The Cheshire Lines Committee
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Arguably, the Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC) was Britain's premier joint railway.
Although the route mileage was not as great as the
Midland & Great Northern Railway, other measures, such as
volume of traffic, put the CLC to the fore.
The CLC was jointly owned in equal shares by the
Great Northern Railway (GNR),
Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR, later the GCR), and the
Midland Railway (MR) companies. Thus, at the grouping in 1923, the LMS had a one third share and the LNER a two thirds
share. Edward Watkin of the MS&LR
was the driving force behind the creation and development of the CLC and certainly the
MS&LR / GCR benefited from the arrangement more than
the other two partners.
Initially, the railway linked rural Cheshire with the Manchester area but a quickly instigated and ambitious
building programme resulted in a much more robust company with a prime inter-city route and
major freight operations.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Richard Barron for the above information.
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