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Brief History
of the M&GN
A collection of small local railway companies
in Norfolk and Lincolnshire were amalgamated in the 1880s
to form the Eastern and Midlands Railway (E&M), with
the intention of creating a through line linking the Midlands
with the East Coast.
On 16th June 1887, the section now
known as the Poppy Line was opened from Holt to Cromer,
engineered by William Marriott. The E&M was largely
dependent on traffic coming on to its metals from both
the Great Northern and the Midland Railways, and when
it fell into a financial crisis in 1889 it was perhaps
inevitable that those two railways should step in.
In 1893 they acquired the whole of the E&M, and the
Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway (M&GN) was
formed in 1893. A Joint Committee ran the railway until
nationalisation in 1948: Marriott remained effectively
in charge until retirement in 1924.
As with so many rural railways, traffic steadily declined
through the 1930s and after World War II, as the car,
lorry and bus abstracted passengers and freight. In 1958,
a British Railways committee recommended closure; and
 for
most of the M&GN the end came on 28th February 1959.
But the section from Melton Constable to Sheringham survived
until Dr Beeching applied his axe on 6th April 1964.
The Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway Preservation
Society was formed in 1959, and a light railway order
for the Sheringham-Weybourne section was granted in 1973.
The order was transferred to the North Norfolk Railway
in 1976, and public services began. The extension to Holt
was opened in 1989, to give a 5½ mile line.
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