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Railway Clearing House
The Railway Clearing House (RCH) was an organisation set up to manage the allocation of revenue collected by pre-grouping railway companies for the conveyance of passengers and goods over the lines (or using the rolling stock) of other companies. It went on to become the major regulatory body overseeing the day-to-day running of railways in Great Britain and setting common standards for railway companies, which ensured their safety and interoperability. The RCH also produced fare structures governing many aspects of rail transport at a national level and set limits on price increases for passenger travel. Rationale When passengers travelled between two stations on the same railway, using trains provided by the same company, that company was entitled to the whole of the fare. Similarly, when goods were consigned between two stations on the same railway, using wagons provided by the same company, that company was entitled to the whole of the fee. However, when coaches or wagons o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Transport Commission
The British Transport Commission (BTC) was created by Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government as a part of its nationalisation programme, to oversee railways, canals and road freight transport in Great Britain (Northern Ireland had the separate Ulster Transport Authority). Its general duty under the Transport Act 1947 was to provide an efficient, adequate, economical and properly integrated system of public inland transport and port facilities within Great Britain for passengers and goods, excluding transport by air. The BTC came into operation on 1 January 1948. Its first chairman was Lord Hurcomb, with Miles Beevor as Chief Secretary. Its main holdings were the networks and assets of the Big Four national regional railway companies: the Great Western Railway, London and North Eastern Railway, London, Midland and Scottish Railway and the Southern Railway. It also took over 55 other railway undertakings, 19 canal undertakings and 246 road haulage firms, as well as th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birmingham And Gloucester Railway
The Birmingham and Gloucester Railway (B&GR) was the first name of the railway linking the cities in its name and of the company which pioneered and developed it; the line opened in stages in 1840, using a terminus at Camp Hill in Birmingham. It linked with the Bristol and Gloucester Railway in Gloucester, but at first that company's line was broad gauge, and Gloucester was a point of the necessary but inconvenient transhipment of goods and passengers onto gauge that became the national standard. Nearly all of the original main line remains active as a "trunk" route, also known as an arterial route or line. Its main line incorporated the Lickey Incline of track climbing a 1-in-37 (2.7%) gradient, northbound (and descending in the other). The climb was a challenge or impediment for many of the heaviest loads and weaker engines during the era of steam traction. Having attracted its own patronage, capital and accomplished fully functional transformation and employment of land, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Railway Companies' Committee
The Railway Companies' Association was a co-ordinating body for British railway companies from 1867 until nationalisation in 1948. Its purpose was to protect the interests of the companies and their shareholders, chiefly against parliamentary interference. It was an early example of a lobby organisation. History The Association had its roots in a meeting of railway company chairmen, held at the Railway Clearing House (RCH) in March 1854, to discuss parliamentary matters of concern, but a properly constituted organisation developed only slowly. This was partly a result of the independent nature of the Victorian railway companies and the number of company chairmen and senior officers who were Lords or MPs in their own right, and partly a reflection of the gradually increasing role of government in regulating railway company actions and the need for an 'industry' response. By 1858 a United Railway Companies' Committee (URCC) had been formed, but it foundered after three years and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Railway Clearing Act 1850
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prepared flat surface, rail vehicles (rolling stock) are directionally guided by the tracks on which they run. Tracks usually consist of steel rails, installed on sleepers (ties) set in ballast, on which the rolling stock, usually fitted with metal wheels, moves. Other variations are also possible, such as "slab track", in which the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface. Rolling stock in a rail transport system generally encounters lower frictional resistance than rubber-tyred road vehicles, so passenger and freight cars (carriages and wagons) can be coupled into longer trains. The operation is carried out by a railway company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facilit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. , the Internet Archive holds over 35 million books and texts, 8.5 million movies, videos and TV shows, 894 thousand software programs, 14 million audio files, 4.4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 241 thousand concerts, and over 734 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive allows the public to upload and download digital material to its data cluster, but the bulk of its data is collected automatically by its web crawlers, which work to preserve as much of the public web as possible. Its web archiving, web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Newspaper Archive
The British Newspaper Archive web site provides access to searchable digitized archives of British and Irish newspapers. It was launched in November 2011. History The British Library Newspapers section was based in Colindale in north London, until 2013, and is now divided between the St Pancras and Boston Spa sites. The library has an almost complete collection of British and Irish newspapers since 1840. This is partly because of the legal deposit legislation of 1869, which required newspapers to supply a copy of each edition of a newspaper to the library. London editions of national daily and Sunday newspapers are complete back to 1801. In total, the collection consists of 660,000 bound volumes and 370,000 reels of microfilm containing tens of millions of newspapers with 52,000 titles on 45 km of shelves. After the closure of Colindale in November 2013, access to the 750 million original printed pages was maintained via an automated and climate-controlled storage facil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838 with the initial route completed between London and Bristol in 1841. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of —later slightly widened to —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways. The GWR was called by some "God's Wonderful Railway" and by others the "Great Way Round" but it was famed as the "Holi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmondson Railway Ticket
The Edmondson railway ticket was a system for recording the payment of railway fares and accounting for the revenue raised, introduced in the 1840s.Farr, M (1997). "Edmondson, Thomas". In: Simmonds and Biddle (1997), Page 141 It is named after its inventor, Thomas Edmondson, a trained cabinet maker, who became a station master on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway in England. He introduced his system on the Manchester and Leeds Railway. Previously, railway companies had used handwritten tickets, as was the practice for stagecoaches, but it was laborious for a ticket clerk to write out a ticket for each passenger and long queues were common at busy stations. A faster means of issuing pre-printed tickets was needed. There was also a need to provide accountability by serial-numbering each ticket to prevent unscrupulous clerks from pocketing the fares, who now had to reconcile the takings against the serial numbers of the unsold tickets at the end of each day. The Edmondson sys ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newcastle And Carlisle Railway
The Newcastle & Carlisle Railway (N&CR) was an English railway company formed in 1825 that built a line from Newcastle upon Tyne on Britain's east coast, to Carlisle, on the west coast. The railway began operating mineral trains in 1834 between Blaydon and Hexham, and passengers were carried for the first time the following year. The rest of the line opened in stages, completing a through route between Carlisle and Gateshead, south of the River Tyne in 1837. The directors repeatedly changed their intentions for the route at the eastern end of the line, but finally a line was opened from Scotswood to a Newcastle terminal in 1839. That line was extended twice, reaching the new Newcastle Central Station in 1851. A branch line was built to reach lead mines around Alston, opening from Haltwhistle in 1852. For many years the line ran trains on the right-hand track on double line sections. In 1837 a station master on the line, Thomas Edmondson, introduced pre-printed numbered pastebo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manchester And Birmingham Railway
The Manchester and Birmingham Railway was built between Manchester and Crewe and opened in stages from 1840. Between Crewe and Birmingham, trains were worked by the Grand Junction Railway. The M&BR was merged into the London and North Western Railway in 1846. History Plans After the building of the Grand Junction Railway and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, investors began to look for other routes south of Manchester. From 1835, the GJR was considering a branch to the Potteries, while the Manchester and Cheshire Junction Railway was planning a line from Manchester to Crewe with branches outwards. Meanwhile, George Stephenson was investigating a line from Manchester and Stockport to the Potteries, which developed into a proposal for a "Manchester South Union Railway". Also involved were proposals for competing lines through the Trent valley to Rugby. After two years of proposals and counter-proposals, what emerged was a scheme to run from a junction from the GJR at Che ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lancaster And Preston Railway
The Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway opened its twenty-mile line in 1840 in Lancashire, England. The company was not commercially successful. When the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway opened in 1846, the L&PJR became part of a busy trunk railway. It had never had the money to provide substantial track equipment or proper signalling arrangements. Most of the line is in use today as part of the West Coast Main Line railway and has been electrified. None of the L&PJR stations is still in use. A chaotic situation developed in which the company did not have a legal board of directors and the Carlisle company ran unauthorised trains over the line. The Lancaster Canal Company had a yearly lease of the line and was unwilling to spend money on improvements without security of tenure. No proper system of safe operation was imposed and in 1848 a rear-end collision took place at Bay Horse station exposing the shortcomings. The situation was regularised at the end of 1848 when the Lanca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liverpool And Manchester Railway
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) was the first inter-city railway in the world. It opened on 15 September 1830 between the Lancashire towns of Liverpool and Manchester in England. It was also the first railway to rely exclusively on locomotives driven by steam power, with no horse-drawn traffic permitted at any time; the first to be entirely double track throughout its length; the first to have a true signalling system; the first to be fully timetabled; and the first to carry mail. Trains were hauled by company steam locomotives between the two towns, though private wagons and carriages were allowed. Cable haulage of freight trains was down the steeply-graded Wapping Tunnel to Liverpool Docks from Edge Hill junction. The railway was primarily built to provide faster transport of raw materials, finished goods and passengers between the Port of Liverpool and the cotton mills and factories of Manchester and surrounding towns. Designed and built by George Step ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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