Joint Line Jubilee

摘要

50 years ago, Britain lost its first major trunk route with closure of the M&GN - an event being marked in February and March by a major gala on the North Norfolk Railway Several years before anyone had heard of the Beeching Axe', a huge chunk was gouged out of the British railway map with the closure of an entire main line system - the former Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway network in East Anglia. The M&GN was the largest joint railway in the country, encompassing 183 route miles from Peterborough and Little Bytham in the west to Cromer, Norwich and Great Yarmouth in the east. On February 28, 1959, all but a short stub of it closed to passenger traffic. Although various British branch lines had closed during the 1950s and even the 1930s, this was the first serious sign that trains in rural areas had had their day. At a stroke, thousands of people living in isolated villages lost their lifeline and were forced to buy cars or use buses - but, thankfully, some refused to accept total defeat and later formed the M&GNJR Society with a view to retaining part of the system for future use. From those seeds of defiance grew today's North Norfolk Railway, now one of the UK's leading heritage lines.