Controlled railway building rather than railway mania

[PMN1]

This probably falls into the realms of ASB but if there had been a controlled building of a network rather than an uncontrolled building frenzy, what routes wouldn’t have seen the light of day and what routes might we have got?

 

[edwin_m]

Nice thought.

I'll take a stab at the earlier lines being build roughly as they were built, to form a network linking the main cities. Branch lines would probably have been mostly built as well, since there was no real alternative to the railway so there would still have been demand to connect as many communities as possible to the network.

Some of the later main lines that were primarily duplicates would not have been built. I'm thinking maybe of the Midland south of Bedford (or even Leicester), almost certainly of the Great Central London extension in its entirety, and probably also of the Great Western Cheltenham to Birmingham etc. Similarly many other duplicate routes such as between Liverpool-Manchester and Edinburgh-Glasgow.

Some of the duplicate main lines closed or downgraded by Beeching are likely to be the ones that wouldn't have been built, since although his basic premise may have been wrong the actual choice of routes to develop seems broadly logical. Usually the main lines built last were the ones downgraded later, because the first company in an area usually had the most comprehensive network.

All this would have left us with more of a capacity problem than we have today!

 

[Buttsy]

Had the governments of the time decided to get involved with the planning of the railways, I think you'd have found it would have been done on a 'spoke' basis, intending to link the major population centres at the time. For example, Oxford would have had spokes to London, Bristol, Cheltenham, Worcester, Birmingham and Northampton at least.

Terrain or villages close to the route could have then required the route to divert sufficiently to serve that place. Using the Oxford example above, the Birmingham route may have gone via Banbury & Leamington (as today) or vis Chipping Norton and Stratford-upon-Avon.

Taking a map for that time 1830s-1850s and linking up the major towns would show how different the system would look had it been planned.

Later years may have seen cut offs and new routes added to aid the demand of people from A who want to go to B without the hassle of going via C. An exmple of this would be the GWR Bicester cut off line opened in the early 1900s.

 

[trickyvegas]

I'm pretty confident the The Macclesfield, Bollington and Marple Railway would never had existed as it was built to try create a route to London avoiding the L&NWR. However it's legacy still lives on in the form of Middlewood station and a very nice bridleway.

 

[Wyvern]

The line from Manchester to Ambergate would have gone through Buxton, which would have had the main line station it deserved.

Which means that places like New Mills (then little more than a hamlet)would have had just one station. On the other hand there might not have been an Ecclesbourne Valley Railway.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I'm pretty confident the The Macclesfield, Bollington and Marple Railway would never had existed as it was built to try create a route to London avoiding the L&NWR. However it's legacy still lives on in the form of Middlewood station and a very nice bridleway.

The Middlewood station to which you allude is actually on the line to Buxton and is still open.

The station of the Macclesfield, Bolllington and Marple Railway was called Middlewood Higher. It was opened on 2nd August 1869 and closed on 7th November 1960. The route forms the Middlewood Way in the area referred to.

 

[Taunton]

I believe the system in Belgium was developed under central planning, with routes being allocated to various private companies to build and operate them. It was all eventually nationalised after World War 1, when much of it had been wrecked. One of the outcomes is that the planned network is a bit thin around Brussels, and somewhat overbuilt in rural areas, not necessarily focused on major points.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alle_spoorlijnen_elektrificatie.PNG

It's also instructive to look at urban metro systems, in London and New York mostly built by private enterprise in the initial years, in Moscow entirely planned. New York is a particularly bad example of duplication while leaving large areas are unserved.

 

[yorksrob]

Well done to the OP - a fascinating question !

I suspect that a planned network might have looked something like the L&SWR or LB&SCR's (south western and south central divisions in new money). If you look at both of these networks, they had relatively little competition penetrating into their territories, and consequently had a fairly logical network structure.

Take the South Eastern division on the other hand is the product of competition.

Originally the Government stipulated that there should be one route to the South East to Dover from Redhill which developed with branches towards Maidstone, Hastings, and Margate. Had we stuck with a planned system, the LC&DR would never have existed as a separate company, so it's questionable whether Government would have decided to extend the North Kent route beyond Chatham. Maybe these North-South secondary routes would have become main line arteries.

Perhaps the geography of the North Downs would have led them to build a North Kent route anyway, but it would have built it to join with the existing route at Canterbury (West) with trains continuing to Margate or Dover via Minster. Also, since the cut-off line via Sevenoaks was built to compete with the LC&DR, would it have been built at all, or would Tonbridge trains still be running via Redhill ?

Certainly, we wouldn't have had two stations at Chatham, Margate, Ramsgate, Canterbury, Maidstone etc, or for that matter trains from the South East terminating at Victoria, Holborn Viaduct, Charing Cross and Cannon Street. Everything would probably still finish at London Bridge !

 

[trickyvegas]

The Middlewood station to which you allude is actually on the line to Buxton and is still open.

The station of the Macclesfield, Bolllington and Marple Railway was called Middlewood Higher. It was opened on 2nd August 1869 and closed on 7th November 1960. The route forms the Middlewood Way in the area referred to.

I assume the surviving Middlewood station was built after Higher, to serve as an interchange between lines, Wiki states it opened in 1879 but I know that is not always the case but I would imagine there would be no station at all if the line had not been built. I used to use it as an occasional commute to work when I worked at High Lane.

 

[tbtc]

Interesting though some of the histories are, revisiting some duplication/ competition just depresses me with regard to the amount of wasted efforts/ money/ land/ time in some areas of the country.

I think that a planned system would have meant just one (main) central station in most towns/ cities (excluding London/ Birmingham/ Manchester/ Glasgow) - which would have made things a lot simpler in places like Bradford, Warrington, Yeovil...

You'd also have seen some places on "spurs"/ "branches" still on main lines - Nottingham being an obvious example of a place that should be on a main line rather than tucked away.

Hopefully it'd have meant no other major infrastructure (like Heathrow or "out of town" shopping centres) being built without a decent railway connection, but it may also have meant some "railway towns" like Doncaster and Crewe would have had the status that they gained.

 

[Bevan Price]

Many early railways were built for freight, rather than passengers. So, there would be lines built to serve coal, iron ore, stone & other mineral production areas, linking them to towns & cities, and also to manufacturing centres (existing or new) outside major towns. Passenger traffic was almost an afterthought with these early railways. Many of these would have closed as mineral sources became exhausted and manufacturing centres declined.

Passenger services developed initially to link the larger towns & cities. Smaller towns & largish villages may have received railways gradually , but there would have been no competing lines providing two or more railways to many of the smaller towns - no cases of 2 or more railways running in parallel along some of the Cardiff /South Wales Valleys, for example. Some routes might not be the most direct, being designed to serve the greatest populations, rather than to provide the fastest journeys.

So, as just one of many possibilities, there might have been a West Coast line from London (North Central) - Northampton - Birmingham - Stoke - Manchester - Preston, etc., with a Stoke - Liverpool branch. Towns like Nuneaton, Tamworth, Lichfield would be served by east/west lines starting in Birmingham. London - Leicester would be served mainly via Northampton or Rugby, but a secondary route (like a MML) might have been created from London to serve growing towns like Luton, Bedford & Kettering.

Towns like Warrington, Wigan would probably be served by branches from Manchester or Liverpool - only one of which would be a Liverpool - Manchester route.

Blackpool may have remained a tiny seaside village without a railway, a few miles from a line from Preston to the once important port of Fleetwood.

An East Coast route might have started from the same London (North Central) terminal and run via Cambridge, Peterborough, Lincoln, (then Doncaster or Sheffield) to Leeds, then York, Darlington, Newcastle, Berwick & Edinburgh. Branches would serve the ports of Grimsby & Hull (Immingham would probably never have been built.). There would be at most 2 cross-Pennine routes - possibly Sheffield - Barnsley - Huddersfield - Manchester & Leeds - Bradford - Rochdale - Manchester (a bit like the Calder Valley, but Bradford being on a direct line with no need for reversals) etc., etc., etc.....

 

[yorksrob]

Interesting though some of the histories are, revisiting some duplication/ competition just depresses me with regard to the amount of wasted efforts/ money/ land/ time in some areas of the country.

At least in Kent, most of the infrastructure is still in everyday use in spite of being the result of some of the most rabid (and financially ruinous) competition.

 

[daccer]

I will stand corrected but I believe that much of the European system was built under the auspices of central Governments who viewed it as a military asset to aid the deployment of troops to potential combat zones. The period of peak railway building coincided with heightened tensions between the Great Powers in Europe railways became another tool of war as well as a transport mode for the public and for freight. As Britain was an island and a small one at that (and unlikely to be invaded) such considerations were probably not as important.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I will stand corrected but I believe that much of the European system was built under the auspices of central Governments who viewed it as a military asset to aid the deployment of troops to potential combat zones. The period of peak railway building coincided with heightened tensions between the Great Powers in Europe railways became another tool of war as well as a transport mode for the public and for freight. As Britain was an island and a small one at that (and unlikely to be invaded) such considerations were probably not as important.

Spot on ......