Title:
GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY SOCIETY
Level: Category
Miscellaneous archives; Societies' and Organisations' records
Level: Fonds
GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY SOCIETY
Scope and Content:
The Great Eastern Railway Society Collection of Historical Records and Relics comprises items relating to the Great Eastern Railway and its progenitors and successors to the present day. Currently the Collection consists of over 800 separate donations which total some 12,000 individual pieces.

The Collection is primarily a research resource and thus principally consists of documentary material in all forms. As collecting information is the primary objective some items consist of copies of documents rather than the original documents themselves.

The Society will continue to add to the collection material relating to the Great Eastern Railway itself, its progenitors and successors, and to its joint and associated lines, as well as to other smaller independent railways in the East Anglian region which have no study group of their own.

Admin History:
An amalgamation, authorised in 1862 of the Eastern Counties Railway with the Norfolk, the Eastern Union, East Anglian, and East Suffolk (all of which it already worked), giving the amalgamated company a railway monopoly east of Cambridge.

The Great Eastern Railway grew out of the Eastern Counties Railway, which was the first to open to traffic in the East Anglian region in 1839 between Mile End and Romford. It was intended to link London with Norwich via Colchester and Ipswich, but started to run into financial difficulties before it even started operating.

In 1840 the London and Blackwall and the Northern and Eastern Railways both started. The N&ER was to link London and Cambridge and then north, and shared the ECR's line from the Shoreditch terminus (opened in 1840) to Stratford where it branched into the Lea Valley. It did not survive long as an independent company, it was leased to the ECR in 1844 before the line even reached Cambridge, but it established the beginnings of a second route to Norwich via Ely, and the first railway works at Stratford, which were enlarged as the main worksjops of the ECR in 1847. The London and Blackwall Railway was an almost unique cable-operated railway running from Fenchurch Street along the north bank of the Thames to Blackwall. Its main traffic consisted of conveing shipping messengers between Millwall Docks and the City, and passengers joining and leaving ships at Blackwall Pier to avoid the loop of the river round the Isle of Dogs. It later converted to conventional locomotive operation.

A number of other railways opened in East Anglia in the 1840s - the Norfolk Railway in 1844, the Eastern Union in 1846, the East Anglian in 1847. None were particularly propserous and the ECR gradually acquired, leased or worked most of the other railways to open in the region, while at the same time gaining a most unfavourable reputation. The ECR promoted an Act to combine all of the leasing and working agreements under one company.

By the end of the 1850s it was beginning to restore its image and was re-formed as the Great Eastern Railway on 1 August 1862. Its only real rivals in the area were the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway which cut across north Norfolk and the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway along the north of the Thames.

The London, Tilbury and Southend Railway was promoted jointly by the ECR and the London and Blackwall Railway and unusually leased to the contractors that built it, who in turn hired locomotives and rolling stock from the ECR/GER. The line opened in 1854. The GER leased the L&BR in 1866 whilst the LT&SR became an independent company in 1880. In 1912, to great surprise, it was sold to the Midland Railway Company.

Over the next sixty years the GER continued to acquire other railways in the area, whilst at the same time building new lines and becoming involved in a number of joint railways. The GER also became involved in joint railways, one of the earliest being the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway. This was intended to link Gospel Oak on the North London Railway with Tottenham on the GER, it was initailly worked by the GER, and then by the Midland Railway by a spur from Kentish Town. Traffic later improved and the GER resumed running trains over the line, mainly consisting of diversions of GER Cambridge line expresses to and from St. Pancras, a local service between Gospel Oak and Chingford and cattle trains to and from the GER's depot at Tufnell Park. The Midland continued to work local passenger trains to South Tottenham as well as goods traffic to and from the Royal Docks. In 1902 the Midland and GER managed to take over the line jointly.

In the 1890s a Walthamstow property developer proposed a new railway line crossing north-east London area from South Tottenham on the T&HJR to the LT&SR south of Forest Gate Junction. He succeeded in interesting the LT&S and Midland companies in the scheme, such a line would give LT&S trains use of another London terminus, while the Midland would gain direct access to Tilbury Docks. The new line was jointly owned by two companies and known as the Tottenham and Forest Gate Junction Railway which opened in 1894. As a result of the sale of the LT&SR to Midland in 1912 the T&FGJR became completely Midland owned.

The Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Railway opened in 1880. By the 1870s the Great Northern coal traffic was a serious impediment to the important and growing passenger trains between London and the north-east and Scotland, and the GNR and the GER jointly constructed a line from March on the GER to Doncaster on the GNR to take the coal traffic. Much of it was handled by the GER, which also operated some through express passenger trains over the route and on to York. By virtue of this line the Great Eastern became involved in the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast and the Sheffield District Railways.

The East London Railway was orig
Custodial History:
The historical records have been gradually transferred to the Essex Record Office by the Great Eastern Railway Society. The catalogue has been compiled by Society members and added to Seax. It has been rearranged from its original numerical sequence into the present one to try to bring similar records together, rearranged by their originating company.
Acquisition Source:
The Society relies almost entirely upon donations to form the collection, and thus some subjects are inevitably better represented than others. However, in recent years some funds have come available for the purchase of significant items when the opportunity arises.