Southern Railway (UK) - History - Constituent Companies and Formation in 1923

Constituent Companies and Formation in 1923

See also: List of constituent companies of the Southern Railway

Four important railway companies operated along the south coast of England prior to 1923 – the London & South Western Railway (LSWR), the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR), and the South Eastern Railway and the London Chatham and Dover Railway. (The last two had formed a working union known as the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR) in 1899.) These companies were amalgamated, together with several small independently operated lines and non-working companies, to form the Southern Railway in 1923, which operated 2186 route miles (3518 km) of railway. The new railway also partly owned several joint lines: notably the East London Railway, the West London Extension Joint Railway, the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway and the Weymouth and Portland Railway.

The first main line railway in southern England was the London and Southampton Railway, (renamed LSWR in 1838), which completed its line in May 1840. It was quickly followed by the London and Brighton Railway (September 1841), and the South Eastern Railway (formerly the South Eastern and Dover Railway) in February 1844. The LSWR branched out to destinations including Portsmouth, Salisbury and later Exeter and Plymouth. It grew to be the largest of the four constituent companies. The LBSCR was a smaller railway than its LSWR neighbour, serving the port of Newhaven and several popular holiday resorts on the south coast and operating much of the south London suburban network. It had been almost bankrupt in 1867, but during the last twenty-five years of its existence it had been well-managed and profitable. It had begun to electrify routes around London (using an overhead line system) from 1909 to compete with the new electric trams that were taking away some of its traffic. Finally, the SECR had been created after years of wasteful and damaging competition between the two companies involved, with duplication of routes and services. Both companies had been unpopular with the travelling public and operated poorly maintained plant and infrastructure. Nevertheless real progress had been made in rectifying this during the period 1899-1922.

The formation of the Southern Railway was rooted in the outbreak of the First World War, when all British railway companies were taken into government control. Many members of staff joined the armed forces and it was not possible to build and maintain equipment at peacetime levels. After the war the government considered permanent nationalisation but instead decided on a compulsory amalgamation of the railways into four large groups through the 1921 Railways Act, known as the Grouping. The resultant amalgamation of the four south coast railways to form the Southern Railway meant that several duplicate routes and management structures were inherited. The LSWR had most influence on the new company, although genuine attempts were made to integrate the services and staff after 1923. The rationalisation of the system led to the downgrading of some routes in favour of more direct lines to the channel ports, and the creation of a coordinated, but not necessarily centralised form of management based at the former LSWR headquarters in Waterloo station.

In addition to its railway operations, the Southern Railway inherited several important port and harbour facilities along the south coast, including Southampton, Newhaven and Folkestone. It also ran services to the harbours at Portsmouth, Dover and Plymouth. These had come into being for handling ocean-going and cross-channel passenger traffic and the size of the railway-owned installations reflected the prosperity that the industry generated. This source of traffic, together with the density of population served in the London suburbs ensured that the Southern would be a predominantly passenger-orientated railway.