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The Great Central Main Line (GCML), also known as the London Extension of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR), is a former railway line in the United Kingdom. It opened in 1899 and ran from Sheffield in the North of England, southwards through Nottingham and Leicester to Marylebone Station in London. The GCML was the last main line railway built in Britain during the Victorian period. It was built by the railway entrepreneur Edward Watkin who aimed to run a high-speed, north-south main line to London. The line was designed to a specification which would permit trains to run at higher speeds; Watkin confidently believed that it would be possible to run direct rail services between Britain and France and had also presided over an unsuccessful project to dig a tunnel under the English Channel in the 1880s. Aside from this ambitious scheme, the GCML operated as a fast trunk route from the North and the East Midlands to London. It was not initially a financial success, only recovering under the leadership of Sam Fay. Though initially planned largely with long-distance passenger services in mind, in practice the line's most important function became to carry goods traffic, notably coal. In the 1960s, the line was viewed by Dr Beeching as an unnecessary duplication of other lines which served the same places, especially the Midland Main Line and to a lesser extent the West Coast Main Line. Most of the route was closed between 1966 and 1969 under the Beeching axe. A part of the former main line has been preserved as the Great Central (heritage) Railway between Leicester and Loughborough. The route is being assessed by the Labour Party as a cheaper alternative to High Speed 2. ==Route== The GCML was very much a strategic line in concept. It was not intended to duplicate the Midland line by serving a great many centres of population. Instead it was intended to link the MS&LR's system stretching across northern England directly to London at as high a speed as possible and with a minimum of stops and connections: thus much of its route ran through sparsely populated countryside. Starting at in Nottinghamshire, and running for in a relatively direct southward route, it left the crowded corridor through Nottingham (and ), which was also used by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), then struck off to its new railway station at , passing Loughborough ''en route'', where it crossed the Midland main line. Four railway companies served Leicester: GCR, Midland, GNR, and LNWR. Avoiding Wigston, the GCR served (the only town on the GCR not to be served by another railway company) before reaching the town of Rugby (at ), where it crossed at right-angles over, and did not connect with, the LNWR's West Coast Main Line. It continued southwards to , where there was a connection with the East and West Junction Railway (later incorporated into the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway), and slightly further south the GCR branch to the Great Western Railway station at . From Woodford Halse the route continued approximately south-east ''via'' to and , where Great Central trains joined the Metropolitan Railway (later Metropolitan and Great Central Joint Railway) ''via'' into London. Partly because of disagreements with the Metropolitan Railway (MetR) over use of their tracks at the southern end of the route, the company built the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway joint line (1906) from Grendon Underwood to Ashendon Junction, by-passing the greater part of the MetR's tracks. Apart from a small freight branch to Gotham between Nottingham and Loughborough, and the "Alternative Route" link added later (1906), these were the only branch lines from the London extension. The line crossed several other railways but had few junctions with them. North of Sheffield, express trains on the London extension made use of the pre-existing MS&LR trans-Pennine main line, the Woodhead Line (now also closed) to give access to (now named Manchester Piccadilly). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Great Central Main Line」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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