Midland Main Line - History

History

The Midland Main Line was built in stages between the 1830s and the 1870s, originating in three lines which met at the Tri Junct Station in Derby, which became the Midland Railway.

First to arrive was the line built by the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway (B&DJR) from Hampton-in-Arden, Warwickshire (on the London and Birmingham Railway) to Derby, which opened on 12 August 1839. This section is now known as the Cross-Country Route through Birmingham New Street to Bristol Temple Meads.

This was followed on 1 July 1840 by the North Midland Railway, which ran from Derby to Leeds Hunslet Lane via Chesterfield, Rotherham Masborough (from where the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway ran a branch to Sheffield Wicker), Swinton and Normanton. This avoided Sheffield, Barnsley, and Wakefield in order to reduce gradients.

On the same day the Midland Counties Railway, which ran from Derby and Nottingham to Leicester Campbell Street, was extended from Leicester to a temporary station on the northern outskirts of Rugby. A few months later, the Rugby viaduct was finished and the Midland Counties Railway reached the London and Birmingham Railway's Rugby station. This cut 11 miles (18 km) off the B&DJR route via Hampton-in-Arden.

When these three companies merged to form the Midland Railway on 10 May 1844, the Midland did not have its own route to London, and relied upon a junction at Rugby with the London and Birmingham's line (which became part of the London and North Western Railway on 1 January 1846) to London Euston for access to the capital.

By the 1850s the junction at Rugby had become severely congested, and so the Midland Railway constructed a route from Leicester to Hitchin via Bedford. giving access to London via the Great Northern Railway from Hitchin. The line avoids Northampton, instead going via Kettering and Wellingborough in the east of Northamptonshire. This line met with similar problems at Hitchin as the former alignment had at Rugby, so in 1868 a line was opened from Bedford via Luton to St Pancras.

The final stretch of what is considered to be the modern Midland Main Line was a short cut-off from Chesterfield through Sheffield, which was opened in 1870.

The mid-1870s saw the Midland line extended northwards through the Yorkshire Dales via the Settle-Carlisle Railway, now considered a secondary route and not part of the present-day Midland Main Line.

Before the line closures of the Beeching era, the lines to Buxton and via Millers Dale were considered the main lines from London to Manchester, carrying named expresses such as The Palatine. Express trains to Leeds and Scotland such as the Thames-Clyde Express mainly used the Erewash Valley Line then on to the Settle and Carlisle Line. Expresses to Edinburgh Waverley, such as The Waverley travelled through Corby and Nottingham.

Also part of the line, as defined by Network Rail, are the Erewash Valley Line, the Leicester to Burton upon Trent Line, the Oakham to Kettering Line and sections of the Nottingham to Lincoln Line (as far east as Newark) and the Birmingham to Peterborough Line (between Nuneaton and Oakham).

Partly to appease the concerns and opposition of landowners along the route, in places some of it was built to avoid large estates and rural towns, and to reduce construction costs the railways followed natural contours, resulting in many curves and bends. This has also resulted in the MML passing through some relatively hilly areas, such as Sharnbrook (where there is a 1 in 119 gradient from the south taking the line to 340 feet (100 m) above sea level). This has left a legacy of lower maximum speeds on the line compared with other main lines. The response to a similar situation on the West Coast Main Line has been the adoption of tilting trains, but there has been no proposal for such a solution on the Midland line.

In 1977 the Parliamentary Select Committee on Nationalised Industries recommmended considering electrification of more of Britain's rail network, and by 1979 BR presented a range of options that included electrifying the Midland Main Line from London to Yorkshire by 2000. By 1983 the line had been electrified from Moorgate to Bedford, but proposals to continue electrification to Nottingham and Sheffield have not been implemented.

The introduction of the High Speed Train (HST) in May 1983 following the Leicester area resignalling brought about an increase of the ruling line speed on the fast lines from 90 miles per hour (140 km/h) to 110 miles per hour (180 km/h).

Between 2001 and 2003 the line between Derby and Sheffield was upgraded from 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) to 110 miles per hour (180 km/h) as part of Operation Princess, the Virgin Cross Country route upgrade.

Numerous proposals have been put forward to improve speed and journey times, only later to be dropped. Most recently there are plans for 125 miles per hour (201 km/h) running on extended stretches, improved signalling, increased number of tracks and the revival of proposals to extend electrification from Bedford to Sheffield (see Future section, below).