Midland Railway - Grouping

Grouping

In 1914 all the railways in the country were taken under the control of the Railway Executive Committee and were paid an amount based on their receipts during 1913. All excursion traffic was cancelled. Passenger service and the steamers across the Irish Sea were limited in order to cater for munitions and troops trains, which at times overwhelmed the system. By the end of the war overcrowded trains were running at only half the prewar mileage. The overworked locomotives had not had the benefit of the prewar standard of maintenance, while many of the staff had never returned from the battlefront.

The Midland had not recovered from this when in 1921 the Government passed the Railways Act, with those uncomfortable bedfellows, the Midland and the LNWR, joining the Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Caledonian and the Glasgow and South Western Railway, along with such lines as the Furness and the North Staffordshire to form the London Midland and Scottish Railway.