If World War 2 had never happened....

[St Rollox]

I doubt on social issues WW2 made the slightest bit of difference.
It was a generation at least after the war finished before womens, gay, ethnic rights etc became the norm.
Being a single mum or gay in most UK working class communities in the 1960s was a complete no no.

 

[21C101]

With the problems that affected "Leader", I just wonder what time scale would have been needed to make this locomotive totally trouble-free?

Not long. Bulleid did it (in Ireland) in 1957, where he built a "Mk 2 Leader" (no. CC1) that ran on turf (peat) of all things, in response to the Irish government requesting this because turf was abundant locally and coal expensive. Apparently it was virtually silent and did not theoretically need a fireman as augers automatically loaded the turf.

The cheap oil availability and diesel technology in the late '50s saw it never get beyond the prototype.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIÉ_No._CC1

It was Irelands 92220, the last steam engine to be built in Ireland and its scrapping and breaking up is much regretted.

 

[Dawg]

The one thing that affected our locomotive building which had nothing to do with the second world war was the sheer abundance and cheapness of coal in this country - it's why we still built Steam locos in the 1950s and I believe that still would have happened. Coal stocks would still have decreased into the 1960's and I would imagine that rail closures would have been far more severe than the Beeching report of '63

 

[341o2]

I doubt on social issues WW2 made the slightest bit of difference.
It was a generation at least after the war finished before womens, gay, ethnic rights etc became the norm.
Being a single mum or gay in most UK working class communities in the 1960s was a complete no no.

one important social development of WW2 was women wearing trousers. With so many men away or in active service women took over duties such as the land girls or in factories and skirts were inappropriate

 

[ChiefPlanner]

The one thing that affected our locomotive building which had nothing to do with the second world war was the sheer abundance and cheapness of coal in this country - it's why we still built Steam locos in the 1950s and I believe that still would have happened. Coal stocks would still have decreased into the 1960's and I would imagine that rail closures would have been far more severe than the Beeching report of '63

The fact we had a coal based economy in the 1940's is often lost - my own father was a miner (and only 17 when war broke out) - and worked 6 days a week to 1947 to cover demands (and they even tried "Coal Sundays" towards 1945 to get more production from an exhausted workforce) - any unsold coal stocks from the 1930's soon dissapeared towards industry and power stations. A forgotten part of the war effort.(bit like the railway contribution in both wars frankly)

 

[21C101]

The fact we had a coal based economy in the 1940's is often lost - my own father was a miner (and only 17 when war broke out) - and worked 6 days a week to 1947 to cover demands (and they even tried "Coal Sundays" towards 1945 to get more production from an exhausted workforce) - any unsold coal stocks from the 1930's soon dissapeared towards industry and power stations. A forgotten part of the war effort.(bit like the railway contribution in both wars frankly)

Not an insignificant number of conscripts ("Bevan Boys") were conscripted into the mines, much to the annoyance of most. Then, to cap it, they had to put up with idiots claiming they were "conscientious objectors" after the war.