page_title: Great Central Railway
section_title: The "London extension"
hierarchical_section_title: Great Central Railway / History / The "London extension"
caption_attribution_description: English: Marylebone station, City of Westminster. Français&#160;: La Gare de Marylebone, dans la Cité de Westminster, en Angleterre.
context_page_description: The Great Central Railway in England came into being when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897, anticipating the opening in 1899 of its London Extension. On 1 January 1923, the company was grouped into the London and North Eastern Railway.
context_section_description: The MS&LR obtained Parliamentary approval in 1893 for its extension to London. On 1 August 1897, the railway's name was changed to  Great Central Railway. Building work started in 1895: the new line, 92 miles (147 km) in length, opened for coal traffic on 25 July 1898, for passenger traffic on 15 March 1899, and for goods traffic on 11 April 1899. It was designed for high-speed running throughout.
  It is a commonly held myth that the nomenclature for the direction of travel on the new line was the opposite of standard UK railway practice, and that trains travelling to London were referred to as "down" trains, and those travelling away from the capital as "up" trains.  It is supposed that this was a result of the GCR’s headquarters at the time being in Manchester.
  However official documents dated 21 July 1898, detailing the method of working of mineral trains on the London Extension (used to help consolidate the new earthworks before passenger traffic began in March 1899) clearly show that the direction of travel on the new line was conventional - up to London, down to Annesley.  Furthermore, contemporary descriptions in newspapers of the trains running on the new line are explicit that up trains ran to London
  and down trains away from it.
  The new line was built from Annesley in Nottinghamshire to join the Metropolitan Railway (MetR) extension to Quainton Road, where the line became joint MetR/GCR owned (after 1903), and returned to GCR tracks at Canfield Place, near Finchley Road for the final section to Marylebone. In 1903, new rails were laid parallel to the Metropolitan Railway from Harrow to the junction north of Finchley Road, enabling more traffic to use Marylebone.
caption: Marylebone station frontage
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