Great Eastern Railway
Company | Defunct
1862 CE to 1922 CE
The Great Eastern Railway (GER) is a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line links London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which has other lines through East Anglia.
The company is grouped into the London and North Eastern Railway in 1923.
Formed in 1862 after the amalgamation of the Eastern Counties Railway and several other smaller railway companies, the GER serves Cambridge, Chelmsford, Colchester, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich, King's Lynn, Lowestoft, Norwich, Southend-on-Sea (opened by the GER in 1889), and East Anglian seaside resorts such as Hunstanton (whose prosperity is largely a result of the GER's line being built) and Cromer.
It also serves a suburban area, including Enfield, Chingford, Loughton and Ilford.
This suburban network is, in the early twentieth century, the busiest steam-hauled commuter system in the world.
The majority of the Great Eastern's locomotives and rolling stock are built at Stratford Works, part of which is on the site of today's Stratford International station, and the rest is adjacent to Stratford Regional station.
The GER owns twelve hundred miles (nineteen hundred and thirty-one kilometers) of line and has a near-monopoly in East Anglia until the opening of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway in 1893, although there are a number of minor lines, such as the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway that stays resolutely independent until after the grouping in 1923.
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Its first tenants are rehoused from an area that had been cleared during railway construction work, and they pay a nominal rent.
Built by the Great Eastern Railway, Blackwall Buildings had been started because of an obligation created by Parliament when large scale engineering works were constructed and a number of houses were demolished, that these dwellings be replaced and the people re-housed.
In 1885 the London and Blackwall Railway had applied to Parliament for permission to widen their line between Fenchurch Street and Stepney.
This had been granted and as a result the houses demolished had to be replaced.
Blackwall Buildings are the result.