Southern Railway

The Southern Railway was a British railway company created in the 1923 Grouping through the amalgamation of the London and South Western Railway, the London Brighton and South Coast Railway and the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. Headquartered at London Waterloo, it operated about 2,186 miles of line across southern England, connecting London with the Channel ports, the south west and coastal resorts, making it the smallest of the Big Four companies but the only one to operate entirely within England. Unlike its more freight oriented rivals, the Southern Railway was predominantly a passenger carrier, and it built what was then the world's largest electrified railway system on a third rail network still in use today. It ran famous named trains including the Brighton Belle, the Golden Arrow and the Bournemouth Belle, painted in a distinctive malachite green livery with bright yellow lettering, before nationalization in 1948 turned it into the Southern Region of British Railways.