Talk:Railways Act

Railway Acts: Public and/or Private?

The title of this page is to some extent at variance with its contents. It only lists (some of) the Public railway acts. Apart from the rest of the Public acts there are the far more numerous Private acts under which the actual railwats were built and deviated, their powers extended, amended etc..

For clarity:

Acts of Parliament can be divided into two types: public acts and private acts. Public acts are legislation of universal application and change the general law. Private acts (alsoknown as local and personal acts) affect the powers of individual groups, such as companies or local authorities.
(...)
Since 1798 printed acts have been divided into two series: “public general acts” and “local and personal acts” (which are further subdivided).

I suggest that either it is made clear that this page deals with both Public and Private railway Acts or separare pages are set up for each category.

It should be born in mind that there were many Private Acts passed whose powers were not used andd hence no railway was built.

There is also the question of Railway Bills that were not passed to become Acts - should those be listed (and where) ?

Finally although there is a page that lists Railways built under a LRO, it does not deal with all the other LRO's past between 1896 and the advent of Transport and Works Orders (which themselves could be listed). This particularily includes all the LROs and LR Transfer Orders past to enpower Heritage Railways to take over ex-BR lines. Is this another page needed ? Or should the existing page be extended ?

LRO's were issued as 'Statutory Rules & Orders' until 1948 and then became 'Statutory Instruments'.

XTOV 15:20, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Note

This talk page was formerly located at Talk:List of railway acts. That list has been merged into this article. James500 (talk) 05:28, 7 December 2011 (UTC)