The Great Central Main Line (GCML), also known as the London Extension of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR), is a former railway line which opened in 1899 linking Sheffield with Marylebone Station in London via Nottingham and Leicester.
The GCML was the last main line railway built in Britain during the Victorian period, and it was not initially a financial success, only recovering under the leadership of Sam Fay. Though initially planned largely with long-distance passenger services in mind, in practice the line's most important function became to carry goods traffic, notably coal.
In the 1960s, the line was viewed by Doctor Richard Beeching as an unnecessary duplication of other lines which served the same places, especially the Midland Main Line and to a lesser extent the West Coast Main Line. Most of the route was closed between 1966 and 1969 under the Beeching axe.
Read more about Great Central Main Line: Route, Remaining Infrastructure
Famous quotes containing the words central, main and/or line:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Sinclair Lewis is the perfect example of the false sense of time of the newspaper world.... [ellipsis in source] He was always dominated by an artificial time when he wrote Main Street.... He did not create actual human beings at any time. That is what makes it newspaper. Sinclair Lewis is the typical newspaperman and everything he says is newspaper. The difference between a thinker and a newspaperman is that a thinker enters right into things, a newspaperman is superficial.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“I had lived over twenty years without the legal right to be alone one hour M to have the exclusive use of one foot of space M to receive an unopened letter, or to preserve a line of manuscript “from sharp and sly inspection.””
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)