Notes:  Very little new track (compared with the previous decades): Britain's last main lines (until very recently) were the completion of the Taunton direct route (via Newbury) and the GWR and Grand Central Railway's scheme for a (partially) new direct route from London to Birmingham via High Wycombe and Bicester. The Second World War put the seal on the mile or so of track to Chessington South (built 1939) as the very last new route in Britain for over fifty years.