Railway reading

I am reading a book about the career of John George Robinson CBE, Locomotive Superintendent of the Great Central Railway.  I saw his 'Director' class of locomotive in action in the 1950s and 60s.

The Manchester Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, known to its shareholders as 'Money Sunk and Lost' and to its passengers as 'Mucky Slow and Lousy' served collieries in Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.  It handed over London bound coal traffic to the Great Northern at Retford or just north of Nottingham. 

The company decided to open the London Extension and thereafter was known as the Great Central Railway. Shareholders considered that their money had 'Gone Completely'.  The extension ran through Nottingham, Leicester and Rugby and thereafter via either Aylesbury or High Wycombe to  London Marylebone.  The line duplicated the lines of other companies and was one of the major casualties of the railway closure programme in the 1960s, being closed completely from just south of Sheffield to just north of Aylesbury.

The original MS&L line over the Woodhead Pass was electrified in the 1950s to ease the passage of coal trains between South Yorkshire and Lancashire.  This line was closed also.