Thank you.
I've often thought that it would be useful to have a digital railway map that could be set to any year, to show the actual network in that year. For instance, it took me quite a while to realise that some of the lines that are now quite important actually opened as late as the start of the 20th century, examples being Reading - Taunton via the B&H, and London - Banbury via High Wycombe (although both incorporated parts of some earlier branches). Being able to see what was, and indeed what wasn't there at any time in the Victorian era would be very interesting.
fascinating.
https://openrailwaymap.app supports this feature, but its dataset via the OpenHistoricalMap project is very incomplete (it doesn't have the track-level detail of its present-day data, and you have to zoom in to see most lines because they aren't marked as "main" or "branch"). A useful project would be for someone to work through the public domain maps available on the NLS site etc. and improve it...
To which should be added lines that should never have been built in the first place, ie were highly speculative or an attempt to compete with another company in too thin a market.
The underlying data for the map video is 'StopsGB: Structured Timeline of Passenger Stations in Great Britain' - see https://bl.iro.bl.uk/entities/product/56ff09f0-db5b-4ca9-8389-cfa362d5f46b , and links from there, and the YouTube page, for details and credits. This is essentially a conversion (automated) of Michael Quick’s book ‘Railway Passenger Stations in GB’, see https://rchs.org.uk/railway-passenger-stations-in-great-britain-a-chronology/ to machine processable form for historo-statistical purposes.
I may still have Quicks in a spreadsheet actually… myself and a couple of other volunteers transcribed it to make it more accessible for a YouTube channel. I might try and do something with it if I get time. The biggest issue will be the georeferencing. I did briefly try manually plotting them on a map but I don’t think I ever made it through all the “Aber____”s… there’s very little information on some of the shorter lived Halts.
Thanks. If you could make your spreadsheet available, that would be great, one way or another, that would be great.
For completeness it would also need lines complete but not yet opened (thinking of EWR!), under construction, authorised (to what level? Some lines were authorised (up to a point) for years before being proceeded with or - perhaps more often - abandoned) or proposed (with what degree of seriousness?)