![]() | History of rail transport in Great Britain was a Engineering and technology good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Former good article nominee |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
British Railways was divided up into four administrative regions, which exactly mirrored the regions covered by the former "big four" companies. Erm, what about the Scottish Region, then? Arwel 21:42, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Er good point G-Man 22:18, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)
No large railway can operate at a profit unless more than half its traffic is freight, and the freight was being siphoned off by the road companies.
There is certainly a view that Passenger transportation was never profitable for most railway companies, the profits being earned almost entirely from freight. Difficult to prove since it was not always easy to separate the costs involved in infrastructure maintenance between passenger and freight traffic, and even some of the operating costs could be shared (eg same locomotives used for both types of traffic).
Today, it is difficult to identify any national passenger network that makes a commercial return without some sort of subsidy. Whether in that case passenger rail services justify their existence or not is as much a political as an economic question.
Exile 11:12, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
GWR, LMS and LNER were freight dependant (for revenue and thus survival) but Southern was never so freight dependant (ie most of its income came from passengers). Now why did the Southern passenger operation make money, etc is the next question and a variety of answer such as location, population and extent of electrification can be used to answer it. Pickle 16:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
This should remain at History of rail transport in Great Britain - Ireland is a seperate rail system - different history. Even the gauge is different. Don't forget Ireland was all one administration when rail in the island began. Zoney 16:31, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I beleive the Wapping Tunnel was open when the railway opened does that not mean the reminus was not Crown street but Wapping?-- Jirate 21:29, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)
Reading through your piece I am immediately struck by the fact that, apart from almost throw-away lines mentioning the LSWR, the Midland; GNR, the southern and eastern parts of Great Britain are ignored. Considering that the oldest passenger-carrying railway (the Canterbury & Whitstable) opened four months before the Liverpool & Manchester that is a bit surprising!
I should have liked to have seen mention of the SE&CR; the LBSCR; the GER; the Cambrian Railways; and the L&YR - even if they weren't quite so successful as the article shows (and I suppose history too!) the GWR to have been. The fact of commercial backbiting played against many of the others, and the GWR lost out when it took to the broad-gauge. All played their part in The History of rail transport in Great Britain. And to mention them will draw readers to their own histories, if nothing else.
Peter Shearan
A timeline of rail transport series of documents has been created, currently with little content. Please help out (not least since all but 3 "events" are US based). You know the drill: births & deaths, dates of key bits of infrastructure & acts / openings / amalgamations / closures / accidents &c. -- Tagishsimon (talk)
I notice what I perceive to be a combination of inconsistency and omission: the London and North Western Railway article describes the LNWR's formation in 1846, but makes no mention of its subsequent expansion, for example by leasing the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway in 1859 and taking it over in 1879.
The History of rail transport in Great Britain article implies that LNWR served Scotland from 1846 through "an amalgamation of companies working from Euston to Scotland". The LNW Railway Society website, however, talks about serving Scotland through cooperation with the Calledonian Railway.
I am no expert, and don't currently have time to research this, but it would appear that at least one, and possibly both, of the LNWR and History of rail transport in Great Britain articles may be misleading. StephenDawson 16:34, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I felt that the opening paragraphs glossed over far too much of the early days of rail transport. There was nothing said about the tramways which set the whole thing in motion; none of the early pioneers are mentioned (even though most of them have articles in Wikipedia); and methods of traction were absent. There were one or two errors - the S&DR was incorporated to carry passengers for example - and some quite sweeping statements which don't really count as fact. The two tramways mentioned (the Stratford and the Cromford) were not among the pioneers - but the Surrey was, and not included.
I shall be looking at the following few sections with a view to rewrite in due course. They too are replete with some fairly sweeping statements, I feel Peter Shearan 07:29, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Peter Shearan 14:42, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Peter Shearan 10:55, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I started on a paragraph entitled "Following the Grouping ..." and have included that already. I admit to jumping the gun a bit, since I wrote the para in isolation from the following one - "The Grouping Period" - which at the moment repeats some of what I have said. On the other hand much of it should be put before talking about the end result, which I shall now do with the first paragraph. (We have to work chronologically in an history article, after all)
I now see that the article is considered as being too long (<32kilobytes). It may be that, by bringing in all the other railways, I am the guilty party! I am now sitting back and considering options:
I shall return! Peter Shearan 10:55, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Re the length of the article. There is already a "List of British Railway Companies". Do we need the section "Major railway companies in Great Britain" If so might it not be better abbreviated as far as possible but, especially, be in chronological rather than alphabetical order, since this is a history. Chevin 14:18, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I have added some references to this, It would be nice if more could be added. Especially for the earlier history. G-Man * 23:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
How you want to incorporate this info is up to you in the bigger scheme of the rewrite / expansion of each section. I've been looking into electrification [1] at 1500v DC in East Anglia / Essex which all over wikipedia article seam to have missed out.
Obviously this article need to cover the other systems in GB such as; Southern Electrics, LBSCR overhead, Tyneside electrics, Mersyside electrics, the Liverpool OHR, and the various schemes around Manchester (including the woodhead tunnel). Then detailing the adoption of 25Kv AC for the WCML, Glasgow suburban and the East Anglian suburban routes under the 1954 modernisation plan. Pickle 16:50, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Without wishing to revive the lack of southern GB info debate, there is a lack of mention of the work by Network South East in the 1980s. They introduced new stock (Networkers) and did lots of work (eg Thameslink), revival of the Chiltern railways area, etc. Pickle 16:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I prospose that this article be split up. It is 47kB in size, and likely to grow. (The sections on the big four, the 1970s and post-privitisation all need some expansion). I suggest four main articles:
Alternatively, the article names could be
Either way, the content could be the same. The earliest article woudl be substantionally bigger than the other three, but I don't think it will expand as much as the others. That said, the pre-1923 material could be across two articles, to give five in total:
Any thoughts/comments/suggestions/approvals/disapovals? Tompw 14:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
A year later, I thought I'd look at how much the new articles have expanded:
Intersg to see which bits have grown the most... clearly people are nostalhic about BR. Tompw ( talk) ( review) 20:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I have decided to put the nomination on hold. The reasons are:
These are relatively minor problems, so I think it could be brought up to GA when they are fixed. -- Hirohisat Kiwi 04:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to fail this since it didn't meet the 7 day dead line. -- Hirohisat Kiwi 06:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
"As early as 1844 a bill had been put before Parliament suggesting the state purchase of the railways; this was not adopted. It did, however, lead to the introduction of minimum standards for the construction of carriages[7] and the compulsory provision of 3rd class accommodation for passengers - so-called "Parliamentary trains"."
This isn't quite correct. The 1844 Act permitted the government to buy up the railways at a fair price; Gladstone considering doing it during Palmerston's government. Mackensen (talk) 01:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
While not wishing to cloud the general focus of this article, there have been a significant number of local tram lines, which can be comfortably described as "rail transport in Great Britain", but never belonged to the heavy duty "railway network". While there are articles on local efforts (such as Trams in London or other items in Category:Tram transport in the United Kingdom ), there is no overall piece for light rail in the UK. Any ideas as to how best to link in a reference to this? Ephebi ( talk) 19:38, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
This review is transcluded from Talk:History of rail transport in Great Britain/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
I will do a full review in time, but to start with I have some significant concerns. However, they can be easily rectified, so I will place the article on hold, and hope they can be quickly addressed.
Let me know what you think, and I'll come back to help out with a fuller review. Peanut4 ( talk) 12:41, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
Apart from the passenger numbers graph, would some kind of timeline be useful in this article? Also there is no External Links section? Some readers might find this site useful as it shows the chronological development of stations and thus main routes. Thanks. Martinevans123 ( talk) 18:58, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
IkbenFrank has added content to this article, Impact of the privatisation of British Rail and Privatisation of British Rail about the troubles that Southern has been having with reliability, industrial disputes and share prices. While this certainly seems notable enough for the Southern article, I really do not see how the content is notable enough for articles about the wider railway network, which do not refer to any other train operators in such a way. While I do always try and assume good faith, the section header that IkbenFrank added to Impact of the privatisation of British Rail: "Rewarding failure" does not seem to fit this. I have removed the content from this article and will remove it from the other articles tomorrow unless there is a consensus otherwise. Absolutelypuremilk ( talk) 22:39, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on History of rail transport in Great Britain. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 03:33, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on History of rail transport in Great Britain. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 12:09, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 5 external links on History of rail transport in Great Britain. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 04:38, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
![]() | History of rail transport in Great Britain was a Engineering and technology good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Former good article nominee |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
British Railways was divided up into four administrative regions, which exactly mirrored the regions covered by the former "big four" companies. Erm, what about the Scottish Region, then? Arwel 21:42, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Er good point G-Man 22:18, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)
No large railway can operate at a profit unless more than half its traffic is freight, and the freight was being siphoned off by the road companies.
There is certainly a view that Passenger transportation was never profitable for most railway companies, the profits being earned almost entirely from freight. Difficult to prove since it was not always easy to separate the costs involved in infrastructure maintenance between passenger and freight traffic, and even some of the operating costs could be shared (eg same locomotives used for both types of traffic).
Today, it is difficult to identify any national passenger network that makes a commercial return without some sort of subsidy. Whether in that case passenger rail services justify their existence or not is as much a political as an economic question.
Exile 11:12, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
GWR, LMS and LNER were freight dependant (for revenue and thus survival) but Southern was never so freight dependant (ie most of its income came from passengers). Now why did the Southern passenger operation make money, etc is the next question and a variety of answer such as location, population and extent of electrification can be used to answer it. Pickle 16:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
This should remain at History of rail transport in Great Britain - Ireland is a seperate rail system - different history. Even the gauge is different. Don't forget Ireland was all one administration when rail in the island began. Zoney 16:31, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I beleive the Wapping Tunnel was open when the railway opened does that not mean the reminus was not Crown street but Wapping?-- Jirate 21:29, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)
Reading through your piece I am immediately struck by the fact that, apart from almost throw-away lines mentioning the LSWR, the Midland; GNR, the southern and eastern parts of Great Britain are ignored. Considering that the oldest passenger-carrying railway (the Canterbury & Whitstable) opened four months before the Liverpool & Manchester that is a bit surprising!
I should have liked to have seen mention of the SE&CR; the LBSCR; the GER; the Cambrian Railways; and the L&YR - even if they weren't quite so successful as the article shows (and I suppose history too!) the GWR to have been. The fact of commercial backbiting played against many of the others, and the GWR lost out when it took to the broad-gauge. All played their part in The History of rail transport in Great Britain. And to mention them will draw readers to their own histories, if nothing else.
Peter Shearan
A timeline of rail transport series of documents has been created, currently with little content. Please help out (not least since all but 3 "events" are US based). You know the drill: births & deaths, dates of key bits of infrastructure & acts / openings / amalgamations / closures / accidents &c. -- Tagishsimon (talk)
I notice what I perceive to be a combination of inconsistency and omission: the London and North Western Railway article describes the LNWR's formation in 1846, but makes no mention of its subsequent expansion, for example by leasing the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway in 1859 and taking it over in 1879.
The History of rail transport in Great Britain article implies that LNWR served Scotland from 1846 through "an amalgamation of companies working from Euston to Scotland". The LNW Railway Society website, however, talks about serving Scotland through cooperation with the Calledonian Railway.
I am no expert, and don't currently have time to research this, but it would appear that at least one, and possibly both, of the LNWR and History of rail transport in Great Britain articles may be misleading. StephenDawson 16:34, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I felt that the opening paragraphs glossed over far too much of the early days of rail transport. There was nothing said about the tramways which set the whole thing in motion; none of the early pioneers are mentioned (even though most of them have articles in Wikipedia); and methods of traction were absent. There were one or two errors - the S&DR was incorporated to carry passengers for example - and some quite sweeping statements which don't really count as fact. The two tramways mentioned (the Stratford and the Cromford) were not among the pioneers - but the Surrey was, and not included.
I shall be looking at the following few sections with a view to rewrite in due course. They too are replete with some fairly sweeping statements, I feel Peter Shearan 07:29, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Peter Shearan 14:42, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Peter Shearan 10:55, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I started on a paragraph entitled "Following the Grouping ..." and have included that already. I admit to jumping the gun a bit, since I wrote the para in isolation from the following one - "The Grouping Period" - which at the moment repeats some of what I have said. On the other hand much of it should be put before talking about the end result, which I shall now do with the first paragraph. (We have to work chronologically in an history article, after all)
I now see that the article is considered as being too long (<32kilobytes). It may be that, by bringing in all the other railways, I am the guilty party! I am now sitting back and considering options:
I shall return! Peter Shearan 10:55, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Re the length of the article. There is already a "List of British Railway Companies". Do we need the section "Major railway companies in Great Britain" If so might it not be better abbreviated as far as possible but, especially, be in chronological rather than alphabetical order, since this is a history. Chevin 14:18, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I have added some references to this, It would be nice if more could be added. Especially for the earlier history. G-Man * 23:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
How you want to incorporate this info is up to you in the bigger scheme of the rewrite / expansion of each section. I've been looking into electrification [1] at 1500v DC in East Anglia / Essex which all over wikipedia article seam to have missed out.
Obviously this article need to cover the other systems in GB such as; Southern Electrics, LBSCR overhead, Tyneside electrics, Mersyside electrics, the Liverpool OHR, and the various schemes around Manchester (including the woodhead tunnel). Then detailing the adoption of 25Kv AC for the WCML, Glasgow suburban and the East Anglian suburban routes under the 1954 modernisation plan. Pickle 16:50, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Without wishing to revive the lack of southern GB info debate, there is a lack of mention of the work by Network South East in the 1980s. They introduced new stock (Networkers) and did lots of work (eg Thameslink), revival of the Chiltern railways area, etc. Pickle 16:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I prospose that this article be split up. It is 47kB in size, and likely to grow. (The sections on the big four, the 1970s and post-privitisation all need some expansion). I suggest four main articles:
Alternatively, the article names could be
Either way, the content could be the same. The earliest article woudl be substantionally bigger than the other three, but I don't think it will expand as much as the others. That said, the pre-1923 material could be across two articles, to give five in total:
Any thoughts/comments/suggestions/approvals/disapovals? Tompw 14:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
A year later, I thought I'd look at how much the new articles have expanded:
Intersg to see which bits have grown the most... clearly people are nostalhic about BR. Tompw ( talk) ( review) 20:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I have decided to put the nomination on hold. The reasons are:
These are relatively minor problems, so I think it could be brought up to GA when they are fixed. -- Hirohisat Kiwi 04:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to fail this since it didn't meet the 7 day dead line. -- Hirohisat Kiwi 06:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
"As early as 1844 a bill had been put before Parliament suggesting the state purchase of the railways; this was not adopted. It did, however, lead to the introduction of minimum standards for the construction of carriages[7] and the compulsory provision of 3rd class accommodation for passengers - so-called "Parliamentary trains"."
This isn't quite correct. The 1844 Act permitted the government to buy up the railways at a fair price; Gladstone considering doing it during Palmerston's government. Mackensen (talk) 01:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
While not wishing to cloud the general focus of this article, there have been a significant number of local tram lines, which can be comfortably described as "rail transport in Great Britain", but never belonged to the heavy duty "railway network". While there are articles on local efforts (such as Trams in London or other items in Category:Tram transport in the United Kingdom ), there is no overall piece for light rail in the UK. Any ideas as to how best to link in a reference to this? Ephebi ( talk) 19:38, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
This review is transcluded from Talk:History of rail transport in Great Britain/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
I will do a full review in time, but to start with I have some significant concerns. However, they can be easily rectified, so I will place the article on hold, and hope they can be quickly addressed.
Let me know what you think, and I'll come back to help out with a fuller review. Peanut4 ( talk) 12:41, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
Apart from the passenger numbers graph, would some kind of timeline be useful in this article? Also there is no External Links section? Some readers might find this site useful as it shows the chronological development of stations and thus main routes. Thanks. Martinevans123 ( talk) 18:58, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
IkbenFrank has added content to this article, Impact of the privatisation of British Rail and Privatisation of British Rail about the troubles that Southern has been having with reliability, industrial disputes and share prices. While this certainly seems notable enough for the Southern article, I really do not see how the content is notable enough for articles about the wider railway network, which do not refer to any other train operators in such a way. While I do always try and assume good faith, the section header that IkbenFrank added to Impact of the privatisation of British Rail: "Rewarding failure" does not seem to fit this. I have removed the content from this article and will remove it from the other articles tomorrow unless there is a consensus otherwise. Absolutelypuremilk ( talk) 22:39, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on History of rail transport in Great Britain. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 03:33, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on History of rail transport in Great Britain. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 12:09, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 5 external links on History of rail transport in Great Britain. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 04:38, 5 November 2017 (UTC)