page_title: Great Northern Railway (Great Britain)
section_title: Completion of the first phase
hierarchical_section_title: Great Northern Railway (Great Britain) / Completion of the first phase
caption_attribution_description: English: Great Northern Railway Boston Works, near to Boston, Lincolnshire, Great Britain. The ex Great Northern Railway Boston Works. Now a Fitness First health club. The work was transferred from here and Peterborough to Doncaster in the 1850s, thus creating the massive &#39;plant&#39;. &lt;a href="https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2012988"&gt;SE5703&#160;: Diesels at Donny&lt;/a&gt;
context_page_description: The Great Northern Railway was a British railway company incorporated in 1846 with the object of building a line from London to York. It quickly saw that seizing control of territory was key to development, and it acquired, or took leases of, many local railways, whether actually built or not. In doing so it overextended itself financially.
  Nevertheless, it succeeded in reaching into the coalfields of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire, as well as establishing dominance in Lincolnshire and North London. Bringing coal south to London was dominant, but general agricultural business and short and long distance passenger traffic were important activities. Its fast passenger express trains captured the public imagination, and its Chief Mechanical Engineer Nigel Gresley became a celebrity.
  Anglo-Scottish travel on the East Coast Main Line became commercially important; the GNR controlled the line from London to Doncaster and allied itself with the North Eastern Railway and the North British Railway so as to offer seamless travel facilities.
  The main line railways of Great Britain were "grouped" following the Railways Act 1921 into one or other of four new larger concerns.
context_section_description: At the end of 1852 it was considered that the Company had achieved its objectives as originally conceived, with the line opened from King's Cross over both the Towns Line and the Loop, into Yorkshire. Four passenger trains ran from Kings Cross to York, one of them first class only and one Parliamentary train.
  The Directors of the Company continued to seek to consolidate occupation of territory, without necessarily building new lines. The capitalisation of the Company was already considerable, and a further million of money was authorised by an Act of 1853. Another demand on financial resources was willingly undertaken: the installation of the electric telegraph, at first at the southern end of the system. It was soon used for signalling trains through the tunnel sections, and by 1856 it was used throughout as far north as Hitchin.
  Reflecting the anticipated focus of operations, the GNR opened a new locomotive works at Doncaster in 1853, replacing earlier facilities at Boston.
caption: The former GNR works at Boston, Lincolnshire
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