British Rail: A New History

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Morrison, Brian; etal. (1986). Motive Power Annual 1987. Shepperton: Ian Allan. ISBN 0-7110-1635-6.

The Broad Gauge Story". Journal of the Monmouthshire Railway Society. Summer 1985 . Retrieved 24 November 2006. RAIL1204 for records relating to the Pullman Car Company, 1909-1985, including minutes, agreements and share records A chronology of the construction of Britain’s railways 1778-1855 by Leslie James (Ian Allan Ltd, 1983) Professor John Uff (QC FREng) (2000). "Investigation The Southall Rail Accident Inquiry Report". The Railways Archive. (Originally published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office) . Retrieved 30 November 2006.Baker, Stuart K. (1988) [1977]. Rail Atlas Great Britain & Ireland (5thed.). Yeovil: Oxford Publishing Co. p.40. ISBN 0-86093-419-5. T419. RAIL 1030– principally maps and plans of proposed and constructed railways but includes some Ordnance Survey maps. Hylton, Stuart (2007). The Grand Experiment: the Birth of the Railway Age 1820-1845. Ian Allan Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7110-3172-2. RAIL 1036– maps, plans and surveys from overseas including North American, South American and Japanese railways maps, plus maps of European countries and their railway networks. This ended the BR blue period as new liveries were adopted gradually. Infrastructure remained the responsibility of the regions until the "Organisation for Quality" initiative in 1991 when this too was transferred to the sectors. The Anglia Region was created in late 1987, its first General Manager being John Edmonds, who began his appointment on 19 October 1987. Full separation from the Eastern Region – apart from engineering design needs – occurred on 29 April 1988. It handled the services from Fenchurch Street and Liverpool Street, its western boundary being Hertford East, Meldreth and Whittlesea. [38] [39]

Before 1923 there were many private railway companies operating across Britain. In 1923 over 120 of these companies merged into four new groups: Yet nationalisation did not solve the railways’ financial problems. From the mid-1950s up to privatisation, BR failed to make a profit, notwithstanding a series of cost-cutting expedients. The most notorious of these were the closures overseen by Richard Beeching in the early 1960s, when over two thousand stations were eliminated from the network. Wolmar reminds us that this was merely the peak of a continuous retrenchment drive, which saw successive rounds of station and branch-line closures, staffing reductions and sales of assets, including the fifty-four hotels, the multi-million-pound wine cellar and the handful of golf courses BR had inherited from the Big Four. The other side of economisation was the launch of new products, such as the InterCity brand, to draw in more passengers. Some of these proved effective, but the surplus was never enough to pay for the loss-making parts of BR’s business.The rail transport system in Great Britain developed during the 19th century. After the grouping of 1923 under the Railways Act 1921, there were four large railway companies, each dominating its own geographic area: the Great Western Railway (GWR), the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the Southern Railway (SR). During World War I, the railways were under state control, which continued until 1921. Complete nationalisation had been considered, and the Railways Act 1921 [3] is sometimes considered as a precursor to that, but the concept was rejected. Nationalisation was subsequently carried out after World War II, under the Transport Act 1947. This Act made provision for the nationalisation of the network as part of a policy of nationalising public services by Clement Attlee's Labour Government. British Railways came into existence as the business name of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission (BTC) on 1 January 1948 when it took over the assets of the Big Four. [4] Keddell, F (1890). The Nationalisation of Our Railway System: Its Justices and Advantages. London: The Modern Press.