Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway

The Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway (M&GN) was a joint railway owned by the Midland Railway (MR) and the Great Northern Railway (GNR) in eastern England and comprised three units. The first consisted of four small contractors lines crossing the district between Peterborough, Bourne, Spalding and Kings Lynn opened in 1858-66 and worked by the Great Northern and Midland Companies both wanting to extend into north Norfolk. The second was an independent line from Yarmouth to North Walsham opened in 1879-81. The Lynn and Fakenham Railway merged with this company in 1882 to form the Eastern & Midlands Company. The Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway built its works at Melton Constable, the central junction on its system. The first track was laid in May 1881 and the works were brought into operation in 1883 and closed in October 1936.

As from July 1st 1893, the Eastern and Midlands Railway has become the property of the Midland Railway (MR) and Great Northern Railway (GNR) companies. It was formed by the amalgamation of many smaller local lines, rather than being conceived from the start as a single trunk route. However, it offered its two parents - the MR and the GNR - access to the ports of East Anglia, and also enabled them to develop what became a lucrative source of revenue from holiday traffic from the industrial Midlands to the east coast resorts. It was easily the longest joint railway system in the UK, exceeding 180 miles (295km). The railway is managed by a joint committee appointed by the two companies.

The M&GN's administrative headquarters was at Austin Street, King's Lynn, but its engineering centre and the heart of the system was at Melton Constable before the railway arrived this village had a population of just over 100 people. Within a few years it had grown ten-fold, with almost all the new arrivals employed by the railway and living in company-built housing, and it acquired the nickname of "the Crewe of North Norfolk".

With the creation of the nationalised British Railways Corporation in 1948, the M&GN looked vulnerable. It was one of the first major closures with the bulk of its routes shut in 1959; displaced traffic mostly transferring to the former GER routes. Throughout its years of operation under many different owners, and notwithstanding the high proportion of its route that was single-track, it was an extremely safe system - not a single passenger was killed on the M&GN.