North British Railway



The North British Railway was a Scottish railway company, based in Edinburgh. Established in 1844, its network grew from the original Edinburgh–Berwick-upon-Tweed line (completed in 1846) to serve the East of Scotland. It provided the northernmost part of the East Coast Main Line, and at the Grouping in 1923 the NBR – then the largest railway company in Scotland, and the fifth largest in the United Kingdom – became part of the London and North Eastern Railway. For much of its life it had contended for primacy in Scotland with the generally more profitable Glasgow-based Caledonian Railway, the equivalent Scottish component of the West Coast Main Line.

History
The North British Railway Company was established in 1844 to build a railway from Edinburgh to Berwick-upon-Tweed, with a branch to Haddington. The line was completed in 1846, but a continuous rail connection between London and Edinburgh was not available until October 1848; the Caledonian having been able to offer a through service via Carstairs since March 1848. The fastest trains between the two capitals then took slightly over 12 ½ hours (for both East Coast and West Coast routes), and the (cheaper) steamship service between Leith and London still took the bulk of the passenger traffic. The NBR had no running rights south of Berwick. Mineral traffic (in particular coal from the Lothian coalfield) was the largest source of revenue; an English shareholder blamed the low passenger revenue on the willingness of Scots to travel third-class even when they could afford better.

Extensions giving access to Carlisle and Newcastle
The first major extension of the system was a branch to Hawick (completed 1849); this was subsequently extended (by the Border Union Railway) to give a through route to the West Coast Mainline at Carlisle (1862), but the West Coast companies had a secret agreement to continue to route goods traffic to Edinburgh via the (less direct) Caledonian, rather than the NBR's "Waverley Route"and to obstruct/delay goods arriving from Edinburgh via the Waverley Route. To obtain access to Carlisle, the NBR had bought the Carlisle and Silloth Bay Railway and Dock Company and with it dock facilities at Silloth on the Irish Sea; from there sea transport to Liverpool was possible, but for the most part the West Coast blockade was effective and made the Waverley Route little more than a £5m branch line. From the Waverley Route, a line (initiated by a separate company -the Border Counties Railway- absorbed into the NBR in 1860) also completed in 1862 branched southeastwards to reach Hexham, where it connected with the North Eastern Railway's Newcastle-Carlisle line over which the NBR acquired running rights into Newcastle.

Amalgamations gaining access to Tayside and to Glasgow
The Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway, covering Fife was absorbed into the NBR in 1862. Its service from Edinburgh to Dundee was more direct (by 28 miles) than the Caledonian route via Stirling and Perth, but involved ferry crossings of both the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay removing much of its competitive advantage for both passenger and goods traffic.; remedying this was to be a preoccupation of the NBR for the next 25 years. The Caledonian and the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway both had lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow, with East Coast traffic to Glasgow being routed over the E&GR from Edinburgh. The Caledonian and the E&G had made a joint purse agreement (effectively to fix prices, not to compete, and to share revenues in fixed proportions) for traffic between Edinburgh and Glasgow and the prices fixed were such as to make the East Coast route uncompetitive for traffic between England and Glasgow. The NBR countered this by proposing a new line (the Glasgow and North British) to provide better service more cheaply; the E&G attempted to undermine support for this by cutting its prices without agreeing this with the Caledonian. The Caledonian's response drove the E&G to amalgamate with the NBR (in 1864). The NBR now had access to Glasgow, Clydeside and the Lanarkshire coalfield.

Branch lines
The original Edinburgh–Berwick line had had numerous branches added to it by the NBR before it opened; the traffic on these had been uniformly disappointing and thereafter the branch line network grew by the formation by local interests (with NBR support) of nominally independent companies which built the branch, leased it to the NBR when built, and, after a few years were absorbed into the NBR.

The NBR in 1866
By these means, the NBR grew to have (by the summer of 1865) about 450 miles of route (almost equally divided between double- and single-track) and was working another 40 miles of single track (branch companies yet to be absorbed). A contemporary book on Scottish industry reports data which shows it to have achieved rough parity with the Caledonian. Work was underway to add another 150 miles to the system and the NBR was starting to plan for building a railway bridge across the Firth of Forth. News that the English Midland Railway, similarly frozen out of cross-border traffic by the West Coast lines had put forward a bill for its own line (the Settle and Carlisle) to Carlisle gave hope that the expected benefits from the Waverley Route might eventually materialise.

The crisis of 1866
The NBR had managed to finance this expansion, and still pay a good dividend. There were two reasons for this; it had cut expenditure on maintenance of existing lines and rolling stock maintenance to the bare minimum (if not beyond), and it had paid the dividend out of capital and hidden this by what a subsequent Committee of Investigation described to NBR share holders as .. "not merely deliberate falsification of the accounts from year to year so as to show to the shareholders and divide among them a revenue which was not in existence and was known not to have been earned; but it was a careful and most ingenious fabrication of imaginary accounts, begun and carried on from time to time for the purpose of supporting the falsified half yearly statements of revenue and the general misrepresentation of affairs"

When this was revealed in September 1866 by auditors (tipped off by a new company secretary), the board and the company chairman were voted out of office, and the policy of the company changed to deal with the crisis. Lord William Hay joined the board and soon became chairman.

Acquisitions
In 1865 it took over the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway, the oldest in Scotland. Other amalgamations followed, altogether over 50 small lines being made part of the North British system, which ultimately totalled 2,739 miles.

Main line
The main line was from Aberdeen through Dundee to Edinburgh, whence it forked to Carlisle and Berwick to meet the main English routes (the London and North Western Railway (also the Midland Railway) and the North Eastern Railway respectively). Fife was covered with a network of lines, and the pleasure resorts on the east and west coasts were also served. The company owned the Tay Bridge and its services also used the Forth Bridge, for whose construction it was responsible as part of the Route to the North in the 19th century. The so-called "Race to the North" with the Caledonian Railway took place in the 1890s.

English lines
Although primarily a Scottish railway, the NBR also had an extensive branch network in northern Northumberland, reaching to Hexham, Morpeth and Rothbury, as well as the main line into Berwick. Its lines also reached into northern Cumberland as far as Silloth, Port Carlisle, and Carlisle.

Train services
The NBR operated services between Waverley station, Edinburgh and Queen Street station in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Carlisle (via Galashiels and Hawick – the Waverley Route) and between Newcastle upon Tyne and Aberdeen. The North British was a partner (with the North Eastern Railway and the Great Northern Railway) in the East Coast Joint Stock operation from 1860.

Business activities
The company’s headquarters were at 23 Waterloo Place, Edinburgh and its works at Cowlairs, Glasgow. Its capital in 1921 was £67 million. Besides its railway, the company also operated steamers on the River Clyde serving Arran and points west and acquired a 49% stake in the road haulage firm Mutter Howey.

The North British Hotel at the east end of Princes Street in Edinburgh city centre forms a prominent landmark with its high tower displaying large clocks. It was renamed the Balmoral Hotel in the 1980s, though the old name is still shown in the stonework. Since the building opened, the clock on the hotel has run three minutes ahead of real time to encourage tardy travellers to get to the station on time.

Component companies
During its existence the NBR absorbed the following companies:
 * Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway – first public railway in Scotland
 * Slamannan Railway
 * Ballochney Railway
 * Dundee and Arbroath Railway
 * Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway
 * Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway
 * Edinburgh, Loanhead and Roslin Railway
 * Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway
 * Edinburgh Suburban and Southside Junction Railway
 * Glasgow and Milngavie Junction Railway
 * Glasgow, Yoker and Clydebank Railway
 * Invergarry and Fort Augustus Railway
 * Kilsyth and Bonnybridge Railway
 * Kirkcaldy and District Railway
 * West Highland Railway
 * Jedburgh Railway
 * Peebles Railway
 * Esk Valley Railway
 * Penicuik Railway
 * Selkirk and Galashiels Railway
 * Eyemouth Railway
 * East Fife Central Railway
 * Arbroath and Montrose Railway

Chief mechanical engineers

 * Thomas Wheatley 1867–1874
 * Dugald Drummond 1875–1882
 * Matthew Holmes 1882–1903
 * William P. Reid 1903–1919
 * Walter Chalmers 1919–1922