The Northern & Eastern Railway (N&ER) was an early British railway company, that planned to build a line from London to York. Its ambition was cut successively back, and it was only constructed from Stratford, east of London, to the towns of Bishop's Stortford and Hertford. It was always short of money, and it got access to London over the Eastern Counties Railway (ECR). It was built at the track gauge of , but it converted to standard gauge in 1844. Its main line opened progressively between 1840 and 1842. It was worked by the neighbouring ECR, and it leased its network to that company in from the beginning of 1844 for 999 years. From that time it was a financial company only, it amalgamated with the ECR's successor, the Great Eastern Railway, in 1902. The entire network is still in use and is now electrified, and part of the original main line now forms a section of the West Anglia Main Line between London Liverpool Street and Cambridge. Proposals When the Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened in 1825, great enthusiasm for railway transport was generated. A number of schemes were put forward for connecting London and York, and some of these were planned to pass through Cambridge. A canal engineer, Nicholas Wilcox Cundy, surveyed such a line, to be known as the Grand Northern & Eastern Railway, in 1834, and the following year another survey was made, by Joseph Gibbs, for another line from London through Cambridge to York. This scheme went to Parliament in the 1836 session as a proposed "Great Northern Railway" (nothing to do with the subsequent Great Northern Railway a decade later). The 1836 proposal was rejected by Parliament. Meanwhile, a public meeting was held at Cambridge Town Hall on 23 January 1836, at which it was decided to support a route surveyed by James Walker. A bill for a Northern & Eastern Railway was prepared; it was to run from London to Cambridge, with a branch from a little south of Cambridge to Newmarket, Norwich and Great Yarmouth. The extension from Cambridge to Lincoln was not included, as the surveys had not been completed. The bill was passed, but the route was cut back to run from London to Cambridge only; it received royal assent on 4 July 1836. Authorised share capital was £1,200,000. Although the construction cost was large, the company was