Southern Railway Routes West of Salisbury - Grouping of The Railways

Grouping of The Railways

In the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth, Parliament had fostered competition between railway companies, seeing most co-operative alliances as anti-competitive. However the demands of the First World War, in which the railways had been directed by Government, and had been unable to renew and maintain their systems normally, coupled with the general external competitive situation, had led to a situation in which continued competition was unsustainable, and the Government enacted the Railways Act, 1921 which compelled the railway companies of Great Britain to combine into four groups—the so-called "big four"; the process is called "the grouping". This took effect on 1 January 1923, when the L&SWR was absorbed into the new Southern Railway along with its southerly neighbour, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. The GWR formed a group of its own (combining with a large number of smaller lines). Competition to the south, to Portsmouth and Epsom ceased, but critically competition in the West with the GWR was unaffected.