and in partnership with the
Great Northern Railway it owned the
Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway to provide connections from the Midlands to East Anglia; the M&GN was the UK's biggest joint railway system.
The Midland pioneered the use
gas lighting of
trains in Britain, put third-class carriages on all its trains in
1872, and abolished second class in
1875, giving third class passengers the level of comfort formerly afforded to second class passengers (elsewhere some third class passengers travelled in open wagons) and introduced the first British
Pullman Company Pullman supplementary-fare cars. The non-contiguous numbering of classes, with 1st and 3rd class only, continued until
1956, when third class was renamed second.
The company was
Grouping Act grouped into the
London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) on
January 1,
1923 and was the most influential of the pre-grouping companies that formed the LMS.
See also
locomotives of the Midland Railway.
External links
-
Midland Railway Society
{{UK-rail-stub}}
{{LMSconstituents}}
category:Pre-grouping British railway companies
category:LMS constituents
Main article:
Midland Railway
Category:LMS constituents
category:Pre-grouping British railway companies
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