PGBerrie wrote:What about the Woodhead electricification? Would it have been extended towards London?
Peter
There was some mention of it but i think costs at the time would have put it on the back burner the government would have probably had to give considerable grant aid to enable this to happen. A more logical extension to the Newark/Retford area could have potentially streamlined coal and cross country passenger services as a start, tapping into the Nottinghamshire coal field and the Trent valley power stations without an engine change at Sheffield.
I would have thought Newcastle Carlisle would have the potential for electrification, i can picture in my minds eye EM1s and 2s taking an interval service from Central to Carlisle.
Hi interested in the area served by 52D. also researching colliery wagonways from same area.
PGBerrie wrote:What about the Woodhead electricification? Would it have been extended towards London?
Peter
There was some mention of it but i think costs at the time would have put it on the back burner the government would have probably had to give considerable grant aid to enable this to happen. A more logical extension to the Newark/Retford area could have potentially streamlined coal and cross country passenger services as a start, tapping into the Nottinghamshire coal field and the Trent valley power stations without an engine change at Sheffield.
I would have thought Newcastle Carlisle would have the potential for electrification, i can picture in my minds eye EM1s and 2s taking an interval service from Central to Carlisle.
I think it was once planned to extend the Woodhead scheme to March via Lincoln and the GN & GE Joint (possibly including the ex-LDECR lines), as it was primarily planned as a freight moving scheme.
I don't know a great deal about the NE, but Newcastle to Carlisle seems a bit fanciful to me. It isn't even electrified now. How on earth the GE line north of Ely ever qualified is beyond me!
I was being a bit fanciful in my Carlisle scheme but the March scheme sounds about right also remember there was originally dc electrification to Shenfield so a push north from London could have given an electrified freight route into the capital with the bonus of picking up more passengers as well.
Hi interested in the area served by 52D. also researching colliery wagonways from same area.
now, now 52D we didnt want that overhead rubish spoiling the countryside, after all we had our beloved Tyneside electric's, just think the BRB could have headed south and joined up with the southern, then who knows headed for Carlisle and further !
The money waisted on BR standards could have been waisted on electric stock perhap's ex Bullied?
I believe if the railways were never nationalised then right now rail fares would be cheaper, why? Because with four big companies competing against each other they compete for lower prices, quality etc. Currently the railways are still damaged even though they have been re privatised it cannot turn back time. For example Asda and Tesco's, both big supermarket brands that are always trying to outdo each other; what's happening? Cheaper prices. And cheaper prices means more customers, and more services available to serve those additional customers.
I would hate to see Britain when they nationalise supermarkets which knowing some idiots, will probably happen. Look at the banks for example.
I have been following this discussion for some time and many people have raised valid points, but what must not be forgotten is that, in 1948, the railways were on the point of collapse. The heavy traffic and almost total lack of maintenance during the war had left the railway companies facing huge bills to replace worn out track, locomotives and rolling stock at a time when competition from road transport was increasing; the compensation from the government was nowhere near enough to even start to pay for the rebuilding needed. The only thing that prevented even more traffic being lost to road transport was that road haulage was nationalised at the same time as the railways. If the railways had not been nationalised, then road transport would not have been either, and that would have meant that thousands of ex servicemen leaving the forces with a driving license and a few pounds in their pocket would have been able to pay a hundred pounds or so for an ex army Bedford and set themselves up in business.
Even before the war, the LNER along with the other companies had started to cut services on some lines, even closing some of them, and this would have continued after the war with the result that many of the lines later closed by Beeching would have closed anyway - many of them much earlier than they actually were.
I think that lines like the Great Central may have survived, possibly also the Waverley Route, but there would have been a drastic pruning of the branch line network, much like we saw in the 1960's.
I firmly believe that nationalisation saved the railways of Britain from a fate even worse than the one they eventually faced under Beeching, and it gave them a breathing space that allowed most of them to survive until more enlightened times when people started to realise how important they are. The Moderisation Plan was badly thought out and much of the money invested was ultimately wasted, but many good things came out of it; some of the diesels proved very succesful, no-one can deny that BR did not get value for money from the class 20's or 37's, and the DMU's undoubtedly saved some of the branch line services.
How much of this would have happened under private ownership is debateable, but I think that most of the "Big Four", faced with massive repair bills, starved of investment and a shortage of revenue would have really struggled to make ends meet, and it would only have been a matter of time before the shareholders would have pulled the plug. The LNER could not make a profit before the war, it did not stand a chance after.
Micky wrote:The question should be what if re-privatization of the railways hadn't happened under John Major's government in the mid-1990s?. Answer maybe it would still be a good job to work for?. Since re-privatization in the mid-90s it feels very much like working under 'colonel Gaddafi's regime' in recent years the slightest delay that you may incur you are now virtually automatically put on 'poor performance' with the follow up threat of 'being let go' if there is no improvement on your personal performance regardless of how many years that you have worked on the job which was never the way of doing things under B.R.. Still if you like the idea of Richard Branson's Virgin Group or a Dutch/German consortium running train services or 20 somethings fresh out of being ex-Tesco and Asda manager's now running Network Rail rather then 'proper railwaymen' then good luck to you. Obviously people will say but we are running more trains and the railways are more popular since the 1920s?. So they say but at what cost?.
Coboman wrote: I like to think it would have. EM2s in LNER green doing 90 down the London Extension, now that would be a sight to see.
Slight problem with the EM2 in this scenario -- they had LMS bogies.
We live in a world of shared designs product swaps. Fiat engines in GM cars, Saab doors on Alfas etc..I'm saying the LNER and LMS did some design swaps in this senario, and invented the idea of shared designs many years before the motor industry did!
Jim
Its good to know where you stand. Saves making a fool of yourself later......
I think Bill had a good point there, and for that very reason I had avoided mention of the EM2s. As however we are playing "what if", then Coboman's point need not rely wholly on present day practice for its substance. The LNER and LMS were partly sharing wagon designs and construction well before 1948, so "what if" the stark post-war economic realities had persuaded them to share aspects of loco design well before 1950, especially in the new and unfamiliar field of power bogies? The LMS and LNER diesel shunter designs visibly overlapped, I would guess largely on account of much being done by English Electric. The only sticking point I can see would be if, perhaps, the EM2s had been contractor built in our "what if" world, but the LMS Co-Co bogies had to be sourced from a rival contractor. On the other hand, our "what if" EM2 contractor may have considered it easier to buy in bogies, or a proven bogie design from outside.
What actually happened after 1st January 1948 is not what might have happened in our "what if" world. Even if the same events had occurred, the reasons might have been different.
Most subjects, models and techniques covered in this thread are now listed in various categories on page1
Dec. 2018: Almost all images that disappeared from my own thread following loss of free remote hosting are now restored.
With out British Railways we would not have had Dr Beeching, as no dout the railway companys would have made the lines pay, and they certainly would not have employed a third party to tell them how to run a railway. Also without the press coverage and public oppinions Dr Beeching may have long lived his retirement.
