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King Street - The Railway Age Begins
War Breaks Out
When the 'railway mania' of the 1840s ended, confidence in rail investment faltered and many companies were forced to merge or make agreements to reduce running costs. Before their line had even been finished, the Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway had signed an agreement with the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway, allowing both companies to operate a joint service between the Midlands and Merseyside. This put them in direct competition with the LNWR, which had previously enjoyed a monopoly in the area and, to make matters worse, the Shrewsbury companies then dropped their fares to attract new customers, sparking a price cutting war. Unfortunately, both the S&B and the S&C were obliged to deal with the LNWR, whose extensive network lay at the end of both their routes. Acts of physical violence and intimidation against the two companies employees followed, with their rival denying them any access over its rails at all. This course of events served only as a prelude to the LNWR poaching business over the Wellington to Stafford line, with the result of some incredible savings for local rail users. At the height of the feud, fairs between Wellington and Shrewsbury were slashed to a single penny and it was not unusual for trains heading in this direction to carry upwards of 1000 passengers at a time, as local people took advantage of the situation by flocking to the County town in huge numbers. Unlike the LNWR, the two small companies did not own a large enough network to sustain their inevitable losses and were forced into an amalgamation with the Great Western Railway in 1854, when the line through Wellington became the first standard gauge route on the GWR network.