The Norfolk Railway was an early railway company that controlled a network of 94 miles around Norwich, England. It was formed in 1845 by the amalgamation of the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway opened in 1844, and the Norwich and Brandon Railway, not yet opened. These lines were built out of frustration that the Eastern Counties Railway line that was expected to connect Norwich to London failed to be completed. The Norfolk Railway also leased the Lowestoft Railway and Harbour company, and built a branch to Dereham and Fakenham, opened in 1846 and 1849 respectively.
It was successful in connecting Norwich to the emerging railway network, by connecting at Brandon with a line from London via Cambridge and also a line from the Midlands through Peterborough. However as a local line it was dependent on bigger partners, and it was threatened by new competing lines, so that its independence was always at risk. In 1848 it agreed with the larger Eastern Counties Railway that the ECR would operate its line, reducing the Norfolk Railway to a financial company only. In 1862 it amalgamated with other companies to form the Great Eastern Railway.
Its first lines, from Great Yarmouth to Norwich and Norwich to Brandon, continue in use at the present day as important regional routes, and although the Dereham and Fakenham branch closed to passengers in the 1960s, the majority of this line remains open as the Mid-Norfolk Railway.
Yarmouth and Norwich Railway
The merchants of Norwich had been gratified when the Eastern Counties Railway got its authorising Act in 1836 to build a line from London to their city and on to Great Yarmouth. The capital for the construction was £1.6 million, a huge amount at the time. The Eastern Counties Railway had grossly underestimated the cost of building its line, and it was running out of money. The people of Norwich were dismayed in April 1839, when the ECR announced that it would be unable to build any further than Colchester for the time being.
Throughout the remainder of that year and in 1840, a number of schemes were put forward and discussed; there were alternative routes, but they all met with the suspicion that large sums of money might be subscribed without the lines being completed. By now the Northern and Eastern Railway was in financial difficulty too; its original intention of connecting London to York was eventually reduced to a line from Stratford to Newport, Essex. Ambitious railway schemes in East Anglia were not held in high esteem, especially when their projected cost was quoted in millions of pounds.
On 21 January 1841, a meeting was held in Norwich to determine how to improve the transport links of Norwich. As a first step, a link to Yarmouth was planned. Yarmouth was the port for the City of Norwich, and at the same time a fashionable watering place, and would be useful, as coastwise shipping was an important transport medium for heavy materials, particularly coal, and the railway would enable minerals to be brought to Norwich from the harbour at Yarmouth. The ECR powers to build between Norwich and Yarmouth had lapsed by this time, but at a meeting on 19 March 1841 a proposal was tabled, prepared by Robert Stephenson, for a line. It was to be routed indirectly, via Reedham, to minimise the cost by avoiding certain river crossings and keeping to low-lying ground: it became known as the Valley Line. It would cost a little under £200,000 including land acquisition and rolling stock.
The project went to the 1842 session of Parliament, and in the face of Eastern Counties Railway opposition, the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway Act passed on 18 June 1842. George Stephenson was the chairman of the Company and Robert Stephenson the engineer.<ref name = barney/. Share capital was £150,000.
Grissell and Peto were appointed as the contractors; they had agreed to take £30,000 of their fee in shares; they started work in late March 1843. There proved to be a difficulty over the Yarmouth terminus, which was planned to be on an island owned by Robert Cory. The only access was over a primitive and narrow suspension toll bridge, and there were covenants preventing anyone from building a further access bridge. The issue was not resolved by the time the line opened, and at first arriving passengers were ferried across the River Bure. Cory objected to that, stating that he had the monopoly on ferry crossings as well, and the matter went to court.