South Yorkshire Joint Railway

The South Yorkshire Joint Railway was a committee formed in 1903, between the Great Central Railway, the Great Northern Railway, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, the Midland Railway and the North Eastern Railway to oversee the construction of a new railway in the Doncaster area of South Yorkshire, England. The five companies had equal rights over the line, each of the companies regularly working trains over it.

Passenger trains on the line ended in 1929; freight work continued on the line, with eight collieries served at peak. Most of the collieries closed by the 1990s; as of 2011, the line remains an important freight line for coal transportation both north and southwards to the Trent and Aire Valley power stations.

Parliamentary permission to build the line was authorised with the passing of the South Yorkshire Joint Railway Act on 14 August 1903, and the formation of the South Yorkshire Joint Line Committee; formed from the railway companies: NER, L&YR, GNR, MR, and GCR. The South Yorkshire Joint Railway act incorporated an earlier scheme, the Shireoaks Laughton & Maltby Railway (Act passed 9 August 1901), a venture of the GCR and MR companies.

In the grouping of 1923, the Midland and L&YR were grouped into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), whilst the GCR, GER and GNR were all grouped into the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). It thus remained an LMS-LNER joint line until nationalisation into British Railways in 1948.

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