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The loading gauge might have been a problem compared to the GCR/LNER one, but this would primarily have been due to the central height being significantly less than any other company: this is rather important in a route largely in tunnels. Even if this could be solved, I think that handling large tender locos in the cramped confines of Baker Street would have left little room for anything but
the shortest trains.
Adding onto this , I'm not aware of a turntable at Baker Street like there was at Marylebone. It would pose some difficulty having to either run expresses out of Baker st tender first , or having to run locos around the whole inner circle to turn them around.
Either that or you have a bank of sidings filled with station pilot locos to haul the empty stock out of the station. But the land for that at Baker st , Like a turntable would probably be at significant expense. Unless you wanted to engage in the very inefficient practice of running a pilot loco from Neasden / Wembley every time a service terminated in Baker Street.
Closure of Marylebone would have left open the question as to whether there would have been sufficient capacity at Baker Street and Paddington to cope with the extra traffic. Wasn't there a proposal to do something along those lines in the mid 1980s? Marylebone would have become a coach station.
It's a little surprising nowadays that the 1960 Met alterations included extending electrification beyond Rickmansworth, rather than making Moor Park a transfer station and handing all beyond to BR, with the 4-tracking from Harrow put in then completely isolating the two systems.
If this was done I bet today we would be looking at this as a prime candidate for "Crossrail-isation" and seeing how we could send the NR trains under central London
When I worked on the Met there was a rumour that under no circumstances will the Chesham branch be closed. This was due to the number of senior LT managers that lived in the Chesham area. How true, I don't know.
Not sure when you worked on the Met, but one of the very last acts of the Greater London Council before abolition in 1986 was paying to replace the bridges on the line that were in a dire state. I did always wonder why, especially as Chesham is outside of Greater London - maybe senior managers living there explains why!
Of course the ill-fated Crossrail1 , included the Chesham Branch - but the Aylesbury & Met service was reduced to 10 TPH - and the spec was generally reduced to cut costs (for example a turnback at Harrow ! , not relocating Rickmansworth Station etc) - there were howls of protest over 25KV wiring to Chesham by local amenity groups...........various bridge reconstructions and of course vegetation clearance.
The residual Met Line service would have been "just" Uxbridge and Watford , but to be fair LUL co-operated admirably in the planning excercises at the time ......
During one of the "Steam on the Met" weekends , BR ran the Chesham service shuttle with a green 121 which managed pretty well - the later one with a Hampshire unit (split with 3 berthed in one of the sidings at Watford Met) managed even better once the drivers (acompanied of course by a Met driver) , got the feel for the line. Great fun all round.
Not sure when you worked on the Met, but one of the very last acts of the Greater London Council before abolition in 1986 was paying to replace the bridges on the line that were in a dire state. I did always wonder why, especially as Chesham is outside of Greater London - maybe senior managers living there explains why!
The initial proposal was to cut the branch back to Chesham Moor. It was before
I moved to Chesham so I don't know the details but I understand that there was a huge campaign against it. I would guess that once a new station was costed in the savings weren't sufficient to justify a prolonged fight.
While electrification all the way to Aylesbury may have been in the earliest thoughts over electrification beyond Rickmansworth, my understanding is that the New Works Programme only included it to Amersham (quoted as such in barker and Robins's History of LT, and in the LPTB 1938 Annual Report). Something to bear in is that while the LT Area did include Amersham, it did not go all the way to Aylesbury.
It seems that a platform was built on the new pair of lines and traffic transferred to it, after which the original ones were closed and a new platform built. Only from 23 April 1961 were all four lines and both platforms at Moor Park in service.
Harsig's signalling diagrams include a stage by stage diagram for the Met quadrupling of 1960-62: it was completed with Stage 5, and commissioning of new local roads (so four tracks) between Northwood Hills and Watford South Junction on 17th June 1962.
If the Aylesbury line had been electrified, what about today’s S stock? They are very unsuitable for a journey of that length, I’d argue they’re unsuitable for the journeys they have to do now…
If the Aylesbury line had been electrified, what about today’s S stock? They are very unsuitable for a journey of that length, I’d argue they’re unsuitable for the journeys they have to do now…
If worrying about capacity issues, running all stations services from Aylesbury Vale Parkway to Aldgate with S7+1 Stock would probably have put a large number of people off.
If this was done I bet today we would be looking at this as a prime candidate for "Crossrail-isation" and seeing how we could send the NR trains under central London
Not sure when you worked on the Met, but one of the very last acts of the Greater London Council before abolition in 1986 was paying to replace the bridges on the line that were in a dire state. I did always wonder why, especially as Chesham is outside of Greater London - maybe senior managers living there explains why!
Originally went all the way to Verney Junction - from 1906 a GCR/Met Joint Committee was responsible between Harrow and Quainton Road. LT was resposnible for maintenence as far as Aylesbury (exclusive) and when the Joint Committee was abolished in 1950 this became the LT/BR boundary - cut back to Mantles Wood (Amersham) in 1961
Was there a noticeable increase in service frequency (and hence decrease in available capacity) once Paddington intercity services switched to HSTs? If so, would that have been at a time to make moving Chiltern services there harder?
There was a time in the early 1980s were cuts were made to some suburban services around London following a recession. Although it tended to be based on attacking the remaining asbestos fitted stock (which was due to be phased out by 1987).
By 1987 London financial businesses were booming and was big scramble to improve things (which led to the repeat orders of 319s and 321s because wasn't time to wait for new networkers). At the time the Crossrail proposal which eventually became the Elizabeth line, was more an outer suburban line (like the Paris RER lines), with the line from Old Oak Common via Ruislip included and electrified. It was the second line on western side (Heathrow branch didn't exist then)
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Originally went all the way to Verney Junction - from 1906 a GCR/Met Joint Committee was responsible between Harrow and Quainton Road. LT was resposnible for maintenence as far as Aylesbury (exclusive) and when the Joint Committee was abolished in 1950 this became the LT/BR boundary - cut back to Mantles Wood (Amersham) in 1961
Yes, the Met went out from London about 50 miles, similar distance to Brighton or Basingstoke. It was more a mainline railway with an inner London extension, unlike the former tube lines extended over suburban lines.
The Brill branch didn't last very long under LT, but they soon greatly improved the Uxbridge branch (which until 1930s had some fairly small rural halts). The Met had also opened the branch to Stanmore in early 1930s and had plans for a tunnelled relief line from Edgware Road (which was enlarged to 4 platforms in anticipation) to bypass the busy section through St John's Wood. In the end the new works programme built what became Bakerloo (now Jubilee) south of Finchley Road, and the intermediate Met stations were closed with others becoming Bakerloo.
Of course in recent years there has been much expansion of towns near top end of Metropolitan, around Aylesbury, Bicester, Haddenham etc. To some extent commuter towns
Originally went all the way to Verney Junction - from 1906 a GCR/Met Joint Committee was responsible between Harrow and Quainton Road. LT was resposnible for maintenence as far as Aylesbury (exclusive) and when the Joint Committee was abolished in 1950 this became the LT/BR boundary - cut back to Mantles Wood (Amersham) in 1961
This was the Railway Conversion League who came up with an impractical and inadequately thought out plan to turn Marylebone into a coach station around 1985, although I think it my have previously surfaced in the late 1970s. It got a lot of publicity as it was very much inline with anti-state-owned, pro-privatisation and deregulation ethos of the Thatcher government. I believe that Sir Alfred Sherman was involved and that the main spokesman was Lance Ibbotson, former WR and SR General Manager. (I must go and wash my mouth and mind out now.)
IIRC, the proposal also included turning much of the southern end of the GCR route (I forget how far out) into a dedicated busway for commuter buses. I seem to recall a article on this that pointed out that to get the same volume of passengers into Marylebone (without significantly widening the trackbed/roadway) would require coaches to be manually driven at 70+mph with less than 1 minute headway between them (and no signalling) and that this would be a recipe for a multi-fatality accident.
As Chairman of the British Transport Commission from 1961 and into 1962 it was Dr Beeching who was over the London Transport Executive as well as the railways, docks, canals and other stuff.
The electrification, quadrupling north of Harrow and introduction of the ‘A’ stock happened on his watch. Great results were expected. The Underground was making a profit of around £3million on a turnover of around £30million. Rationalisation was on nobody’s agenda.
Construction of the Victoria Line was starting, the last of the trolley buses went, new depot for London Country Buses at Harlow, new Green Line luxury coaches; what could possibly go wrong?
Marples and Beeching handed London Transport on from the BTC in good shape.
(Meanwhile some of BR’s own third rail urban electric lines, including Southport, Bury, the North London Line and Newcastle were a different kettle of fish with ageing equipment, falling demand and rising costs.)
The Liverpool-Southport may have had ageing stock, but I can't ever imagine the demand was falling. There was an electric branch from Southport to Crossens as well, which was also popular. Thank god Beeching didnt get his way, would have been a disaster today.
The Liverpool-Southport may have had ageing stock, but I can't ever imagine the demand was falling. There was an electric branch from Southport to Crossens as well, which was also popular. Thank god Beeching didnt get his way, would have been a disaster today.
I have previously explained why Southport (+Crossens) was so financially rickety despite appearances and won’t repeat it here as it would be Off Thread.
My main argument, stated above, is that any suggestion about Dr B and ‘what might have happened to the Met’ is completely bogus. Actions speak louder than anti-Beeching rhetoric. He was pleased to report in two BTC Annual Reports (before it was split up) that the quadrupling, extension of electrification and successful introduction of the A-Stock had been delivered on a profitable Underground network. What’s not to like? Oh, and the Victoria Line had started construction. New DMUs had been introduced on the Marylebone lines.
My main argument, stated above, is that any suggestion about Dr B and ‘what might have happened to the Met’ is completely bogus. Actions speak louder than anti-Beeching rhetoric. He was pleased to report in two BTC Annual Reports (before it was split up) that the quadrupling, extension of electrification and successful introduction of the A-Stock had been delivered on a profitable Underground network. What’s not to like? Oh, and the Victoria Line had started construction. New DMUs had been introduced on the Marylebone lines.
Dare I suggest that because the Underground was profitable as a whole there was less looking into the economics of specific lines than there was for BR?
Dare I suggest that because the Underground was profitable as a whole there was less looking into the economics of specific lines than there was for BR?
Well the alternate timeline the OP is proposed is one where the Metropolitan line was under BR, so a situation where it probably would have its specific finances looked at.
A valid question might be whether the more intense Met service we now have would have been possible if the BR route was still carrying express trains to Nottingham and Sheffield today, instead of just the local Aylesbury services we have.
A valid question might be whether the more intense Met service we now have would have been possible if the BR route was still carrying express trains to Nottingham and Sheffield today, instead of just the local Aylesbury services we have.
I don't have a Newspaper Archive subscription so I can't be certain, but from the excerpts I can read, it looks like the second island platform at Moor Park at least opened on 23 April 1961. Another article of 29 December that year said that Moor Park to Watford South Junction hadn't yet been completed.
If you fancy getting into Wikipedia editing its possible to get free access to most of it https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/ just that it takes quite a lot of editing to get there, and an account that is at least 6 months old. I happen to have access due to trying to sort out pinball articles on there since start of 2025 (first DYK for a pinball machine is going to be on main page of Wikipedia tomorrow) but have hardly ever used it as the magazines I need are on archive.org and another site.
A valid question might be whether the more intense Met service we now have would have been possible if the BR route was still carrying express trains to Nottingham and Sheffield today, instead of just the local Aylesbury services we have.
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