Lincolnshire lines of the Great Northern Railway

rdf:langString Lincolnshire lines of the Great Northern Railway

rdf:langString The Lincolnshire lines of the Great Northern Railway are the railways, past and present, in the English county built or operated by the Great Northern Railway. The Great Northern Railway was authorised in 1846 and was to build from London to York via Newark and also a "Loop Line" via Lincoln. The GNR leased and operated the East Lincolnshire Railway. The construction proceeded in stages, and the line from Peterborough through Boston to Lincoln opened in 1848. The East Lincolnshire Railway from Boston to Grimsby opened in the same year. Gradually the GNR filled in the space between the Loop Line and the coast. East-west connections were developed, and holiday and excursion traffic proved a huge development. The haulage of coal from the Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire coalfields to London and East Anglia was a lucrative traffic. There was relatively little competition from rival railways in the area, and the network as a whole was successful. However the rural character of many of the lines meant that commercially they were of limited success. In 1879 the GNR had to concede the construction of a joint railway with the Great Eastern Railway, which abstracted considerable revenue from the mineral traffic income. After about 1965 many of the lines declined substantially, and in 1970 a widespread closure took place, leaving only key routes from the former GNR network.