I noticed the other day that on the gable end of a building on Warwick
House Street, by the junction with Cockspur Street (and opposite the
Two Chairmen pub) there are the word "Grand Trunk Railway".

Does anyone know what this was, and was it a London railway, or was
this the London office of a national or regional company?

Thanks,

Phil

Phil Clark wrote:
I noticed the other day that on the gable end of a building on Warwick
House Street, by the junction with Cockspur Street (and opposite the
Two Chairmen pub) there are the word "Grand Trunk Railway".

Does anyone know what this was, and was it a London railway, or was
this the London office of a national or regional company?

There was a North American railroad called the "Grand Trunk Railway"
(not all railway companies in North America call/called themselves
"Railroads").

Adam

In message , Phil Clark
writes
I noticed the other day that on the gable end of a building on Warwick
House Street, by the junction with Cockspur Street (and opposite the
Two Chairmen pub) there are the word "Grand Trunk Railway".

Does anyone know what this was, and was it a London railway, or was
this the London office of a national or regional company?

I'm pretty sure it refers to the Canadian company of that name and that
its position there is linked in some way with the proximity of Canada
House, the former Canadian High Commission.

(The company ran the original Toronto - Montreal line before Canada
became a Dominion as such when Ontario and Quebec were the provinces of
Upper and Lower Canada respectively. It was an important factor in
joining the two very different provinces.)

Apologies if the building refers to another Grand Trunk Railway and I'm
on the wrong track [1] altogether. Someone here will know.


[1] I *really* didn't mean that pun. Honestly.

--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

Phil Clark wrote:
I noticed the other day that on the gable end of a building on Warwick
House Street, by the junction with Cockspur Street (and opposite the
Two Chairmen pub) there are the word "Grand Trunk Railway".

Does anyone know what this was, and was it a London railway, or was
this the London office of a national or regional company?


It was a Canadian company and is now the offices of the Central Railway.

http://tinyurl.com/7ga6u

In article ,
(Phil Clark) wrote:

I noticed the other day that on the gable end of a building on Warwick
House Street, by the junction with Cockspur Street (and opposite the
Two Chairmen pub) there are the word "Grand Trunk Railway".

Does anyone know what this was, and was it a London railway, or was
this the London office of a national or regional company?

Wasn't it an LNWR precursor?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

There was a North American railroad called the "Grand Trunk Railway"
(not all railway companies in North America call/called themselves
"Railroads").

Adam

And they still don't. Of the largest U.S. companies, the class I's, I
believe that BNSF, Norfolk Southern, and KCS use the word Railway in their
titles. The two Canadian class I's use the word Railway. Union Pacific
Pacific is the only U.S class I company to use the word Railroad in its
title. The other U.S. class I is CSX and it uses the word Transportation
in its full title.

Dave Wilcox.

Ian Jelf wrote:

Phil Clark writes:

I noticed the other day that on the gable end of a building on
Warwick House Street, by the junction with Cockspur Street (and
opposite the Two Chairmen pub) there are the word "Grand Trunk
Railway".

Does anyone know what this was, and was it a London railway, or was
this the London office of a national or regional company?

I'm pretty sure it refers to the Canadian company of that name and
that its position there is linked in some way with the proximity of
Canada House, the former Canadian High Commission.

(The company ran the original Toronto - Montreal line before Canada
became a Dominion as such when Ontario and Quebec were the provinces
of Upper and Lower Canada respectively. It was an important factor
in joining the two very different provinces.)

The railway was primarily supported by British financiers. It was one
of the first constructed in North America, starting in Portland, Maine,
USA, and was then routed through Montreal and Toronto to Chicago. They
had plans to build into Western Canada around the south of the Great
Lakes, but the Canadian government didn't like the idea of serving the
western part of the Dominion through the USA. The Canadian Pacific,
which was also British financed, won the right to build around the north
of the lakes.

The Grand Trunk eventually went bankrupt, and became part of the
government-owned Canadian National in 1919, and the name disappeared,
except for the US portion of the railroad, which retained the name Grand
Trunk Western. CN's European operations were run out of 17 Cockspur
Street until very recently. I suspect the real estate was simply too
valuable to stay.

One other notable piece of trivia is that the President of the Grand
Trunk at the time went down on the Titanic, following a visit to England
for a meeting with the owners.

Colin Rosenstiel writes:
Wasn't it an LNWR precursor?

Colin is perhaps thinking of the Grand Junction Railway, which ran from
Birmingham to Warrington or thereabouts.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "We don't use clubs; they weren't invented here.
| We use rocks." -- David Keldsen

Ian Jelf:
(The company ran the original Toronto - Montreal line before Canada
became a Dominion as such when Ontario and Quebec were the provinces
of Upper and Lower Canada respectively. It was an important factor
in joining the two very different provinces.)

Canadian history nitpick: Upper and Lower Canada were already history
when the Grand Trunk was started in the 1850s. In 1841 they had been
united under a single colonial government as the Province of Canada.
Denying a separate government to the largely French-descended population
of Lower Canada, then called Canada East, was an attempt to force their
assimilation into British culture; it ended in 1867 when the dominion
of Canada was created and the old boundary becaue the Ontario/Quebec
provincial border.

James Robinson:
The railway was primarily supported by British financiers. It was
one of the first constructed in North America, starting in Portland,
Maine, USA, and was then routed through Montreal and Toronto to Chicago.

And thus it was a notable example of a company that put its business
interests ahead of national ones. Which in turn meant that Canadian
governments weren't too fond of them. And so:

... the Canadian government didn't like the idea of serving the
western part of the Dominion through the USA. The Canadian Pacific,
which was also British financed, won the right to build around the
north of the lakes.

The Conservative government of the day first awarded the contract
to build the line to a syndicate whose intentions proved to be
fraudulent. After the syndicate was caught making a political
payoff, the government fell and the Liberals got in. They tried
building the railway as a government project, which they in turn
proceeded to botch. When the Conservatives were reelected, they
reprivatized the line and this time put it in the hands of the right
people, whose successors are the CPR company that still exists.

The CPR got its financing wherever it could, Canadian and American
money as well as British; I don't remember the proportions. Canada's
then largest bank, the Bank of Montreal, was into the railway to
such an extent that if the company had gone bankrupt during con-
struction, as was feared several times, the bank would probably
have failed as well.

The Grand Trunk eventually went bankrupt, and became part of
the government-owned Canadian National in 1919,

Not formally part of CN until a bit later, but in practice yes.

During WW1 the Canadian government encouraged the building of more
railways. In the end *two* more transcontinental lines were built.
In western Canada one was built by the GTR while the other was an
extension of the existing routes of a regional railway called the
Canadian Northern. I believe it was because the two companies
were too pigheaded to consider cooperating that they ended up
building routes that ran practically side by side for some 1,000
miles out of Winnipeg, as far as Jasper in the Rocky Mountains.

The result was that both companies went bankrupt just after the
war, and were united as the Canadian National Railways. The CNR,
or in later years CN for short, operated as a government agency
for many decades, before eventually being privatized (and along
the way, losing the S in Railways). In an echo of the old GTR's
internationalism, a few years ago they bought the former Illinois
Central Gulf Railroad, giving CN access to the Gulf of Mexico as
well as Canadian ports on the Atlantic and the Pacific. (Their line
to Hudson Bay, however, has been sold off to a separate comany.)
--
Mark Brader | "...most people who borrow over $1,000,000 from a bank
Toronto | would at least remember the name of the bank."
| -- Judge Donald Bowman, Tax Court of Canada

My text in this article is in the public domain.

Thanks, Guys - more information than I expected, but you're right in
that the Canadian High Commission is just over the road.

Phil