The Southern Railway.—South of London there were com bined to form the Southern Railway (S.R.), by the Railways Act of 1921, three important railways, namely, the London and South Western (L.S.W.R.) ; the London, Brighton and South Coast (L.B. & S.C.R.) ; and the South Eastern and Chatham railways (S.E. & C.R.). The L.S.W.R. began as a line from London to Southampton, incorporated in 1834, though what were destined later to be parts of this line were the Bodmin and Wadebridge in Cornwall which dated back to 1832, and the Taw Vale of 1838; it gradually covered the area between London, Southampton and Exeter, reaching Plymouth through North Devon and terminating at Bude and Padstow in Cornwall. By means of a joint line with the Midland it reached Bath, and came into contact with the Great Western at Weymouth, Reading, Exeter and Plymouth. At Ports mouth on the east it met the L.B. & S.C.R. which had originated in the London and Croydon line incorporated in 1835, and the Lon don and Brighton of 1837. The former is of interest as it was at one time worked on the atmospheric system. By this method of propulsion power was derived from atmospheric pressure con tained in a large diameter tube placed between the rails. A vacuum being formed ahead of the train, the carriages were pro pelled by the pressure behind ; owing to leakages the system was not a success. The territory of the L.B. & S.C.R. covered roughly a triangle between London, Hastings and Portsmouth, with Brighton near the centre of the base line. At Tunbridge Wells and Hastings it maintained contact with the S.E. & C.R. In this latter case there was a managing committee (1899) to operate what were in reality two separate railways, the London, Chatham and Dover, and the South Eastern. The violent competition between these two railways led to a position such that practically every important town in Kent was served by both companies, and such a degree of competition was disastrous to the financial posi tion of both. An early portion of the South Eastern was the Lon don and Greenwich opened in 1836, with its London termi nus at London Bridge, reaching the latter over goo brick arches.
British Mileage.—Thus there are to-day, four great British railway systems, the L.1VI.S.R., the L.N.E.R., the G.W.R., and the S.R., each built up of many small lines, as the above brief out line illustrates. The commercial success of the Stockton and Darlington and the Liverpool and Manchester railways resulted finally in the railway mania of 1844-46, after which ensued the financial crisis of 1847 and a keen desire to obtain the economies of railway amalgamation. Though the Houses of Parliament throughout the i9th century based their railway policy mainly on the necessity of keeping competition alive, the World War of 1914-18 finally broke down that policy and created a complete reversal of it in the Railways Act of 1921, which forcibly amal gamated practically all the railways into the present four great sys tems, in certain cases amalgamating lines which had been refused permission to do so some years before (see Sections D and E). Other than the four big railways there exist certain lines jointly owned, such as the Cheshire Lines Committee, to the extent of two-thirds L.N.E.R., and one-third L.M.S.R. ; the Midland and Great Northern, half L.N.E.R. and half L.M.S.R. ; and the Somer set and Dorset, half S.R. and half L.M.S.R. In the London area there is a group of electrified passenger traffic lines (see Sec. B), mainly constructed in tunnels and known collectively as the Underground, while there is also the Metropolitan, a line elec trified within London itself but still worked by steam traction north of Rickmansworth ; in 1933 these, with other public pas senger-carrying undertakings in the London area, were amalga mated under the London Passenger Transport Board. Lastly there
are certain small light railways in various parts of Great Britain, some of a gauge narrower than the standard of 4ft. 81in., notably the Eskdale line in the Lake District, the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch line in Kent and certain lines in North Wales, as the Snowdon Mountain railway are examples of the rack rail system. The steady growth of the British railways is seen in the following mileage statistics: .Miles Miles 1825 . . . . 26 1890 20,073 1844 • • . . 2,236 1900 21,855 185o . . . . 6,635 1910 23,387 1860 . . . . 10,410 192o 23,734 187o . . . . 15,310 1926 20,395* 188o . . . . 17,935 1933 20,251* *Not including Irish Free State.
Since 1890 there have only been comparatively small additions to the railway mileage, route mileage taking no account of the presence of second, third or fourth tracks, but widenings have taken place and the figures for track mileage, which measures all tracks and converts them to a basis of one track only, are : in 1913, 36,448 miles; in 1933 (including sidings), 52,900.