What did the "Great " in Railway Co names refer to?

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

One of the names considered for the LNER was the Great North and Eastern Railway. Taking the G from GNoSR, GCR, GER and GNR. The N from NER, NBR, GNoSR, and GNR. The E from GER, and NER. Now that would have been a Great Railway.

 

There was one other but that ran to bandit country so is best not mentioned here.

 

With the exception of the unmentioned, all the British "Greats" went into the LNER group, whereupon their greatness went into decline.

[sulzer27jd]

16 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

 

 

The Great North of Scotland, I suppose its intentions were there to be great but we all know it never happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Really? Perhaps you should have a look, you might be surprised. 

[Edwin_m]

17 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

The US and others often used Grand such as Grand Central instead.

Another American thing was for a railroad that ran vaguely westwards to add "and Pacific" to its name.  

[Compound2632]

I'm rather taken with the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway, which by association brings up Indian railways, of which the Great Indian Peninsular Railway was one of the principal and earliest.

 

There was something of a proliferation of Great Northerns - in addition to the Irish and English examples, there was a transcontinental railroad in the United States, now part of the BNSF combine, and a lengthy 3'6" gauge line in Queensland, now part of the state railway, as far as I can work out.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Compound2632

[eastglosmog]

No mention of the Great Northern and Southern Railway, as chronicled in the Railway Children!

[jim.snowdon]

Whilst in Ireland, the Great Southern and Western Railway cheerfully carried through into the Great Southern Railway, until becoming subsumed into CIE.

 

jim

[Steamport Southport]

Talking about illusions of grandeur.

 

How about the Manchester and Milford Railway? Totally bonkers idea.

 

Due to a dispute with Liverpool dock owners over fees and then the American Civil War, the Manchester cotton mill owners wanted an alternative port.

 

Meant to connect Milford Haven with the North West, they gave up after a few miles and went to Aberystwyth instead.  

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_and_Milford_Railway

 

 

 

Jason

[pH]

12 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

Another American thing was for a railroad that ran vaguely westwards to add "and Pacific" to its name.  

 

One of the US railroad magazines once did a photo feature entitled "... and Pacific".

 

Some names were just silly, like this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Verde_%26_Pacific_Railway 

26 miles long and didn't get within 400 miles of the Pacific. Really interesting railroad, though.

[pete_mcfarlane]

Some of the early railways had very long winded names, which definitely weren't designed for marketing purposes. My favourite is the 'Ambergate, Nottingham, Boston and Eastern Junction Railway', which actually ran from the eastern outskirts of Nottingham to Grantham. 

 

At the other end of the scale you have the Dunblane, Doune and Callander Railway. This had three stations, all of which are mentioned in the name. 

 

 

[eastglosmog]

One rail system that has "Great" in its title without implying it is large or wonderful is the Great Orme Tramway, Great Orme being where it goes to.

[phil_sutters]

When you look at the promotional announcements of the early railways, one can understand the desire to make investors get their chequebooks out, by using 'Great' or in the USA 'Grand'. At least this was attributable to presenting a strong image and it was usually accompanied by reasonably sensible, if sometimes ambitious route or regional elements. Compare that with the wildly inaccurate prefixes of the re-privatisation era - First and Virgin - train announcers' nightmares or embarrassments. 

[burgundy]

In Spain, there was also a Great Southern of Spain Railway, which was British funded and operated with a fleet of very handsome Moguls, of which the first batch were built by Nielson in 1889/90.  In this case, the company's name changed in the 1920s to FC de Lorca a Baza y Aguilas, becoming more of a list of the main places that it served.

Best wishes 

Eric 

[Edwin_m]

5 hours ago, eastglosmog said:

One rail system that has "Great" in its title without implying it is large or wonderful is the Great Orme Tramway, Great Orme being where it goes to.

Illustrating a point someone made earlier, there's also a Little Orme at the other end of Llandudno.  It's never had a tramway although the Llandudno and Colwyn Bay tram ran through its "foothills".  

[lanchester]

7 hours ago, eastglosmog said:

One rail system that has "Great" in its title without implying it is large or wonderful is the Great Orme Tramway, Great Orme being where it goes to.

Another was the Great North of England, Clarence and Hartlepool Junction Railway, where the 'Great' refers to the name of another railway, and is not a claim that the GNECHJR itself was anything out of the ordinary.

[Compound2632]

58 minutes ago, lanchester said:

Another was the Great North of England, Clarence and Hartlepool Junction Railway, where the 'Great' refers to the name of another railway, and is not a claim that the GNECHJR itself was anything out of the ordinary.

 

The Great North of England Railway being nothing more (or less) than the York to Darlington section of the ECML. It had ambitions on Newcastle but the Newcastle and Darlington Junction Railway got there first, gobbled up the GNER and then the line to Berwick, becoming the York Newcastle & Berwick and in due course the largest constituent of the North Eastern.

[gordon s]

i suppose those who started the Southern went to counselling for low self esteem....

[EddieB]

As has been alluded to, surely the title “great” reflects the optimism of the Victorian age, applied to big projects that were at the forefront of “progress”.  So as those Victorians gave us the Great Exhibition, wherever British companies and engineers were engaged, they took their “greatness” with them.  However, many instances didn’t start off as “great”, but used the term to indicate amalgamations and expansions of smaller concerns, such as the Great Eastern, Great Central, Great Indian Peninsular, Buenos Aires Great Southern, Great Southern & Western, etc., etc.

 

Just be thankful it was the Victorians and not our millennials - otherwise we might have the Awesome Western, the Awesome Northern and similar!

[ardbealach]

Talking about great - maybe the Caledonian should get the top honours. They simply used an unaltered version of the traditional coat of arms of Scotland for their logo - and the Lord Lyon King of Arms who dealt with heraldry - didn't challenge the Caley directors in its use. (AM)  

[rovex]

Would you invest in the Little Western Railway or the Medium Northern Railway?

[Allegheny1600]

13 minutes ago, EddieB said:

Just be thankful it was the Victorians and not our millennials - otherwise we might have the Awesome Western, the Awesome Northern and similar!

Good grief, perish the thought!

 

I have long been interested in the names of various North American railroads and major cities such as Chicago, St. Louis or New York were often favourite names to say that your railroad went or aspired to.

Other themes were "Pacific", "Atlantic" or "Union" - the Chicago & Galena Union being an early one and the "Union Pacific" being an old one that is still extant. I'm not sure whether "union" referred to the union of two or more places or the country itself, the rails being the unifying item.

 

[frobisher]

On 07/05/2020 at 02:51, The Johnster said:

Not quite. Great meant large before it acquired the connotation of being something to aspire to.  Great Britain is called this because it is the largest of the islands of the British archipelago, the ‘mainland’.  The second largest is Ireland, but not everyone there would necessarily agree with this... 

 

Again, not quite.  "Great Britain" only became formally a thing when James VI of Scotland assumed the English throne and the Great was added by him as an affectation and he declared himself "King of Great Britain" presumably to signify the whole island being under a single crown.

 

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain

 

Quote

The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily the daughter of Edward IV of England, and James the son of James III of Scotland, which described it as "this Nobill Isle, callit Gret Britanee". It was used again in 1604, when King James VI and I styled himself "King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland".

 

 

[caradoc]

As, post-grouping, the GWR was able to remain (in name at least) 'Great', the other three companies should have insisted on similar privileged treatment, thus we should have had the Great Midland and Scottish, the Great Northern and Eastern, and the Great Southern Railways.....

 

[Steamport Southport]

1 hour ago, caradoc said:

As, post-grouping, the GWR was able to remain (in name at least) 'Great', the other three companies should have insisted on similar privileged treatment, thus we should have had the Great Midland and Scottish, the Great Northern and Eastern, and the Great Southern Railways.....

 

 

The problem is the lesser company would then be getting all the credit rather than The Premier Line....

 

 

 

 

 

Jason

[Compound2632]

24 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

The problem is the lesser company would then be getting all the credit rather than The Premier Line....

 

There were several attempts at amalgamation between the Midland and the Glasgow & South Western from the time the Settle & Carlisle opened, the most determined being in the 1880s when W.M. Thompson was Chairman of both companies (and also of the Forth Bridge company). That attempt foundered on the lack of physical connection between the two companies, with several miles of the Caledonian, a short stretch of the North Eastern, and the Carlisle Citadel Joint Committee getting in the way. What would such a combined company have been called? Midland & Scottish? 

 

A precursor of the LMS roundel emblem, uniting the rose and thistle, appeared as part of the interior decoration of some Midland & Glasgow & South Western Joint Stock carriages.

 

So the Premier Line contributed "London" to the new company's title, though from an internal perspective, it was the Wessey element that stuck, as the Western Division. Plus of course Euston was the headquarters.

 

 

[The Johnster]

What might the GW have been rebranded as?  London, West Country, West Midlands and Welsh?  Too many Ws.  London, Bristol, and Birmingham?  What about Devon, Cornwall, and Wales.  You begin to see why the old name was retained.  The GW group only had one London terminus (we'll discount the running powers to Victoria), and was more dominant in it's own territory than, say, the GN or Midland.  The GE was more or less the sole occupant in East Anglia, but was not a railway on the scale of the GW.  

 

The Midland was by far the biggest railway at the grouping, but nowhere could you say it had complete dominance over an area; even at Derby, the heart of the network, the GN penetrated.  The GW had southern and northern flanks, where it rubbed up against the LSW and LNW, but other lines within that triangle were small and local, notwithstanding that some of the South Wales ones were intensively operated and more profitable.  The Taff Vale had seniority at Cardiff, which it reached 12 years before the GW sponsored SWR.  

Edited May 9, 2020 by The Johnster