About Us

Painting: Peter Annable (MGRA)

Mike Musson Collection

The grouping of 123 railway companies in 1923 into the 'big four', the Great Western Railway, the London Midland Scottish Railway, the London North Eastern Railway and the Southern Railway was the inspiration for the structure adopted to navigate the website. Within Warwickshire only three of the big four operated, the GWR, LMS and LNER, with the latter only having a very small presence; the section of the former Great Central Railway's mainline dissecting the North-East of the county through Rugby. Therefore we have divided the bibliography to reflect the principal themes of the website - the 'GWR', 'LMS', 'LNER' and 'Miscellaneous'. The GWR was not affected by the grouping in the county with no other railway company being absorbed. However this was not the case with the LMS which was a new company and which within the county absorbed the Midland Railway, the London North Western Railway¹ and the Stratford Midland Junction Railway, the latter having absorbed the East & West Railway and the Evesham, Redditch & Stratford upon Avon Railway Junction Railway in 1909.

'Miscellaneous' was created to address the number of branch lines not owned by the railway companies, mainly colliery branch lines although some significant branches existed serving power stations, quarries and commercial premises and has yet to be addressed to any significant depth. Cadbury's, the Edge Hill Light Railway and the Foleshill Railway are just three that come immediately to mind. It was also designed to provide short cuts to specific themes, such as engine sheds and hopefully one day, the goods yards and each locomotive seen on the website.

We have therefore chosen to provide a separate bibliography for the LMS and GWR whilst the LNER has been included under the 'Other and General' heading. Books covering the post-1948 period of British Railways are listed according to the geographical area that they cover. Therefore books covering an area operated by only one of the pre-1948 railway company are listed under that company, whereas books addressing two or more areas have been listed under the 'Other and General' heading. As the website has focused primarily on the LMS and GWR it is to be expected that there is only a small list of books under 'Other and General'. We hope this will change in the future when the numerous industrial and colliery branch lines are included within the website.

¹ Whilst the Harborne Railway was an independent company up to 1923 with a separate Board of Directors and paying dividends on its own shares, it was operated by the LNWR for much of its life and for that reason it has been treated as being part of the LNWR.

The captions and the histories of the stations and routes on this website have been written by the contributors consulting many resources, not least from the many articles and books that have been published over the last century. Therefore much of the detailed information contained within the website is due in great part to the efforts of the authors of the publications listed below. We wish to take this opportunity to both express our recognition and our thanks for their dedicated research and hard work.

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