The views of the Directors were approved of by the majority of the shareholders (the numbers being 7,792 for, and 6,145 against); and the construction of the line was proceeded with according to Mr. Brunel’s plans.
By June 30, 1841, the whole length of the Great Western Railway was opened from London to Bristol. Some of the Directors’ reports mention the fact that the speed uniformly maintained by the engines much exceeded the ordinary rate of railway travelling, and allude to the ‘general testimony borne to the smoothness and comfort of the line and carriages.’
As has been before mentioned, extensions and branches on the same gauge, to all of which Mr. Brunel was engineer, were projected and ultimately carried out, in accordance with the original scheme of the undertaking, to Exeter, Plymouth, and Cornwall, and to Gloucester, Hereford, and South Wales, as well as to Oxford, Windsor, and other towns in the immediate neighbourhood of the line.
About 1844, the attention of the Company began to be directed to projects involving extensions of a much more serious character, and which were destined to have a powerful influence on the position of the gauge question. During the railway mania, the Great Western Company found it impossible to stand aloof from the contests which were going on around them, and thought it necessary, in order to protect their own interests, to extend their lines beyond the district to which they had originally intended to confine themselves.
At the general meeting in August, an extension from Oxford to Rugby was determined on, as ‘of the greatest importance to the Great Western line.’ About the same time a broad-gauge line was promoted from Oxford to Worcester, and thence by Kidderminster and Dudley to Wolverhampton, in order to open an immediate communication with the Staffordshire and Worcestershire districts. There were also rival projects on the narrow gauge, promoted by the London and Birmingham Company; and the competing plans were referred, as was the custom at that time, for the examination of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade.
In regard to the communication from north to south, through Oxford, the question was, where the break of gauge should be.[56] The Board of Trade saw nothing in the relative merits of the gauges to determine this question, and from commercial considerations, they recommended that the change of gauge should be made at Oxford. On this and other grounds they considered that the narrow gauge schemes to the north of Oxford were preferable to those of the Great Western Railway.
The rival schemes then went before Parliament, and after a protracted enquiry, obstinately fought between the parties, the decision was given in favour of the Great Western lines, contrary to the recommendation of the Board of Trade. It was, however, stated by the chairman of the Commons Committee that the decision had been founded on the local and general merits of the respective lines, without any reference to the comparative merits of the two gauges. On this account some peculiar provisions were made in the Acts; for though the lines were sanctioned on the broad gauge, the proprietors were bound also to lay down narrow gauge rails upon them, if required to do so by the Board of Trade. At the same time the House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Cobden, passed a Resolution praying her Majesty to refer the gauge question to a Royal Commission.
A Commission was issued in July; the Commissioners being three in number—Sir J. M. Frederic Smith, R.E.; Mr. G. B. Airy, Astronomer Royal; and Professor Barlow, of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. They took a large amount of evidence, both oral and documentary, and made some examinations of the working of the two gauges. Their report was presented to Parliament early in the session of 1846.
Of forty-eight witnesses, thirty-five were advocates of the narrow gauge; and against these were arrayed but four champions of the broad gauge, all officers of the Great Western Railway:—Mr. Charles Alexander Saunders, the secretary; Mr. Seymour Clarke, the traffic superintendent; Mr. (now Sir Daniel) Gooch, the locomotive superintendent; and Mr. Brunel.
The report was of considerable length, and in it the Commissioners addressed themselves to three heads of enquiry, viz.:—