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Imaginary Railways


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5 hours ago, 62613 said:

Weeelll..... Stalybridge became a station joint between the LNWR and the MSLR; the LYR station was a separate building, on the land where the fire station now sits. The MSLR talked about what became the New Line (The Micklehurst Loop), but that was eventually built by the LNWR. It's interesting idea; what if the MSLR had built it? Would it have meant the line from Diggle to Huddersfield becoming joint?

The original Huddersfield & Manchester was originally to have been part of the MS&LR, but it went to the LNWR, but I'm away from my copy of Dow, I'll check when I get home. 

 

By the 1880s, I believe the MS&LR and LNWR had been at daggers drawn for a while, so I'm not sure what would make the LNWR decide to partially relinquish control of part of their network.

Edited by GWRSwindon
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I like the 'what if' game.  The Brecon and Merthyr Railway, having successfully connected those two towns, built a southern section that, by it's own metal and by running powers, ran to Newport.  This dog wagging tail was the busiest and most profitable section of this railway.  But there was never a through service to Cardiff, a change being required at Bargoed, and this, along with access to Cardiff Docks to export coal from, must have been on the wishlist for it.  

 

So, what if... The B & M had built a direct route to Cardiff.  It would, I suspect, have branched from Machen, already a bit of a hub being the change for the New Tredegar and Caerphilly branches, to follow the Rhymni River south through Draethen, Cefn Mably, and Llanederyn, to either serve it's own wharves on the Rhymni at Pengam Green or making a junction with the TVR's Roath Branch near the later site of the Power Station for the coal traffic and with the GW at Pengam Jc for passenger trains.

 

Draethen, with industrial railways serving the limestone quarries towards Rudry, would make an attractive model, and in the late 40s/early 50s a bit of work for East Dock's interesting pre-grouping museum pieces.

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  • 2 weeks later...

shuttle.jpeg.3abd05ca43abf62d329456d81e45e768.jpeg

 

Johndon's space shuttle from the Non-railway modelling thread in 'musings, both to 72nd scale or 00.

 

If the Space Shuttle loading bay doors go from the tail to the back of the pilots cabin looks like you can get about three wagon loads of coal up to the International Space Station. Handy if they convert to a coal fired Arga to heat the place.

 

You could have some sort of steam powered shunter rocket to maneuver the wagon to the coal bunker on the side of the station. Or they have set up a low g metal smelting and refining plant in orbit?

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I was reading about the history of Regent's Canal, and at a number of points in the 19th century, there were schemes to buy it out and convert it into a railway. Had it gone ahead, there would have been a railway running from Limehouse, through Stepney, Bethnal Green, Haggerston, Hoxton, tunnelling under Islington, going through King's Cross, Camden, St John's Wood and ending at Little Venice, near Paddington. Along the route, it would pass very near to or directly intersect with the L&BR, GER, GNR, Midland, Metropolitan, LNWR, NLR, ELR and GCR. I don't think it would be unreasonable for the GWR to want to get in on the game, either with their own spur (perhaps buying up the section of the Grand Union Canal from Little Venice to Paddington, next to the station) or via the Metropolitan.

 

There were several reasons it didn't go ahead. The wealthy folk of West London didn't want steam trains running beneath their fancy houses and from the 1860s onward, it was felt that the Metropolitan already provided a link between different lines in London. However, I think one could imagine that if this did get built, maybe it could have been used to relieve the Metropolitan of freight traffic - it would have provided a direct connection to many existing goods facilities, plus the Grand Union Canal and the docks. The 1943 County of London plan identified a need for a separate London freight line, so the idea is perhaps not so far-fetched as it sounds.

 

At one point, the scheme was known as the North Metropolitan Railway and Canal Company, so perhaps the line could be called the North Metropolitan Railway.

Edited by HonestTom
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4 hours ago, relaxinghobby said:

If the Space Shuttle loading bay doors go from the tail to the back of the pilots cabin looks like you can get about three wagon loads of coal up to the International Space Station. Handy if they convert to a coal fired Arga to heat the place.

 

Coal being heavy, and satellites being light, you can only get 29 tons of coal in before it's overloaded. And because the International Space Station is in an awkward orbit, you can only get 15 tons 13 cwt there. Less if you want some sort of container to keep it in.

 

Steam powered rockets are definitely a thing that people use, though. And there was a serious NASA study for building a railway on the moon at one point - I may have to see if I can find it. Electrified, of course, and I believe aluminium rails.

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On 28/10/2020 at 23:45, GWRSwindon said:

The original Huddersfield & Manchester was originally to have been part of the MS&LR, but it went to the LNWR, but I'm away from my copy of Dow, I'll check when I get home. 

 

By the 1880s, I believe the MS&LR and LNWR had been at daggers drawn for a while, so I'm not sure what would make the LNWR decide to partially relinquish control of part of their network.

The original H & M was called The Huddersfield and Manchester Railway and Canal, which should tell you a lot; I've never seen any record of any interest by the MS & L. The LNWR and the MS & L built the present (joint) station in the early 1880s; it was opened in 1885, about the same time as the New Line (the Micklehurst loop)

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6 hours ago, HonestTom said:

I was reading about the history of Regent's Canal, and at a number of points in the 19th century, there were schemes to buy it out and convert it into a railway. 

 

However, I think one could imagine that if this did get built, maybe it could have been used to relieve the Metropolitan of freight traffic - it would have provided a direct connection to many existing goods facilities, plus the Grand Union Canal and the docks. The 1943 County of London plan identified a need for a separate London freight line, so the idea is perhaps not so far-fetched as it sounds.

 

I've also read about this line and thought it is almost the perfect fictional railway for many people; an endless procession of varied freight trains!

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3 hours ago, RLBH said:

Coal being heavy, and satellites being light, you can only get 29 tons of coal in before it's overloaded. And because the International Space Station is in an awkward orbit, you can only get 15 tons 13 cwt there. Less if you want some sort of container to keep it in.

 

Steam powered rockets are definitely a thing that people use, though. And there was a serious NASA study for building a railway on the moon at one point - I may have to see if I can find it. Electrified, of course, and I believe aluminium rails.

 

Didn't Oliver Postgate design something like this?

Was it for Ivor The Engine or The Clangers?

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

What would have happened to Northampton if the local landowners had encouraged the railways to come rather than obstructing them? It would have been the first main town reached by the LMS with massive implications for later developments up to Milton Keynes. Its strategic location would have made it a railway hub as important as Crewe. The line of the LMS would have been different with the section of existing line from Bletchley to Rugby never being built. Even so, Northampton had connections to Peterborough Bedford and Leicester and I can imagine the Leicester connection being intact, the population of the town more than double what it is today, and Castle station double todays size at least. A lot more railway infrastructure may have found its way to the town in general.

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19 hours ago, RobinofLoxley said:

What would have happened to Northampton if the local landowners had encouraged the railways to come rather than obstructing them? It would have been the first main town reached by the LMS with massive implications for later developments up to Milton Keynes. Its strategic location would have made it a railway hub as important as Crewe. The line of the LMS would have been different with the section of existing line from Bletchley to Rugby never being built. Even so, Northampton had connections to Peterborough Bedford and Leicester and I can imagine the Leicester connection being intact, the population of the town more than double what it is today, and Castle station double todays size at least. A lot more railway infrastructure may have found its way to the town in general.

Not the LMS, of course, but the London and Birmingham.

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A plan to add more housing and a small supermarket to my village in Oxfordshire (which hasn't yet gone ahead) got me thinking about where a railway could go to serve both the new supermarket (for deliveries), existing industries and provide passenger services for a growing population in a village which currently has no public transport.

 

The resulting branch line could make an interesting model with a few "what ifs". It would leave a nearby mainline, follow alongside an existing cycle route and stream (crossing both via a bridge and level crossing), then do some street running to reach a passenger halt where supermarket deliveries could be unloaded beofre continuing to some small industries at the other end of the village.

 

The Cholsey and Wallingford railway had an American Alco S2 switcher stored there for a while before it was sadly scrapped. If modelled in HO we could imagine this loco was saved for use on the new branch line and could power a mixed service consisting of a passenger coach and wagons.

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There have been a few Underground lines that never got built but might have...

 

- A line from Euston to Charing Cross that would have connected with the Metropolitan Railway, intended to provide a link between the South Eastern Railway and the London and North Western. It would have followed more-or-less the route of the current Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line.

 

- A branch of the Piccadilly Line from Holborn to Waterloo, which in reality only got as far as Aldwych.

 

- The curious City and Brixton, which would have followed the route of the City and South London Railway closely but not exactly. It would have run from King William Street, using the disused C&SLR tunnels under the river, then would have headed south through Lambeth and terminated in Brixton. With the exception of Brixton, every station along the route was within about five minutes' walk of a C&SLR station and the lines even would have connected at Oval. The C&SLR bought them out, but did nothing with the plan - although one could imagine the Underground reaching Brixton several decades early.

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  • 1 month later...

Here's a little update to my imaginary Salcombe Station.

 

As a terminus of the extension of the Kingsbridge branch. Build on top of in-fill in Batson Creek, using spoil from the two tunnels to Kingsbridge, plus mining spoil from anywhere else nearby in South Devon. With long sidings (like Fowey) for minerals and a quayside.

 

Perhaps it would be best build "upside down"? i.e. viewed from the north, with the quayside in the foreground.

 

image.png.1515d53ee485c039aa7419a8fbb9aaa8.png

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Still pretty big!  This reinforces the oft-forgotten fact that while rural branch termini are so common as "space-savers", real ones weren't actually pretty huge.  Rural land was cheap so the railway companies weren't constrained, unlike in city centres.

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I concur.

 

So I've chopped three feet off of the platform sidings, and reduced the distance between the level crossing and the throat by about a foot. It could be pruned even more drastically (if necessary). For reference, it's a one-foot grid.

 

image.png.647c50e5b87ea08023229251ecd423dd.png

 

Any resemblance to Kingswear and the ferry to Dartmouth is entirely coincidental.

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On 04/03/2020 at 15:12, rockershovel said:

 

The Arctic exploration vessels “Erebus” and “Terror” incorporated locomotives to provide steam heating and drive screw propellers, back in the 1840s

 

Can confirm this, we ran a piece about it in the SLS Journal.

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On 12/09/2017 at 08:42, The Johnster said:

It's probably common practice for all I'd know, but is this unique in using a railway locomotive boiler on a steamboat? 

 

On 12/09/2017 at 16:15, runs as required said:

No, not unique.William Hedley's 1813 'Wylam Dilly' locomotive was used to power a tug boat for towing loaded keels down the Tyne to load onto colliers during a keelmen's strike in 1822.

 


I’ve just come across these posts and, coincidentally, have just watched a program on the discovery of the wrecks of the Franklin expedition’s ships. Both ‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’ were fitted with boilers and mechanisms from withdrawn locomotives of the London and Greenwich Railway:

 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/175812111X13033852943147

 

(Edit - apologies. I found the two posts I quoted on page 4 of this topic, read a bit further and didn’t see any reply to them, so thought I was posting new information.)

Edited by pH
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  • 3 months later...

Here's my little contribution to the world of the imaginary.

 

Here's supposing that the building of Sidmouth station didn't recieve quite so much opposition from the locals, and was built closer to the coastline. My next 'what if' scenario is if the Budleigh Salterton branch had been built as an extension of the Sidmouth branch and not split off at Tipton St. John's. Favourable adjustments to the local topology and a tunnel under Peak Hill, just west of Sidmouth, would have been necessary for this. What was East Budleigh station is now on the other side of the river, serving the two settlements either side of the river. The line then continues into Budleigh Salterton and Exmouth as it did in reality.

 

For the purposes of my own modelling, I'm imagining that the branch was marginally more successful, now that it links Exmouth to the Sidmouth coastline. I suppose that it was transferred to the Western Region in the 1960s and survived as part of the BR network until the early 1970s. As in real life, building developments in Exmouth quickly ate up the branch line route as far as Littleham, but in my imaginary world preservationists managed to take over the line from Littleham to Ottery St. Mary - a total of about 11 1/2 miles. Furthermore, the 3 miles of track to Sidmouth Jct (now Feniton) remains intact and allows the heritage railway to have a main line connection.

 

506229679_SidmouthBranch1.png.02336ab1d9398395fcf2784a3d5e96cc.png

306044747_SidmouthBranch2.png.188ffcf8e8fa9a3ce260d7348f2966e3.png

 

 

 

Edited by MattA
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Some interesting ideas there, @KeithMacdonald.

 

Given the amount of development around Littleham as it was swallowed into Exmouth, I imagine that there would be insufficient room left to put a turntable in by the time preservationists got their hands on the site, even with the demolition of one of the platforms. But the areas around the Ottery St Mary and Tipton St John station sites both have room for such a thing (ignoring the industrial estate/tennis courts at their respective locations, that would never have been built if the stations were still extant!). Therefore, my current thinking is to have the OVR sheds/workshops/other such facilities split between those two locations.

 

I definitely have my eyes on mainline charters, albeit terminating at Sidmouth where I'm thinking that a bay platform (probably a remnant of this Sidmouth station originally being terminus) can be used to store ECS, similar to Kingswear.

Edited by MattA
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