Electrification of British Railways' East Coast Main Line: The project and its management

Abstract

British Railways (BR) is structured into eight commercial businesses of which six have to trade profitably without any government subvention. The most profitable passenger one is InterCity which is managed through sub-sector or route profit centres. Two of these dominate the trading results: the West Coast which was electrified between 1956 and 1967 (London to the West Midlands and the North West) and extended to Glasgow during 1970 to 1974; and the East Coast which is the subject of this paper. The InterCity network is shown in Fig. 1; the West and East Coast routes are indicated. InterCity was the sponsor of the electrification project.