Notes:  The region was the home of two of the first substantial railways, the Liverpool-Manchester and the Leeds-Selby. The network developed rapidly linking the major towns, with the first trans-Pennine route opened in 1841, and linking the towns with the ports (Hull was reached in 1840). Intense competition between numerous competing companies led to a tangled network of lines, with many towns having several "city-centre" stations belonging to different companies. The area east of Leeds, where route extension from the south collided with George Hudson's empire based in York, and with numerous other competing companies, had a particularly tangled knot of junctions and spurs, and the route north was only really finally straightened out with the building of the Selby bypass in 1983.