Fact of the Week 25
In 1895 it was reported that the Midland Railway owned 22,822 miles of telegraph wires, which during the course of the year, carried 13.2 million messages.
Fact of the Week 24
From 1906, the Midland Railway owned an electric tramway – the Burton and Ashby Light Railway – serving the industrial areas of South Derbyshire lying between the two termini. The B&ALR was effectively in direct competition with the Company’s own trains between the two towns. It proved increasingly unremunerative competing against the motor bus after […]
Fact of the Week 23
The Midland Railway owned two canals, the Ashby Canal and the Cromford Canal.
Fact of the Week 22
When St. Pancras station opened in 1868, the single span roof which was 689 feet in length, 240 feet wide and 100 feet high, provided the largest covered area in the World. It was designed by William Henry Barlow (1812 – 1902) and fabricated by the Butterley Company in Derbyshire.
Fact of the Week 21
The longest tunnel on the Midland Railway, and the second longest in the UK, is the Totley Tunnel between Dore & Totley and Grindleford and is 6,230 yards long. Opened in 1893, it is still in use today.
Fact of the Week 20
The highest point on the Midland Railway is at Ais Gill Summit in Cumberland on the Settle & Carlisle line which has an altitude of 1169 feet (356 metres) above sea level.
Fact of the Week 18
Even though the Midland Railway had no lines in Scotland, they ran trains over the Glasgow and South Western Railway and were so invested in Anglo-Scottish traffic that they owned one third of the world famous Forth Bridge.
Fact of the Week 19
It was possible to travel from London to Londonderry entirely on the Midland Railway. First on a train from St. Pancras to Heysham, then across the Irish Sea to Belfast on a Midland Railway steamer and finally to Londonderry on a Northern Counties train which was also owned by the Midland.
Fact of the Week 17
The Sun Hotel at Eastwood in Nottinghamshire is regarded as the birthplace of the Midland Railway. It is where a group of coalmasters decided to build the Midland Counties Railway in August 1832.
Fact of the Week 16
The job of a signalman was a responsible and skilled one. Most were men, as the name implied, but during the Great War women were recruited as men went off to war. Today’s railway employs ‘Signallers’.