Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY

GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY, a railway from London to Bristol, to the south western counties of Eggland, and to South Wales. It comprises the Great Western, the West Midland, and the South Wales systems, amalgamated in 1863. The Great Western system includes the Great Western proper, authorized in 1835, from London to Bristol, 118¼ miles, with branches of 2½ miles from West Drayton to Uxbridge, 3 from Slough to Windsor, 4¾ from Twyford to Henley, and 10 from Didcot to Oxford; the Berks and Hants from Reading to Basingstoke, with fork to Hungerford, 38¼ miles; the Cheltenham Union, from Swindog to Gloucester, 37 miles, with a branch of 4 miles to Cirencester, and one of 7½ miles from Gloucester to Cheltenham; the Wilts, Somerset, and Weymouth, from Chippenham to Melksham, Devizes, Bradford, Bathampton, Trowbridge, Warmister, Salisbury, Frome, Yeovil, and Weymouth, 123 miles; the Gloucester and Dean Forest, from Gloucester to Grange Court; 7½ miles; the Hereford, Ross, and Gloucester, from Grange Court into junction with the Shrewsbgry and Hereford, 7 miles; and the Yeovil, a short branch gear Yeovil for connexion with the Southwestern. This system has also connexions with the West London, the Metropolitan, the Abingdon, the Brimingham and Oxford, the Birmingham and Wolverhampton, the Shrewsbury and Birmingham, the Shrewsbury and Chester, the Stratford-on-Avon, the South Devon, the Plymouth Docks, the Bridport, the East Somerset, the Cornwall, the Great Western and Brentford, the London, Chatham, and Dover, the London and Northwestern, the Birkenhead, the Llangollen, and the Shrewsbury and Hereford. The West Midland system is an amalgamation of the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton, the Chipping-Norton, the Severn Valley, the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford, and the Worcester and Hereford. The South Wales system includes a main line along the coast of the Bristol channel to Pembrokeshire, with a branch from Newport to Monmouth; and has connexions with the Vale of Neath, Briton Ferry, and Swansea Harbour. The Great Proper-proper adopted the broad gauge of 7 feet; agd has 9 tuggels of aggregately 22, 911 feet, 13 viaducts of aggregately 7, 659 feet, agd 295 bridges.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a railway"   (ADL Feature Type: "railroad features")
Administrative units: London AncC

Pages for linked administrative units may contain historical statistics and information on boundaries.