If St Pancras had been demolished?

[Journeyman]

Bedford to Hitchin was actually the Midland Railway's original access to London so presumably built to main line standards.

By the looks of things, it was somewhat downgraded after the opening of the full Midland Main Line, so may have needed some work, but presumably the alignments and clearances would have been decent.

 

[Western Sunset]

A couple of thoughts; please excuse if already mentioned.

Original plan by BR to rebuild Euston (the LMS had wanted to rebuild it too) was for an office block between the station and Marylebone Road; hence no room for The Arch. Then the GLC (or was it still LCC) veteod further office development. Hence the clear space in front of the present station where The Arch could've been located.

Re-coal traffic over the Leicester - Northampton line. This route was well used by the LMS/BR for the coal trains to Stonebridge Park for the power station there. Distinctive high-capacity bogie coal wagons were used on this service.

 

[Senex]

By the looks of things, it was somewhat downgraded after the opening of the full Midland Main Line, so may have needed some work, but presumably the alignments and clearances would have been decent.

One of the WW1 singling schemes. And yes, main line to country branch status immediately on the opening of St Pancras. Same in principle as Wigston to Rugby which was the originall main line and also ended up just as a rural branch, but in that case the cut-off was not quite sharp, as some traffic for London (especially coal) continued to run that way even afte the running powers to King's Cross came into force. Nothing wrong with alignments in either case — the minimum curve radius south of Bedford was 80 chains.

Western Sunset: Was it GLC/LCC or Camden that vetoed the office development — and then not long afterwards permitted the high-rise a little further west along the Euston Road?

 

[Merle Haggard]

A couple of thoughts; please excuse if already mentioned.

Original plan by BR to rebuild Euston (the LMS had wanted to rebuild it too) was for an office block between the station and Marylebone Road; hence no room for The Arch. Then the GLC (or was it still LCC) veteod further office development. Hence the clear space in front of the present station where The Arch could've been located.

Re-coal traffic over the Leicester - Northampton line. This route was well used by the LMS/BR for the coal trains to Stonebridge Park for the power station there. Distinctive high-capacity bogie coal wagons were used on this service.

The reason for the refusal to allow BR to build that office block was something about blocking a long distance view. Possibly viewing Parliament from Hampstead Heath?? The claim seemed at the time to be a bit of a stretch, but preventing B.R. from acting commercially while at the same time criticising B.R. for having a 'nationalised' mindset that wasn't commercially-minded was the theme of the day.

 

[edwin_m]

A possibility for MML traffic that occurred to me would have been to keep the Bedford-Hitchin link (closed in 1964, I think) and run the passenger traffic into Kings Cross that way.

I think the point was to maximise the use of Euston, just rebuilt with 17 long platforms and a 4-track electrified main line. Kings Cross was unelectrified at the time, with the two-track bottleneck at Welwyn and only 8 long platforms plus some rather useless short ones.

Bedford to Hitchin was actually the Midland Railway's original access to London so presumably built to main line standards.

Go back even further and the route was via Kingsbury and Hampton-in-Arden.

 

[70014IronDuke]

Funnily enough, there's a gentleman who often has a stand selling photos. at railwayana auctions. As well as buying from him, I've been tapping him for memories, as he was a Colwick fireman (on the WDs to Northampton) before transferring to Nottingham Midland. At the latter depot, he was often booked as 2nd man to take over the sleeper at Northampton. Passenger to M Harboro', then UCOC bus to Northampton. Neither the M.H. nor the then Northampton Derngate bus stations were close or convenient to the respective railway stations; finding the way across Northampton in the late evening must have been a challenge. But, in those days, UCOC buses always ran
Because the sleeper went indirectly and slowly South, it was shown on the departure boards at Glasgow (and, I think, in some timetables) as being for Northampton. It reversed at Nottingham and Leeds; I think that the engine ran round in each case (rather than slip working) - can remember the sound of a furiously-accelerating light engine disturbing my dozing. Overnight trains always seemed to switch between furious activity and high speed running, and waits with nothing much happening - apart from someone whistling loudly and tapping the side of the coach, possibly on the basis 'I have to be awake, so you should be too'. All gone now (almost).

You should surely invite him for a cup o' tea and ask him if he wouldn't mind being recorded over a couple of sessions. At least two, ideally three minimum - because he will remember stuff meanwhile that he forgot to say in the first two sessions.

Colwick closed in 66 or 67? So assuming he was what, 22 then, he must be 75 or so minimum now? Might not have long to go in this Covid period.

 

[RT4038]

A possibility for MML traffic that occurred to me would have been to keep the Bedford-Hitchin link (closed in 1964, I think) and run the passenger traffic into Kings Cross that way.

I doubt that would have been considered at all. King's Cross was already going to be taking extra trains from Sheffield (via Retford) and Nottingham (via Grantham), so would not have had capacity for the Derby-Loughborough-Leicester service.
Anyway, by the time this was being considered, the line had already been largely dismantled.

The Leicester-Rugby (via Ullesthorpe) line had also recently been dismantled, but I think was considered for rebuilding. Even if it had been intact, it would have required a complete rebuild to take fast passenger trains, as the line had been a backwater for the previous 100 years and the track was in 'worn' condition. However, this line had a level crossing across the busy A5 trunk road (near the present Magna Park warehouses), which would have required a bridge building if the line was to be reinstated.

Both lines had awkward junctions with the main line at the southern end with a flat crossing. At Rugby in particular this was a slow turnout across all the up lines with not any chance of improvement. At Hitchin the Midland train would have to make a southbound flat crossing of the ECML, as well as northbound Cambridge trains.

In those days Leicester only effectively had one train per hour to London, plus one per hour that stopped at the intermediate stations to Bedford, Luton and St Albans. I guess an hourly DMU would have taken up this traffic, connecting with the London train at Market Harborough. Euston would only have had to cope with one extra train per hour, King's Cross two [and either of these may only have got a direct train every two hours?] However the existing WCML & ECML frequencies were much lower than today, both main line and suburban.

 

[Bald Rick]

The reason for the refusal to allow BR to build that office block was something about blocking a long distance view. Possibly viewing Parliament from Hampstead Heath?? The claim seemed at the time to be a bit of a stretch, but preventing B.R. from acting commercially while at the same time criticising B.R. for having a 'nationalised' mindset that wasn't commercially-minded was the theme of the day.

Euston sits smack on the viewing corridor from Primrose Hill to St Paul’s. Any development is limited in height on that corridor.

 

[WesternLancer]

I agree about the mezzanine, and there's something that puzzles me.
HS2 will speed up journey times, and to suggest that speed isn't important is seen by some as heresy. A reduction of half-an-hour is seen as a massive improvement well worth spending billions to achieve.
Meanwhile, at least some passengers are happy to have the present journey time increased by visiting the mezzanine and even using, for instance, the well known chain of chicken restaurants for a sit-down meal lasting, perhaps, half an hour.
Of course, this provides empirical evidence that destroys my own criticism of the time taken to reach the MML platforms at St. Pancras; possibly some passengers really do prefer to spend time in the 'retail units' and admire the architecture rather than catching the next train. But, if speed isn't important, it does raise a question about the validity of some railway investment decisions.

Point well made I guess...

different HM Treasury investment models of course

Time on train - model the cost / benefit using method A (time saved = economic benefit)
vs
Time in fried chicken restaurant - model the cost / benefit via method Y (time spent = money spent on economic activity)

This would lead to investment decisions to ideally get you from A to B via hyperloop transit so you could spend more time in fried chicken restaurants at each end of journey