Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway

Early Scottish railway company (1842–1865)

The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway was authorised by act of Parliament on 4 July 1838. 8 car electric Class 385 trains started operating from Monday 29 July 2019 between Glasgow and Edinburgh via Falkirk High. The fastest trains are scheduled to take 42 minutes.

The earliest railways in Scotland were waggonways, intended for horse drawn operation, in most cases from a colliery or other mineral source, to a waterway for onward transport. Notable early lines were the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway of 1812 and the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway of 1826, the first of the "coal railways" of the Monklands area. The Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway (G&GR) was authorised in the same year, and it opened in 1831. There were unfulfilled ideas of connecting Glasgow and Edinburgh as early as 1824 and when the G&GR got its authorising Act, there were thoughts of extending from Broomielaw in Glasgow over the G&GR to Edinburgh and Leith; the connection to sea going shipping was paramount. In 1830 the railway engineers Thomas Grainger and John Miller were commissioned to survey for such a line. There was to be a tunnel under the centre of Glasgow but there was furious opposition to this; it was so strong that the proposal failed. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway had opened in 1830, and was more successful than its promoters expected, showing that an intercity railway could be commercially successful. The pressure to connect the two great cities of central Scotland continued, and in the second half of the 1830s money became freely available, and investors, chiefly in England (many of them shareholders in the Liverpool and Manchester line), promoted a viable railway.

The coal railways of the Monkland district had been very successful early entrants in the field of conveying minerals to market, but as technological pioneers they were now at a disadvantage, with their primitive track and a track gauge that was now non standard, preventing through running. They worked together in a loose collaboration. In 1844 the E&GR agreed a takeover with them, and from the first day of 1846 took on the operation of their lines, while Parliamentary permission for formal takeover was sought. On 3 July 1846 this was refused by Parliament, and the E&GR withdrew from the informal arrangement at the end of 1846. At this time the Caledonian Railway was planning its route linking Glasgow, and the Caledonian concluded an agreement to take over the Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway and the Wishaw and Coltness Railway. The other coal railways aligned themselves away from the Caledonian Railway's influence, and in 1848 they merged to form the Monkland Railways. there to connect with the Newcastle and Berwick Railway (later to form the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway). The NBR had started operations on 22 June 1846. By then the North British Railway had commenced their passenger service, on 17 June. For a time the two stations were separate, and with separate goods stations in addition. The primitive passenger accommodation at first was only temporary: from 3 August 1846 E&GR passengers were accommodated at a single platform partly under the northernmost of the Waverley Bridge's three wide arches." On 17 May 1847 the permanent joint passenger station came into use. The North British Railway referred to it simply as "Edinburgh" station, or "North Bridge", although it was also known as the General station. and the Scottish Central Railway, and the Forth and Clyde Canal, the Union Canal and the Monkland Canal. (The canals still carried substantial mineral traffic.) That group of companies worked as a voluntary combination for a few months under Bryan Padgett Gregson, an experienced manager of canals and railways from Lancashire. In late 1846 the Lancashire shareholders, insensitive to the fear of Caledonian hegemony and reluctant to spend money acquiring canals, which they considered to be beaten competitors, overturned the arrangement, and Gregson was dismissed. (In 1849 the E&GR purchased the Union Canal for £209,000, still against the opposition of the Lancashire shareholders.) On 1 April 1848 the Caledonian Railway opened its line between Edinburgh and Glasgow. It was difficult in operational terms, but in July the Caledonian accelerated its passenger trains and added new fast services, and cheap fares. The E&GR responded with fare reductions, and a desperate price war soon developed. It could not continue and in September fares were increased by mutual agreement. Although the line connected a number of pits, it was dependent on a long haul to Coatbridge, handing over to the W&C railway at Morningside, and the line was not commercially successful. Raising money to continue eastwards to a more lucrative destination proved beyond the resources of the company. In 1847 the company decided that it could not continue independently, and the negotiated the sale of their line to the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway. A legal prohibition on amalgamation of companies which had not expended half of their authorised capital delayed the process until 1849, when an Act was obtained, authorising the sale to the E&GR, which took full effect in 1850. In the hiatus period, and with the authorisation of the Edinburgh and Bathgate Railway, the WM&CR enlisted E&GR financial help and set about extending from Longridge to Bathgate. The E&GR wished to exclude the Caledonian Railway from the area. The line opened to goods and mineral traffic early in 1850, and passenger traffic started in May 1850, after the takeover by the E&GR.

The Stirling and Dunfermline Railway was authorised on 16 July 1846. As well as linking the named places, there were to be branches to Alloa and Tillicoultry. The line opened between Dunfermline and Alloa on 28 August 1850, and Alloa Harbour and Tillicoultry were connected on 3 June 1851. The section from Alloa to Stirling was completed on 1 July 1852. At Dunfermline, the line made an end on connection with the Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway, giving onward connection to Fife. The company was vested in the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway by Act of 28 June 1858.

On 5 July 1848 the E&GR opened the Campsie branch. This left the E&GR main line east of Lenzie, and dropped down into the Kelvin Valley, running through Kirkintilloch, where it had a station separate from the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway station. The line continued from there through Milton of Campsie to Lennoxtown. This resulted in North British Railway transfer traffic to Glasgow being charged very high rates, and Hodgson, Chairman of the NBR, determined to get control of the E&GR. In 1864 the Great Northern Railway and the North Eastern Railway suggested to Hodgson, that the three companies should jointly lease the E&GR, forming an East Coast route into Glasgow, but it proved impossible to negotiate a deal. Hodgson prepared a scheme for a Glasgow and North British Railway, which would build an entirely new route to Glasgow. Alarmed, the E&GR immediately reduced its rates to Glasgow, which broke its agreement with the Caledonian. On 23 June 1864 the E&GR announced a change of policy and an end to the Thirty Years Agreement, and "an agreement of a permanent nature with the North British Company". The E&GR had long been harbouring a plan to absorb the Monkland Railways, which had an extensive network in central Scotland mainly devoted to mineral sites. The proposal came to fruition on 31 July 1865, when the Monkland Railways were absorbed by the E&GR. The Locomotive Superintendent of the NBR made a tour of inspection of E&GR and Monkland Railways depots and found the rolling stock in an extremely poor state, badly under reported in official returns. The E&GR Cowlairs workshops were far superior to the NBR St Margarets, and they became the principal depot for the combined company.