Acts of Parliament are the foundational legal paperwork that permit the railway company concerned to purchase land, by compulsory purchase if necessary, in order to build a line of railway of acquire land for other railway-related purposes.
Although they are often long and have a style of writing that may take time to get accustomed to, these documents reveal critical information about why and how a railway was permitted to be built. Although railways were given a certain amount of latitude in how they went about achieving their goals, they were also heavily restricted in what they were permitted to do and any deviation outside of the act of parliament required them to go back to the legislature again and again to get what they thought they needed.
The railways we an ever-evolving business entity and constantly looked to enlarge and improve their position. The early days of the GNR were at a time when aggressive and anti-competitve practices were rife and the battles to get railway bills through the legislature to become legally binding acts were events of near-legendary and epic proportions and the history books of the GNR like those of Grinling or Wrottesley (as found in our reading list on the website) graphically tell of the challenges faced by the Board of Directors and the legal team led by men like Edmund Beckett Denison QC.
The lists of Acts of Parliament will grow and we are aspiring to identify as many acts as possible which involve the GNR in any meaningful way and to include antecedent railway acts where information about the original lines are important for anyone studying the history of our railway. If you have a copy of an act you think we are missing, or have access to the information then please contact the archivist or other committee member through the website or via the contacts page in our Great Northern News magazine and we will be delighted to hear from you
MOST ACTS OF PARLIAMENT ARE TOO LONG FOR JPEG COPIES OF EACH PAGE. THERE IS A PDF LINK ON EACH PAGE WHICH WILL DOWNLOAD ONTO YOUR COMPUTER. Please note that many of these files will be substantial in size
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Acts of Parliament
