If you could go back in time and build Britain's railways from scratch...

[34116 Broadwoodwidger]

Something I really like about the world of model railways is that one need not be tied too closely to factual reality as we know it, but can instead imagine what might have been...

 

One of my interests aside from railways is Alternate History, and particularly "Alien Space Bats" scenarios involving a particular person, location or collection of items being projected back through town. One of the best was written by a then Birmingham City Councillor, Iain Bowen, on Thatcher's Britain finding itself back in the 1730s (rest of the world). He also did a rather good one (much shorter) on an alternative development of British Railways from the 1950s onwards.

 

My interest, however, was sparked by watching many Jago Hazzard videos about the nonsensical petty rivalries and pyramid schemes behind many of Britain's railways, plus the knowledge that many routes were poorly planned and almost all suffer moderately or even severely restricted loading gauges, leads me to ask, suppose you were moved back in time (whether involuntarily or via elective time travel) to the 1820s, or possibly earlier, how would you go about planning, designing and building a network fit not only for its time but for all time? Stuff that would make that alternate timeline's Jago Hazzard marvel at how the founding fathers of Britain's railways really got it absolutely right first time, while at the same time probably meaning he'd have far fewer stories to tell, because let's face it, cock-ups, con artists and willy-waving enmities are far more entertaining than sensible success.

 

Would you opt for pre-emptive nationalisation, with some kind of centralised rail executive having the final say on all route planning and construction as part of a nationwide strategy?

 

What track and loading gauge would you go for? I'm thinking that the main line gauge throughout Britain, Europe and the colonies should be 5ft 6in, with a 16ft x 12ft loading gauge. This brings so many benefits, not least the ability to have corridor/compartment stock that isn't hideously cramped...

 

I'd permit the use of narrow gauge for smaller feeder lines (as well as entire systems such as Man and Wight), but even then, I would propose a single gauge of 2ft 9in (being exactly half the main line gauge), with goods wagons designed with quick-release bodies of which four could be craned onto a suitable broad-gauge wagon chassis for quick and easy transshipment - a form of proto-containerisation, if you will. Such lines would need to have a very specific geographical, topographical and economic justification for not being full size broad gauge main lines - doing it just because it's cheap would not in itself be a justification. Clearly, you couldn't realistically run a broad gauge line up the Ffestiniog, not even if it was single-track, but sillinesses like Southwold would not be permitted.

 

How would the routes chosen in this timeline differ from those we know today, or which were lost to closure?

 

For instance, I would envisage the Great Western Railway being routed via Windsor, Newbury, Marlborough and Calne, with a Bath to Taunton direct line via Wells and Glastonbury. The Southampton to Dorchester route could also be extended to Exeter, potentially obviating all those little north-south branch lines along the East Devon coast.

 

A better solution to the Exeter to Plymouth route would need to be found - I favour a route up the gorge of the River Teign from Dunsford to Chagford then across the wild open moor to Princetown and Plymouth (possibly calling at Yelverton), but then that's just because I love Dartmoor and wish we had a railway to exploit those grand views in the way the Settle & Carlisle does, for example. I would also route the Salisbury and Southampton lines via Winchester, Alton, Farnham, Guildford, Kingston and Roehampton, bypassing Andover and Basingstoke, neither of which is likely to develop the importance they gained in the 20th century.

 

Gloucester would be served via a main line leaving the GWML at Windsor, heading through the Chilterns via Maidenhead, Henley and Wallingford to Oxford then crossing the Cotswolds via Witney, Burford and Northleach - I looked at an alternative routing via Cirencester and Stroud but it's ten miles longer. Oxford to Birmingham via Woodstock, Chipping Norton and Stratford-upon-Avon is a possibility, perhaps as well as rather than instead of the existing route via Banbury.

 

A fast direct London to Norwich route via Bury St Edmunds would also be useful.

 

ECML I'd route from Peterborough via Lincoln and Gainsborough to York, with Stamford-Grantham-Newark-Doncaster-Retford-Selby as a relief route. The main Newcastle to Edinburgh route would be inland via Jedburgh rather than faffing round via Berwick, you'd save twenty miles and hopefully avoid all those sharp curves in the Morpeth/Alnwick area. Not to say the coastal route couldn’t be useful...

 

I'd also be tempted to build a York to Carlisle route via Ripon, Leyburn and Appleby, perhaps more useful than the S&C or Stainmore routes...

 

Regarding locomotive policy, I'd be tempted to avoid the competition between different companies or BR regions and impose a BESA group of standard classes as was done in India, and just contract them out to independent builders like Stephensons, or maybe even have just one or two national locomotive workshops, maybe one in the North producing heavy goods locos and one further south focusing on fast passenger locos, but using the maximum of common parts. The amount of money that got wasted on bad locomotive designs... competition seemed just to result in backward parochialism rather than innovation most of the time.

 

Anyway, your thoughts?

[TerryD1471]

This is a fascinating topic to embark on, even if it doesn't ultimately achieve anything. Just the kind of "what if" scenario that I enjoy.

 

If I read you aright, the kind of governmental overview that you suggest was pretty much what they had in France. As I understand it, a Government committee had the right to approve or veto private enterprise schemes depending on whether they fitted in to the "national plan" or not.

 

Nationalisation always seemed to be a good solution in theory, but I have always had severe doubts about the practical outturn. The snag seemed to be that too many politicians and bureaucrats stuck their fingers in (with their own selfish agendas) and "muddied" the original laudable objectives. I don't know if this is a particularly British problem; I had a conversation today with someone who suggested that it was a throwback from the bureaucracy we had to have to run our "empire."

 

Be that as it may, I still think this is an interesting topic well worth pursuing, and I look forward to reading other people's views on this.

[jamieb]

I once wrote a scenario as to how the rail network of Wales may look today if the Cambrian had been absorbed by the LNWR before becoming part of the GWR at the grouping.I shall try and find it 

However,going back to the original question,what the railways served in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries was very different to where they are needed now For instance any lines serving big mining areas would be now serving much quieter less populated parts of the country.

New towns ,and populous suburbs of existing towns,would not have needed the same rail service 200 years ago that they do today 

The country has evolved,many people and industries have been displaced,so any rail network would have to adapt with it,which is pretty much what has happened 

[pH]

11 hours ago, 34116 Broadwoodwidger said:

… how would you go about planning, designing and building a network fit not only for its time but for all time?

This shows just how impossible a task it would be. From today, never mind from when the first railways were built, how can you know the requirements for railways of the future? What are railways going to be used for in the year 2525 (for example)? Will tracked transportation still exist?

[Legend]

Did the Great Central not latterly get it about right . I think same gauge but obviously the European loading gauge for double deckers.  Railway up the spine of the country from London with off shoots to major centres Birmingham , Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds then Glasgow and Edinburgh . West route to Bristol and Wales .  A further set of branches st each conurbation . 

 

These days there would be high speed trains every 10 minutes , forestalling the need for air travel  and motorways . Railways would be our first choice to travel, in fact it would be a no brainer  to go any other way  ( having just suffered the delightful M6/M62 roadworks and the normal M25 on my travels to Dorset and East Anglia !)

[MarkC]

29 minutes ago, Legend said:

Did the Great Central not latterly get it about right . I think same gauge but obviously the European loading gauge for double deckers.  

Ah, that old canard. The London Extension wasn't built to Berne (loading) Gauge, although its clearances were definitely more generous than most UK railways.

[Nearholmer]

A lot would depend upon when your god-like powers applied from, because the first few trunk routes were built when the technology was very immature, one might almost say barely workable. What one had to do in terms of route-design in 1830 (keep it as flat and straight as possible, even if that cost a fortune) was very different from what one could do in, say, 1870, given progress in motive power. Added to which, nobody was quite sure at the outset how much traffic would materialise; it turned out to be a great deal on trunk routes, but it was all a gamble to begin with, so one might under-provide if standing in 1830 or 1840.

 

Whether the French model could have worked in some of our busier industrial districts I’m not sure; it might have created a throttle on expansion of industry, but more generally it would at least have reduced wasteful duplication, and the division between interet general and interet local was a sound one (but see below).

 

I wouldn’t go for the equivalent of the metre gauge network, which wasn’t actually a great success in France (zillions of kilometres of loss-makers that mostly lasted only forty or fifty years, many less), but would introduce the 1896 Light Railway provisions much, much earlier, early enough that nearly all feeder lines (interet local) would be built (to standard gauge) without the expense of a parliamentary act, under the view of commissioners, and would be permitted to operate to safety standards commensurate with light traffic.

 

If the god-like powers included foresight, I would require “lock, block, and brake” much, much earlier, requiring them universally as soon as technical progress permitted, instead of doing the laissez faire thing that was done.

 

But, Britain at Home had a very different attitude to that in France. Britain in her Colonies, was quite different, much more “top down” in some cases (nationalised railways very early), but also much more ready to use “fit for purpose” solutions, rather than over-egging things, even as near to home as Ireland.

 

i agree with the poster above that a big challenge would be how to morph the network to keep in step with ever-changing demands/needs as industry, commerce, employment patterns, leisure travel etc themselves morphed. Particularly challenging in god-like mode, because the railways created or enable the creation of some industries and trades ….. what you do as god will alter mining, heavy metal industries, agriculture, the nature of our great cities (the populations of which could only be fed by rail), the postal network, import and export provisions (docks and harbours), and so forth. You can’t centrally plan the primary transport network without accidentally or intentionally centrally influencing everything else!

 

PS: has central planning and national ownership of trunk roads worked out well? Personally I’m not sure, but it might offer some lessons.

 

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by Nearholmer

[MyRule1]

The only way that railway routes GB would have developed differently is if a fuel source other than coal had been the driver of the industrial revolution. I am reading Ruth Goodman's excellent book "The Domestic Revolution" although most of the book is about the impact of coal on households the first few chapters are about energy sources in general. The section on the economics of transporting coal reveal much about our early rail routes. Once the basic coal routes had been established then additional routes were needed for other raw materials and finished goods. Add in the links to the empire and you have the Victorian rail network. Passenger traffic tended to be an afterthought.

 

Coal commerce and colonialism were fairly seen in unique combinatio in GB. The only possible way to build up a different rail network would be to change one of these.

 

Substitute peat or wood for coal,band you have no steel.

 

The best place to look at an alternative is Ireland how railways developed there. I know little about that subject except for the different gauge to the mainland and the place of peat as an energy source.

[34116 Broadwoodwidger]

One reason why I like 5ft 6in gauge is that it provides so much more room between locomotive frames for a decent size firebox and ashpan, plus larger diameter boilers etc. Worth looking up the 4-cylinder 2-10-0 North British built for India (GIPR/NWR) - it was a monster, and even with only 160psi, had a tractive effort in excess of 50,000lb - 250psi would have raised that to 78,230lb, near enough two 9Fs' worth (albeit it had the smaller driving wheel diameter of the 8F - for any given boiler pressure it was worth 2.17 of those). You can obviously also haul much more freight in a wider wagon with lower rolling resistance. Further benefits for ride quality, stability and passenger carriage space.

[Nearholmer]

16 minutes ago, MyRule1 said:

Passenger traffic tended to be an afterthought.

Are you sure that’s true of the first long distance intercity railway, namely the London & Birmingham, or the first suburban railway, The London & Greenwich?

 

My picture of things is that once the technology had been proven in its basic form as a coal-schlepper, promoters quickly woke up to the fact that general merchandise and passengers were likely paying propositions too. Look how early the London and Brighton was built (on the back of the London and Croydon), and that certainly was never primarily a goods line, in terms of earnings, and didn’t carry a great deal of coal for a fair while - coal continued to come to London and the south coast primarily by sea for a good while after the first railways began (wasn’t the Canterbury & Whitstable built to haul sea coal inland?) and was still coming by sea in large volumes in the 1960s, a hundred years after really large volumes began to come by train.

 

But, industry and commerce were certainly the things that grew in a symbiotic relationship with railways, which was the point I was trying to make in my earlier post:   Inextricably linked.

[RichardT]

This issue has been addressed by “the Casson counterfactual” - Prof Mark Casson’s (University of Reading) study “The World’s First Railway System”.  (Prof Casson is an eminent business and economic historian who is not afraid to out himself as a former train-spotter and railway enthusiast on his university profile page.). His book “Uses counterfactual analysis to show how the British railway system could have developed, but didn't due to political and commercial pressures”.

 

His use of railway deposited plans for this book has been rather over-hyped (the implication being that no one knew about those sources before) but nonetheless it’s well worth a look.

 

A more detailed critique of Casson’s proposals is attached 

Hope this is of interest.

 

casson counterfactual critique.pdfRichard T

Edited June 26, 2022 by RichardT
Editing

[The Johnster]

I would work on the principle that a central controlling committee resposnsible for allowing lines to be built would do so from two primary points of view and that, in the 1830s to 1850s, these would have been firstly military and secondly for the economic good of the nation.  Military lines would be from London to Dover, Portsmouth, Milford Haven, Holyhead, (the last two to put down Irish rebellions), and possibly Richborough, supplemented by lines from Leeds/Manchester to Holyhead and Glasgow to Stranraer.  The Severn Tunnel or a bridge would have been built much earlier, probably by 1850, to supply the Fleet at Portsmouth and Plymouth efficiently with Welsh Coal.  These military routes need not pass through more than a few  centres of population on the way. 
 

LInes built for the carriage of goods, minerals, and passengers would have probably developed much in the way that they did in reality, but there would have been very few duplications.  That would have led to much heavier traffic on the lines that were built, and 4- or 6- track formations would have been common, even more close to London.  No GW broad gauge nonsense, no Badminton cut-off, no Settle and Carlisle or G&SW, no GC London extension and no George Hudson, so the development of the Midland and it's cross country route might have been very different.  Cardiff might have been bypassed by a main line running to it's north roughly along the route of the current M4 and the big city would have been Newport, with docks extending westward over the Wentloog levels.

[34116 Broadwoodwidger]

12 minutes ago, MyRule1 said:

The only way that railway routes GB would have developed differently is if a fuel source other than coal had been the driver of the industrial revolution. I am reading Ruth Goodman's excellent book "The Domestic Revolution" although most of the book is about the impact of coal on households the first few chapters are about energy sources in general. The section on the economics of transporting coal reveal much about our early rail routes. Once the basic coal routes had been established then additional routes were needed for other raw materials and finished goods. Add in the links to the empire and you have the Victorian rail network. Passenger traffic tended to be an afterthought.

 

Coal commerce and colonialism were fairly seen in unique combinatio in GB. The only possible way to build up a different rail network would be to change one of these.

 

Substitute peat or wood for coal,band you have no steel.

 

The best place to look at an alternative is Ireland how railways developed there. I know little about that subject except for the different gauge to the mainland and the place of peat as an energy source.

 

While essentially correct, I feel that this ignores many other contributory factors in the development of the railway network. Most railways were built not to address an established need or because of any great vision, but purely as an opportunistic (and usually unsuccessful) get-rich-quick scheme, often combined with a desire to obstruct a coma,speting scheme from a rival company, or to get one over The Other Guy (witness the knife-fight between Edward Watkin and James Staats-Forbes over Watkins' Metropolitan and JSF's District railways and also EW's South-Eastern and JSF's LCDR, a dog-eat-dog competition so incredibly pointless and monumentally silly that it bankrupted both companies and forced them to merge).

 

Then you had obstructive landowners and commercial vested interests in places like Stamford, Northampton, Kingston-upon-Thames, Windsor/Eton and Marlborough, leaving those towns languishing with poorer rail services on less significant lines built later when they realised their mistake, and some of which have since closed (Marlborough and Calne have had no rail service since Beeching)...

 

There were also issues with penny-pinching construction budgets leading to weak bridges, bridge collapses and tunnel cave-ins (e.g. the SER tunnels on the Tonbridge to Redhill and Hastings lines, which had to be lined down, leaving them with an incredibly tight loading gauge), construction cock-ups like that at Oxted Tunnel, where excavation from both ends meant they failed to meet in the middle and had to connect the two misaligned bores with a tight reverse S-bend which again constricts the loading gauge...

 

In London, it took the ruthless Machiavellian machinations of a literal gangster from Chicago (which he'd had to leave in a hurry when his fraudulent crimes there were exposed) to make sense of the mess caused by Watkins, Staats-Forbes and other colourful personalities like J. Whitaker Wright... Charles Tyson Yerkes may have been a con-man, but it is to him that London owes thanks for its integrated public transport network. He bought up most of the then extant Tube network, integrated them all into Underground Electric Railways of London, and when the tram and bus companies objected to his expansion of the network, he simply bought them all out and integrated their surface services with his trains... without Yerkes and UERL, there would have been no LPTB/LT/TFL.

 

In short: never credit the Victorians with too much common sense. Profit motive and ego usually came first, often at the cost of viability.

[Nearholmer]

Yetkes was only Victorian for about six months of his London incarnation, wasn’t he?

 

But, yes, the pursuit of money was behind it all, as it was behind colonialism, commerce, and indeed coal.

 

Greed is a powerful, if wildly unpredictable, engine of progress, leaving vast amounts of waste and wreckage in its wake. The bit I’m not sure I get is how you put rationalist central planning of the railways into the swirling greed-pit of Victorian capitalism running at full rip, without sacrificing significant progress in the attempt to prevent significant waste. 

[pH]

51 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

… no Settle and Carlisle or G&SW …

The railway that began as the Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr, opened in 1839/40 and that had a virtual monopoly on the haulage of coal from the Ayrshire coalfield?

[Steamport Southport]

2 hours ago, MyRule1 said:

Passenger traffic tended to be an afterthought.

 

 

Not in the case of the Liverpool & Manchester. It was always designed as a goods and passenger railway. They just didn't expect the lower classes to want to travel. But did expect businessmen and the upper classes to.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/l/liverpool_crown_street/index.shtml

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/m/manchester_liverpool_road/index.shtml

 

Some of the biggest objectors were the stagecoach companies who knew they would be out of business. Travel between the two cities was long, slow and dangerous (not just highwaymen, but a massive bog and across a flood plain). Most went the long way around via Birkenhead, Chester, etc. as it was easier.

 

When the railways turned up you can travel in relative comfort and safety in a couple of hours.

 

 

 

Jason

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

in the 1830s to 1850s, these would have been firstly military and secondly for the economic good of the nation

If you look at what was already in place by 1830, 20 000 miles of turnpike road, plus 4 000 miles of canal (other navigable waterways I can’t find a length for, but navigable rivers were also very significant), although some of it was militarily useful, the prime functions were very much commercial, and perhaps governance, in the sense that the postal system was the means of ‘remote control’ both internally and of the colonies.

 

So, standing in 1830, I think my prime rail routes would target the same same places as the turnpikes and inter-city canals, which is not far off what happened: London to Birmingham, Bristol, Portsmouth/Southampton area, and somewhere in Kent to connect to the continent; Liverpool to Manchester, with connecting leg south to Birmingham; Birmingham to Bristol, etc.

 

Some places that had been prime turnpike targets pre industrial revolution, were already becoming eclipsed by 1830, long distance transport of perishable goods (except on the hoof, driven over great distances) hadn’t been thought of, so the growing conurbations were drawing food mainly from their own doorsteps, and long distance transport of coal was something that you did by boat.

 

What I’m trying to say is that the map of Britain looked different seen through 1830 eyes, and I’m also saying that snaffling trade from stage coaches was an early target, both The Royal Mail, which paid very well, and passengers, because you could set fares high, partly because of the time saving, but also because travelling by coach, especially inside, was a monetarily expensive game, with meals, and in many cases stopovers, on the way. Even serving the travelling needs of businessmen and government officials was a potentially good earner, before you factored in the clergy, the judiciary, the landed gentry, and their families.

 

It took until the 1850s for railways to begin to dominate goods transport, so it will make a huge difference whether our time travel has the gift of fore/hindsight and when he/she lands …… no foresight, land in 1830, unlikely to fully grasp rail’s potential for heavy goods transport over long distances and how transformative that will be, therefore don’t build a huge central goods artery, spend more time copying the turnpike map, with a mind focused on high value, low volume goods, Mail, and posh passengers, leave heavy coal and ore movement as a localised thing for rail, using water to carry heavy stuff over long distances.

 

Small fact: The Liverpool & Manchester Railway earned 50% of its profits from passengers, and most of the rest from cotton imports, and manufactured goods exports, not from moving coal about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by Nearholmer

[melmerby]

4 hours ago, MarkC said:

Ah, that old canard. The London Extension wasn't built to Berne (loading) Gauge, although its clearances were definitely more generous than most UK railways.

Built before Berne gauge even existed!

The construction of the GCR (13' 5" by 9' 3") London Extension was started in 1894, The Berne Gauge (14' 0" high by 10' 2" wide) was agreed in 1912.

 

The GCR wasn't even that generous, it was better than the smaller loading gauges of some lines.

It's height of 13' 5" wasn't that tall, 8 pre- grouping companies were taller, e.g. the Midland at 13' 9" (oft quoted as being a small railway!) being one of them.

It's overall width was 9' 3", the same as several others, The GWR was 9' 8" & NSR was 9' 6"

It's max height at 9' 0" width was actually quite low at 10' 7" and was one of the lowest.

 

So overall the GCR was not anything special.

 

[DavidB-AU]

19 hours ago, 34116 Broadwoodwidger said:

For instance, I would envisage the Great Western Railway being routed via Windsor,

 

That wouldn't happen for reasons unrelated to petty rivalries. Eton College had way too much power.

 

Cheers

David

Edited June 27, 2022 by DavidB-AU

[mdvle]

18 hours ago, 34116 Broadwoodwidger said:

how would you go about planning, designing and building a network fit not only for its time but for all time?

 

Generally speaking you can't.

 

Most things aren't built for all time, but rather anything long lasting is usually because we have been able to modify/update/upgrade it to suit the changes that happen with time.

 

18 hours ago, 34116 Broadwoodwidger said:

Would you opt for pre-emptive nationalisation, with some kind of centralised rail executive having the final say on all route planning and construction as part of a nationwide strategy?

 

Nope.

 

The Government wasn't going to fund something speculative like a national railway network when it was unproven technology with no proven need, and as always the Government's of the day had other priorities for spending money on.

 

Like it or not the early days of any technology are wasteful as we explore what really works.

 

18 hours ago, 34116 Broadwoodwidger said:

What track and loading gauge would you go for? I'm thinking that the main line gauge throughout Britain, Europe and the colonies should be 5ft 6in, with a 16ft x 12ft loading gauge. This brings so many benefits, not least the ability to have corridor/compartment stock that isn't hideously cramped...

 

Absolutely not.

 

Go with the European gauge simply because it is the best combination of size vs weight.

 

Going bigger inherently means heavier (volume increase is challenging) and that in turn increases every other cost - bridges/viaducts/rail size and even the energy to move the train.

 

We see this in North America where high speed rail traditionally has been problematic for a variety of reasons but as significant problem is the cost of moving such heavy trains.  Large trains only benefit the moving of freight, passenger movement is best with smaller/lighter (to a point) thus the European standards appearing to be the best compromise for passenger operation.

 

18 hours ago, 34116 Broadwoodwidger said:

How would the routes chosen in this timeline differ from those we know today, or which were lost to closure?

 

For instance, I would envisage the Great Western Railway being routed via Windsor, Newbury, Marlborough and Calne, with a Bath to Taunton direct line via Wells and Glastonbury. The Southampton to Dorchester route could also be extended to Exeter, potentially obviating all those little north-south branch lines along the East Devon coast.

 

Maybe.  But I can't help but think that not just your suggestions but other suggestions tend to look at a map of the UK and assume everything is flat.  In a large part the existing rail network exists as it does as a result of geography, and going back in time isn't going to suddenly make geography irrelevant.

 

18 hours ago, 34116 Broadwoodwidger said:

A better solution to the Exeter to Plymouth route would need to be found - I favour a route up the gorge of the River Teign from Dunsford to Chagford then across the wild open moor to Princetown and Plymouth (possibly calling at Yelverton), but then that's just because I love Dartmoor

 

But then you throw away rail access to the resort towns of south Devon that drove so much rail traffic until the car and motorway network came along, and thus throw away rail access to the most populous part of Devon.

 

18 hours ago, 34116 Broadwoodwidger said:

Regarding locomotive policy, I'd be tempted to avoid the competition between different companies or BR regions and impose a BESA group of standard classes as was done in India, and just contract them out to independent builders like Stephensons, or maybe even have just one or two national locomotive workshops, maybe one in the North producing heavy goods locos and one further south focusing on fast passenger locos, but using the maximum of common parts. The amount of money that got wasted on bad locomotive designs... competition seemed just to result in backward parochialism rather than innovation most of the time.

 

Which ignores that historically we didn't know that the "bad" locomotive designs were bad until they got built.  When you are building locos pre-modern computing trial and error was simply part of the learning process of discovering what worked and didn't work.

 

 

 

[mdvle]

6 hours ago, 34116 Broadwoodwidger said:

One reason why I like 5ft 6in gauge is that it provides so much more room between locomotive frames for a decent size firebox and ashpan, plus larger diameter boilers etc. Worth looking up the 4-cylinder 2-10-0 North British built for India (GIPR/NWR) - it was a monster, and even with only 160psi, had a tractive effort in excess of 50,000lb - 250psi would have raised that to 78,230lb, near enough two 9Fs' worth (albeit it had the smaller driving wheel diameter of the 8F - for any given boiler pressure it was worth 2.17 of those).

 

Working within the current rail spacing the Pennsylvania Railroad got 96,000 lbf of tractive force, so no need to go wide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_I1s

 

But the question becomes why?  Where in the UK would there be enough freight traffic to justify such a loco?

 

[MarkC]

8 hours ago, melmerby said:

Built before Berne gauge even existed!

The construction of the GCR (13' 5" by 9' 3") London Extension was started in 1894, The Berne Gauge (14' 0" high by 10' 2" wide) was agreed in 1912.

 

The GCR wasn't even that generous, it was better than the smaller loading gauges of some lines.

It's height of 13' 5" wasn't that tall, 8 pre- grouping companies were taller, e.g. the Midland at 13' 9" (oft quoted as being a small railway!) being one of them.

It's overall width was 9' 3", the same as several others, The GWR was 9' 8" & NSR was 9' 6"

It's max height at 9' 0" width was actually quite low at 10' 7" and was one of the lowest.

 

So overall the GCR was not anything special.

 

Indeed so. Thanks for putting some meat on the bones, as it were.

 

The only thing that the London Extension really had in its favour was a lack of level crossings - only one, IIRC?

 

Whilst it was fairly flat, it wasn't actually that great for high speed running, due to alignments through its many island platforms. Indeed, I seem to recall a book where a Management Officer was taking a footplate trip, & stated that some of the station approached seemed to be almost like 90 degree corners! Exaggeration, for sure, but it obviously gave him cause for concern...

[Nearholmer]

The London Extension also didnt have a fantastically good approach to London, because it crashed into the Chilterns and squiggled and slogged through them by the Met & GC, and GW&GC routes, whereas the L&B route sliced bravely through at Tring.

 

The L&B route was very cleverly selected, and our time traveller might do well, if he or she has foresight, to select it, but go large, and make it a six or eight track super-highway as far as Rugby, then branch for Birmingham, Trent Valley, and the GC route to tap the various commercial and industrial areas, with the GC route being the way onwards towards Tyneside. Sort of the M1/M6 of railways.

 

In fact, here is my outline proposal for a sensible start to a railway network in 1830. I would add Holyhead, and Norwich, and finish the route to Brighton, cos I like Brighton, and Londoners deserve a day out at the seaside every now and then.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Nearholmer

[darrel]

The problem with this countries national transport plan, is that its never had a national transport plan. 

In the original post it was suggested to building a railway that was fit for all time. But back then no one could have dreamed of Airports. 

Even when we built Airports there was no plan to link them to the rail network.

For example in Central Scotland you have 3 Airports Prestwick, Glasgow and Edinburgh. The largest two of these Glasgow and Edinburgh have no rail links. When it would have been better to have one large airport built next to the Edinburgh Glasgow mainline with a dedicated station. 

Prestwick Airport didn't get a station until the early 1990s. And to get to it from Edinburgh you have to change in Glasgow and walk between Queen st and Central.

 

So going back to the original point of this thread I would have built a railway line in tunnel crossing Glasgow North to South. With a station underground between Queen st and Central with both stations joined by underground passageways.

[johnofwessex]

Back in the late 80's Will Hutton made the point that the UK had The Industrial Revolution by accident.  The rest of the world, by and large didnt and came to see how we did it, they then took away ideas about what we got right, and more importantly what we got wrong.  Also of course because they were nowhere near as wealthy as we were they had to use the resources they had carefully, hence much greater state planning/involvement across the economy.

 

My suggestion as to the bigger 'what if' is what could have been done in the inter war period. n As a 'for example' you can stand on Dunster Station with its goods yard and goods shed and see Minehead station, similarly equipped,  probably an excessive level of provision in the days of the horse and cart and certainly so after WW1.  In the same way, between Chilcompton and Radstock there are 5 stations - Chilcompton, Midsomer Norton & Radstock on the S&D and Radstock and Welton on the GWR all with goods sheds, yards etc and no more that 4 miles apart.

 

There was also the collapse of local passenger traffic in the 1920's with little attempt to either produce more attractive timetables or replace trains with buses, as a 'for example' Colin Maggs cites the Radstock Housewife who could not make a morning trip to Bath by train returning by lunchtime.

 

While the inability to raise capital, and regulation played a part,  as Fiennes points out there were significant management failings by the Railways in terms of understanding their business.