What Might Have Been.

[jamie92208]

This topic cropped up in comversation at the wakefield show over the weekend where I did a bit of demonstrating and attempting to scratch build some 1908 Midland railway EMU's.

 

The conversation turned to what might have happenned but for the outbreak of World War 1.

 

After some discussion 4 of us came up with the following list (In no particualr order)

 

1. The West Riding Lines would have been completed through bradord which would ahve given the Midland a superb fast route to Scotland and would have left a well graded route south for today's coal trains to the Midlands. The project for the missing bit was due to go out to tender the autumn of 1914.

 

2. The North eastern would have elecrified from York to Darlington and probably on to Newcastle. The prototype main line loco was built.

 

3. The Midland would have electrified fom Derby to manchester with high Voltage AC overhead. This would have followed the successful trial bewen Lancaster Morecambe and Heysham.

 

4. The GN would have electrified it's suburban services.

 

5. The LBSC would have got their electrification to brighton and most Southern electrfication would probably have been AV Overhead. They did get masts erected as far south as Coulsdon.

 

Those came from the areas of knowledge of the 4 participants in the conversation. These projects alone would have lead to a vastly different railway by the 1950's. We would probably never have had the later Gresley Pacifics as the whole ECML would probably have been wired by then.

 

 

What does anyone else think.

 

 

[pete_mcfarlane]

5. The LBSC would have got their electrification to brighton and most Southern electrfication would probably have been AV Overhead. They did get masts erected as far south as Coulsdon.

But what of the LSWR 3rd rail electrification? The SECR was planning a 3/4 rail scheme of it's own as well.

 

The big quesion for your alternative relaity is would there have been a Southern at all? Would the railways have been grouped or would they have carried on as dozens of independent companies? My personall view is that the process of mergers and aquisitions that was already well underway would have continued, and we'd have ended up with a few large companies (Midland, GWR etc) and a few remaining smaller ones.

 

 

A few other things to think about:

 

- No WW1 means a much slower development of the IC engine, so now cheap buses to compete with the railways from the 1920s onwards and no cheap cars (or diesel shunters) in the 1930s.

- German electrification technology remains available for the various new schemes.

- No post-WW1 labour shortages, as the British Empire has 1.1 million extra men available for work (750,000 in the UK). This will have an effect on the development of labour saving technology as well as keeping labour costs down.

- Southern Ireland stays part of the UK (albeit with devolved government) and its railways aren't damaged in the Civil War, cut in two by partition and the various minor lines continue to be subsidised by the Government. So a lot more of them will survive.

 

So I would suggest a World where a few larger railways companies electrify their main lines, very few rural lines close (as there was not much road competition) and a lot of the smaller companies aren't merged or bought but carry on pretty much as before.

[Glorious NSE]

The big quesion for your alternative relaity is would there have been a Southern at all? Would the railways have been grouped or would they have carried on as dozens of independent companies? My personall view is that the process of mergers and aquisitions that was already well underway would have continued, and we'd have ended up with a few large companies (Midland, GWR etc) and a few remaining smaller ones.

 

That would seem very logical

 

I'd suggest though that the few large companies may well have looked anything like the big four though - looking to the US the successful mergers have been about expanding spheres of influence and/or increasing route lengths rather than putting duplicate routes in the same area under one control which appears to be the essence of all the "forced" UK groupings.

 

So i'd think in terms of things like GC+Met+SECR for example rather than SECR+LSWR+LBSC

 

I can't see there would have been a huge amount of point in merging the 3x Southern systems with each other, even now getting on for 90 years after we still have what amounts to 3x different organisations running 3x different networks - so you could argue that operationally speaking there doesn't seem to have been much of an advantage in them all being the same company.

 

(edited to make paragraph make some kind of sense! )

[Dave777]

Ooooh, spooky, I just entered an 'alternative UK railway history' in my blog, under a bit of pondering called 'A realistic trainset'. I was exploring the idea that with an alternative history you could have a layout that still had private owner coal wagons, Mk III coaches, and locos in LNER, GWR and rail blue liveries all running alongside each other.

 

It's a bit more far fetched than what we have in this thread though

[Ravenser]

That would seem very logical

 

I'd suggest though that the few large companies may well have looked anything like the big four though - looking to the US the successful mergers have been about expanding spheres of influence and/or increasing route lengths rather than putting duplicate routes in the same area under one control which appears to be the essence of all the "forced" UK groupings.

 

So i'd think in terms of things like GC+Met+SECR for example rather than SECR+LSWR+LBSC

 

I can't see there would have been a huge amount of point in merging the 3x Southern systems with each other, even now getting on for 90 years after we still have what amounts to 3x different organisations running 3x different networks - so you could argue that operationally speaking there doesn't seem to have been much of an advantage in them all being the same company.

 

(edited to make paragraph make some kind of sense! )

 

Specifically , I think the LNW/L&Y merger would have happened, but the Midland would have been seperate. The question is whether and how quickly the GSW might have been picked up by the Midland and whether the Caledonian would have stood outside a "greater LNW " and for how long. The post 1923 GW would have been pretty much the same , probably

 

But the LNW /L&Y might well have been electrification minded - whereas the LMS was actively hostile. There would certainly have been a strong L&Y presence at the top

 

I don't think the GC would have gone with the SECR - sooner or later the 1909 proposed merger of GC, GN, GE would have gone through. Electrification policy and management there is an interesting question - presumably the choice of General Manager would have been between Henry Thornton of the GE and Sam Fay of the GC , Wedgwood being out of the picture on the NER. I don't know how far either were pro electric or how far their reticence was driven by lack of cash (neither the GC nor GE could afford it)

 

In this scenario a SER/LCDR/LBSCR merger might have happened (remember the SECR was legally a common purse/joint venture set up), and gone high voltage AC overhead while the LSWR went its own way....

 

And we are assuming Parliament dropped its long-standing hostility to railway mergers.

 

On the other side - how long would "Common User" pooling of goods wagons have taken without the pressure of WW1? The Yanks still haven't done it

[pete_mcfarlane]

So i'd think in terms of things like GC+Met+SECR for example rather than SECR+LSWR+LBSC

Good point. The Midland in particular seemed to go through a phase of aquiring random small companies, such as the LTSR and the Northern Counties.

 

The result of this form of mergers would have been no removal of duplicate lines, as was done by BR in the 1950s and perhaps more importantly no rerouting of services to use a single station (as happened under BR in Lincoln and under the Southern in Leatherhead and Ramsgate for example). This would have perhaps made the railways less user friendly than they are now as you'd have to trek across town to make certain connections.

 

Nice through the idea of Mk3s in LNER livery is, surely with a framented system there would be no "standard" designs of rolling stock? Each company would buy or build its own designs. Perhaps there would have been some items of common rolling stock (in the way that the GWR. CIE and GNR(I) all bought AEC railcars). And perhaps more stock would have been bought in from overseas

[The Fatadder]

 

Nice through the idea of Mk3s in LNER livery is, surely with a framented system there would be no "standard" designs of rolling stock? Each company would buy or build its own designs. Perhaps there would have been some items of common rolling stock (in the way that the GWR. CIE and GNR(I) all bought AEC railcars). And perhaps more stock would have been bought in from overseas

 

I think that we would still have converged on a common set of rollingstock at some point, simply because it makes much more economic sense to buy locos from someone else makeing a 100 of a class than to build 20 yourself. likewise with wagons and coaches etc.

The big difference I suspect would be where the stock would be built, without a nationalised British Railways with a government saying you have to buy British (and hence locking out the US and European loco builders). It could mean that in more modern times things like the 59s may have arrived a lot sooner.

 

Of course conversely you could also say that without WW1 (and hence no WW2 either) the Empire wouldnt have fallen apart and Britain rather than the US would still be the world's economic superpower, and hence it would be new designs of British locos that would be exported to the rest of the world.

 

Does make for an interesting layout concept, though I suspect the hardest part would be coming up with a modern variation on the historic companies liveries (of course if the GW etc had survived until now they wouldnt be running the same liveries as in the 20s and 30s.)

[Edwin_m]

As people have said the absence of WW1 would have allowed railways to get on with electrification and delayed the development of the diesel, possibly to the extent that we ended up with a high proportion of electrification and very few diesels at all. However, unlike most other countries with greater state control, we'd have had a largish number of incompatible systems.

 

I guess we'd have got the Channel Tunnel a lot sooner too.

[jamie92208]

Yes I also agree about mergers with the Midland and GSW getting together. The Caledonian had been backed originally by LNWR as well as Scottish interests. However Scots Sensibilities might have had some sort of joint management but keeping their identities. Certainly many of our iconic later steam designs would probably not have appeared. There would probobly have been much more joint working as had already started. the LNW and Midland had been pooling coal traffic since at least 1909 on the Midlands to London Route depending on destination. The interestijng one to me would have been who the GC allied itself with. Obviously the Metropolitan and South eastern were both Watking complanies and the GC would have made a good partner with the Met. Perhaps the GWR would have used it to get more trffic from the north.

 

All makes for good modelling licence. A 4-6-4 Midland Main line electric would look nice haling some Clerestories, perhaps a project for the future lancaster Green Ayre project.

 

Jamie

[bike2steam]

Obviously the Metropolitan and South eastern were both Watking complanies and the GC would have made a good partner with the Met. Perhaps the GWR would have used it to get more trffic from the north.

 

Jamie

 

Indeed the newly renamed Great Central built the London extension to the European gauge, showing Watkins intentions, the Channel Tunnel would have come earlier. Certainly the Great Western was happy to go along with it, Banbury yard being evident of that.The idea of early electrification being an advantage is questionable considering the changes in systems,switchgear, and other equipment over the years, early electrification becoming obsolete, and expensive to replace, look what happened to some places in the U.S.A.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

But if you cancel WWI, then other social trends take its' place. The campaign for women's suffrage increases, and the depression of industrial wages which triggered the General Strike in 1926 occurs earlier, due to all the extra man power which hasn't died in France being available as a workforce. Meanwhile the Bolshevik revolution hasn't succeeded in Russia; without external war the Tsarist government is able to stomp Lenin et all into the ground. The survivors come back to the British Library reading room to work out where they have gone wrong; re-read Marx and discover that proletarian revolutions should happen in industrialised states, and succeed in exploiting social tensions here, to create a revolution in the UK.

 

The aristos and landed gentry who predominate in senior railway management are slaughtered to a man, and new plans are formulated to make the railway serve the proletariat. The Great Workers Railway (serving the balmy southern paradise where the homes of the new masters are to be located) has its' terminus relocated to Buckingham Palace, and all other London bound railways are made to converge on this, the new Proletarian Central Station. Take it from there, worker comrade heroes of the revolution...

[Glorious NSE]

On the other side - how long would "Common User" pooling of goods wagons have taken without the pressure of WW1? The Yanks still haven't done it

 

I would say they have nowadays, at least to the extent that we have.

 

On "traditional" US ops though I doubt the US system needed it, it was written into the "rules" that you could backload in the vague direction of the home road (not neccesarily to them) so "general service" cars like boxcars could wander reasonably freely even then. From the 60s/70s you get specially created fleets of cars coming on stream which are never even intended to go anywhere near their home road, they are pure "free runners" earning money for their owners...

 

Ref T&RS development i'm with Fatadder - as the years went on you would get more work going out to private loco & stock builders - in real life these companies tended to do industrial and export work (North British, RSH etc) but with smaller companies there would be more tendancy to buy off-the-peg designs rather than have an in-house team.

 

So whilst BR Standards wouldn't have happenned there might well have been "North British" standards competing with somebody elses "standards"

 

I'm not convinced by the "no diesel" theories either, i'd agree with the OPs comment that internal combustion could well have been held back somewhat by the lack of a war, but developments around the world still put the dawn of main line diesels at the back end of the 1930s (most folk cite the FT of 1939 as the breakthrough model in the US for example) - i'd suggest that there was plenty of impetus to use this technology for rail applications.

 

In the UK WW2 plus the creation of BR held back mainstream dieselisation for getting on for 20 years after it had started in the US for example - assuming WW2 and BR were not an issue then you can be sure that companies would be checking this technology out for any unelectrified routes.

 

With companies used to buying off-the-peg designs from outside builders diesel would have been an even more obvious technology to try - how about a UK loading gauge EMD Nohab in the 1950s for example?

 

UK companies might even have been leading this technology rather than playing catchup and being forced out of business due to feast/famine orders.

[Guest Phil]

What an interesting thread, although I have to admit to being somewhat of a Philistine, pre Nat' and certainly pre WW2.

 

It is very contentious to speculate whether BR might have come into existence in the way it did, if at all. One thing I'm certain of is that the appalling wastes which the railway industry was subjected to, would never have happened if the railways had remained private.

 

Perhaps a number of different designs would have evolved from equipment manufacturers, but I'm sure considerably more effort would have been applied to improving reliability. The board of directors of Great Eastern Railways could certainly not have written off the NBL type ones (BR Nos D84xx) with the indecent haste afforded to the BR owned class.

 

One topic to speculate on is whether the British locomotive building industry might have swung the way of our transatlantic neighbours with regard to "trade-ins". A good many locomotives were traded in against new stock, sometimes reusing some existing equipment during the process. In this case, perhaps some of the original designs might have been recycled to produce newer kit. This certainly happened in the UK with multiple units, and draws into contrast the "throw away society" ways of BR when they binned barely run-in stuff.

 

I still don't personally believe there wasn't work available for the D95xx which seem to me to have been farmed out to BSC and NCB with almost indecent haste. The locos survived a number of years in industrial use and could easily have perfomed local trip work of which there were plenty of examples right up until very recently. Cases in point are the class 08 / 09 workings around Cardiff which existed up until very recently.

 

 

Anyway - enough waffle from me - someone else's turn !!!

[bike2steam]

I would say they have nowadays, at least to the extent that we have.

 

In the UK WW2 plus the creation of BR held back mainstream dieselisation for getting on for 20 years after it had started in the US for example - assuming WW2 and BR were not an issue then you can be sure that companies would be checking this technology out for any unelectrified routes.

 

The years immediately following WW2 this country was bankrupt, the idea of importing expensive oil(we hadn't found our own yet) had to be very limited, so using coal was the cheaper option, especially as exports of coal, on which we were heavily dependant on money, were collapsing.

When the decision was taken to 'Modernise' in 1955 money was then limited to 'building our own' as it was thought more expensive to import, and it meant keeping jobs at home. Then we had the fiasco of the 'Pilot Scheme', where some classes were absolute duds like the NBL D84xx class, that always seemed to spend time( to me anyway) on Stratford shed stopped.

Sorry 'phil', you also mentioned the D95xx, they were mainly for transfer freight, between yards, such as Acton to Old Oak, all that kind of work dissappeared within a few years of the first one coming off the production line. They too seemed to beset with problems, as at Stratford with the D84xx, the D95xx were always lined up at Old Oak stopped. Some 25 years later, we had a D95xx at Swanage - nothing but trouble, we soon got shot of it.

 

Sorry for my waffle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[28XX]

But if you cancel WWI, then other social trends take its' place. The campaign for women's suffrage increases, and the depression of industrial wages which triggered the General Strike in 1926 occurs earlier, due to all the extra man power which hasn't died in France being available as a workforce. Meanwhile the Bolshevik revolution hasn't succeeded in Russia; without external war the Tsarist government is able to stomp Lenin et all into the ground. The survivors come back to the British Library reading room to work out where they have gone wrong; re-read Marx and discover that proletarian revolutions should happen in industrialised states, and succeed in exploiting social tensions here, to create a revolution in the UK.

 

The aristos and landed gentry who predominate in senior railway management are slaughtered to a man, and new plans are formulated to make the railway serve the proletariat. The Great Workers Railway (serving the balmy southern paradise where the homes of the new masters are to be located) has its' terminus relocated to Buckingham Palace, and all other London bound railways are made to converge on this, the new Proletarian Central Station. Take it from there, worker comrade heroes of the revolution...

 

So the great British working class would get the the wage increases and conditions improvements of the 50s and 60s 'You've never had it so good' era 20 - 30 years earlier, and would have spent it on happy holidays to the cornish riviera, until the country went bankrupt as Russia nearly did in the '80s and we finally did last year.

[iak]

To answer the question...

We might have a railway system that works properly today!!!

[Allegheny1600]

What a fascinating thread! As a student of history, i have to add my two bob's worth!

 

Both the diesel and the petrol engine were being developed before the turn of the last century (Rudolph Diesel produced the first successful engine bearing his name in 1897)(the internal combustion engine (petrol) was developed by Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and later Karl Benz between 1876 and 1979, although theoretical work had been done MUCH earlier!) (Henry Ford started the Ford Motor company in 1903 and his production lines in 1913!). This shows that the application of the internal combustion engine to almost all forms of transport would have taken place with or without war.

 

War between Britain and Germany was inevitable given that Britain already had it's empire and Germany wanted one. Through the nineteen noughts and teens there was an arms race developing anyway as Britain wanted to ensure it's place as the world superpower of the day and Germany knew that to gain it's own superpower status - it would have to fight Britain, simple! The way the war actually started was rather obscure but "a good excuse!".

If however, war between Britain and Germany had indeed been "all over in six weeks" rather than becoming a "world war", THEN we can look at various "what if's".

 

The railways (of Britain and Germany, probably!) would have had a nice little earner carting troops and munitions around for a few weeks without wearing out equipment, losing personnel and so on. Seeing as the country may not have been so economically damaged, the railways should have received due recompense.

However that would only have kept the railways going for a short while and road vehicles would have inevitably started to make inroads into profits from marginal lines.

Could we therefore have started to see some limited mergers on the later American model? I would think so, perhaps some like the 1922 LNWR and L&Y merger - consolidating territory with a small expansion in area AND "theoretical" mergers like GC, Met & SECR giving a large increase in territory and offering better service.

Once such a ball had started rolling, it would have been inevitable that the smaller railways would have to merge or face starvation.

I like to think that we would have ended up with five or six "bigger companies" or maybe seven if there were an all Scottish line.

My take would be;

The "Greater North Western" comprising the former LNWR, L&YR, FR, M&CR, NSR and possibly the H&BR (giving access to eastern ports). Possibly include the CR & HR?

The "Midland" or Greater Midland whose tentacles possibly would have been enhanced by full absorption of the joint lines albeit with due compensation to the other companies. Completion of the Bradford lines would be beneficial and probable. Possibly include the GSWR?

The "Greater Northern & Eastern" comprising the GNR, GER, NER and NBR. Possibly include the GNoSR?

The "Great Central & Continental" comprising CLC, GCR, Met & SECR with access to a lot of seaports, very profitable!

The "Great Western" probably pretty much as it ended up under the grouping.

The "Southern Railways" basically just the LBSC & LSWR combined - could that have worked?

Finally the Scottish railways, about which i don't know enough to make an informed or logical guess! Apart from above.

 

Such companies may well have developed electrification schemes or early dieselisation schemes however, in our "what if" scenario can we negate the effect of the great crash of 1929 which led to the great depression? I doubt it very much indeed, sadly.

Sadly as this would have provided the ideal breeding ground for the sort of extreme views that actually did happen in real life, leading inevitably to war once more. Timing of such a war would possibly be harder to predict but probably in the late 1930's after a few years of depression. Would Hitler have still led a fascist Germany? perhaps not, as without such an awful WW1 to inspire him, he may have remained a obscure trouble causer.

What is more interesting (to me, anyway!) is - if a cataclysmic WW1 had not happened - would the weapons that fought WW2 have been more or less developed? My guess is less developed as there would have been less need to develop them. To me this points to a war at this time blowing up into a great cataclysm, sort of like a WW1 at a later date.

This would mean government control of railways (again!) - D'oh! (which is what we were trying to get away from!).

 

Now lets fast forward to the end and aftermath of this last war and we have:

Labour shortages due to the loss of life,

Availability of government road vehicles aplenty,

governments relinquishing control of the railways.

This time round however, MAYBE the railways are better placed to recover from the effects of war, due to previously installed electrification schemes (at least). A parallel with this would be the Pennsylvania and New Haven railroads in the USA - these were (and still are) the greatest of the American electrified roads and due to the investment in the fixed plant, weathered war more successfully than non-electrified roads.

Our railways would have to electrify the whole of their mainlines in order to realise the benefits of electrification however else the savings would all be lost at the transitions of power.

Manpower hungry applications like shunting or branch-line work would have to be modernised - most likely with diesel locos or railcars due to inevitable road competition.

No nationalisation (hopefully!) would mean no Beeching, however as (possibly) misguided as his cuts were, it gives us a model to work with.

To apply this to my earlier scenario of six or so big railway companies - could they all have survived post this last war? Maybe not in their original forms.

We may well find that four northern mainline companies is too much for the economy to bear, prompting another round of mergers possibly giving us a "Big four" or even a "Big three";

The "Great North Western & Scotland" whereby the Midland is absorbed into the GNWR,

The "Great North Eastern & Continental" - the GNE absorbs the GC&C,

The "Great Southern & Western" - the GWR takes over the former SR lines.

How would this work?

Parallel main lines would be closed; the Midland line to Scotland, the GC line to the northern midlands(?) and the LSW line to the south west. Branches would be kept as feeders to the remaining main lines and towns formerly served by main lines would find themselves on single track branches with much smaller stations.

 

As we now must be arriving in the decade of the seventies or thereabouts, i would imagine that all of the great main lines would be electrified (on whichever system!) along with the better used branches, the remainder of the network using internal combustion traction.

Now, looking at motive power i imagine that initially the railways would have developed "in house" projects but later on would have purchased power off the shelf - simply due to the development costs of bigger, more advanced and sophisticated locomotives/units. Even if our railway companies had purchased power from abroad however, it's difficult to believe that they would not have at least been assembled over here.

Thus we could have seen Peaks and class 25's working alongside Nohabs or V200's, Tommy's (class 76!) with French CC6500's and so on.

 

Coming bang up to date, would we have a Continental loading gauge applied to the ECML (had the GC line really been closed?) with ICE trains swooping up and down at great speed passing double headed class 152's on huge containers trains? Or would we all have perished in some great unforeseen cataclysm?

 

Please forgive this rather long winded ramble, which is only a bit of fun from my imagination - it's rather hard to re-write history and the further back in time you go, the larger the effects of whatever it is you postulate, when you move forward in time again.

Cheers,

John E.

[Chrislock]

 

What does anyone else think.

 

There is an opinion that British railways are behind Europe because we did not go straight to electrification, but chose instead to develop diesels in the interim.

It maybe that WW1 put a spoke in the natural evolution of our railways - as well as killing millions of people pointlessly, of course.

[pete_mcfarlane]

This shows that the application of the internal combustion engine to almost all forms of transport would have taken place with or without war.

Obviously, but my original argument was that development of IC engines was speeded up by WW1, and then at the end of the War vast quantities of government surplus motor vehicles were sold off for civilian usage. Not to mention all the ex-servicemen who were now trained in driving and maintaining them.

 

Without a prolonged war this development would still have happened but would take much longer. And above all the war creates a unique situation where buses and lorries (and drivers and mechanics) suddenly become available far more readily and cheaply than would have otherwise been the case.

 

The million dollar question is, what would the railways have done when the buses and lorries finally arrived? The two interesting things to bear in mind are:

 

1. It would have taken much longer to happen, therefore the railways would have longer to come up with a solution.

2. Without grouping, there are many more railway companies, and many more CME departments, working on the problem. This means lots of different solutions, more chance of somebody coming up with the right one, and more chance of somebody persevering with it.

 

A final interesting point is that if some companies came up with an effective way of competing with buses and some didn't, then the number of rural line closures would vary massively from region to region.

[Burkitt]

This really is a fascinating thread - I'm a great fan of alternative histories, especially when railways are involved.

 

Meanwhile the Bolshevik revolution hasn't succeeded in Russia; without external war the Tsarist government is able to stomp Lenin et all into the ground. The survivors come back to the British Library reading room to work out where they have gone wrong; re-read Marx and discover that proletarian revolutions should happen in industrialised states, and succeed in exploiting social tensions here, to create a revolution in the UK. Take it from there, worker comrade heroes of the revolution...

 

I think this is a particularly interesting take on the situation if WWI had been avoided. Imagine British People's Railways standard steam locomotives with a big red hammer and sickle on the front.

 

What is more interesting (to me, anyway!) is - if a cataclysmic WW1 had not happened - would the weapons that fought WW2 have been more or less developed?

 

This is straying away from railways, but my view is that had WWI ended in such a way that the Kaiser remained in power, his position would have been strengthened and the Nazis would not have come to power. Either vindicated by success in WWI, bitter at its failure, or with the pre-1914 arms race still continuing had it not happened at all, Germany would have remained highly militaristic. The persecution of the Jews would not have taken place, and Germany would have remained at the forefront of nuclear physics. Combining these factors, Germany would probably have become the first nuclear armed nation, and it is likely they would have exploited this aggressively.

 

With companies used to buying off-the-peg designs from outside builders diesel would have been an even more obvious technology to try - how about a UK loading gauge EMD Nohab in the 1950s for example?

 

Admittedly for an un-nationalised LNER, but I had a go at photoshopping such a thing once...

 

RMweb Gallery

 

Finally, this website has a number of interesting alternative railway histories - http://www.kalyr.com/railways/LocoTimelines.html

 

Paul

[The Fatadder]

 

Sadly as this would have provided the ideal breeding ground for the sort of extreme views that actually did happen in real life, leading inevitably to war once more. Timing of such a war would possibly be harder to predict but probably in the late 1930's after a few years of depression. Would Hitler have still led a fascist Germany? perhaps not, as without such an awful WW1 to inspire him, he may have remained a obscure trouble causer.

What is more interesting (to me, anyway!) is - if a cataclysmic WW1 had not happened - would the weapons that fought WW2 have been more or less developed? My guess is less developed as there would have been less need to develop them. To me this points to a war at this time blowing up into a great cataclysm, sort of like a WW1 at a later date.

This would mean government control of railways (again!) - D'oh! (which is what we were trying to get away from!).

 

Cheers,

John E.

 

That does allow for further interesting developments. A WW1 taking place at the WW2 timeframe, could theoretically mean that despite the war the railways end up in a much better condition at the end of the war given that without the ww1 happening the development of aerial combat (particularly bombing) would perhaps only be in its infantcy, thus the wide spread destruction to the network (and to industry) would be avoided, and coupled with the investment in new technologies in the 20s, post war in the late 40s & 50s the railway companies wont be in such a bad position meaning they manage to avoid nationalisation.

 

____________________________________

 

 

Another interesting alternative would be what would have happened if Churchil had won the election instead of Labour at the end of the war. Would that have just resulted in the inevitable nationalisation just being pushed back further with the network ending up in an even worse state, or would given time the GW et al manage to turn things around.....

[The Fatadder]

 

 

Finally, this website has a number of interesting alternative railway histories - http://www.kalyr.com...oTimelines.html

 

Paul

 

Now that has some interesting alternative histories....

 

One day I really would love to model that Hydraulic option....

 

Virgin XC and GWT Westerns, EWS Hymeks brilliant!

[pete_mcfarlane]

I think this is a particularly interesting take on the situation if WWI had been avoided. Imagine British People's Railways standard steam locomotives with a big red hammer and sickle on the front.

I wonder if they would have tried a 4-14-4 like the Soviets did?

[DavidB-AU]

Does make for an interesting layout concept, though I suspect the hardest part would be coming up with a modern variation on the historic companies liveries (of course if the GW etc had survived until now they wouldnt be running the same liveries as in the 20s and 30s.)

Railway companies were running some of their own bus and lorry services by the 1920s. It's possible that Great Western and Midland could be running a lot of suburban buses today, instead of trains being run by bus companies!

 

Another possibility is the railways could have been nationalised earlier. There were Bills to this effect put to Parliament as early as 1906 but the Labour Party didn't have a big enough majority at the time. The Big Four was a compromise to nationalisation given recent events in Russia and Scotland.

 

Cheers

David

[Enterprisingwestern]

1. The West Riding Lines would have been completed through bradord which would ahve given the Midland a superb fast route to Scotland and would have left a well graded route south for today's coal trains to the Midlands. The project for the missing bit was due to go out to tender the autumn of 1914.

 

I thought these had been built, isn't that what Wibdenshawe is a (superb) model of?