North London Railway

The North London Railway (NLR) was a British pre-grouping railway formed in 1853 by the renaming of the East and West India Docks and Birmingham Junction Railway. Its system was a curving line of about 13 miles arcing northward across north London from Broad Street to Richmond via Hampstead Heath, Willesden Junction and Kew. The NLR ran one of the most intensive steam-worked passenger services in Victorian London, with trains every few minutes through the dense suburban network.

Locomotive engineering was carried out at Bow Works under William Adams (Locomotive Superintendent 1854–1873), then under J. C. Park and Henry J. Pryce. Adams's 4-4-0 tank engines and his patent radial-bogie were widely adopted across British suburban railways.

From 1909 the NLR was managed by the LNWR under a working agreement, and at Grouping on 1 January 1923 it became part of the LMS. The Broad Street terminus closed in 1986; much of the NLR survives today as the Overground's North London Line.