What-if....?

What if Longmoor railway had stayed open. I wonder how many ex barry locos would of found a home there.

 

Maybe not with a large railway centre on its door step and with all the workshops already up and running. Plus a running line already in place.

Does anyone know what the total mileage of running line was still in use before the army vacated the Longmoor railway.

Thanks

 

No East Somerset Railway as David Shepherd would have stayed there with his stock.

 

34023 Blackmoor vale and 35028 Clan Line also went to Longmoor. Could of been a good location to stable main line locos between main line tours.

 

What a load of utterly pointless, time-wasting wibble this all is! Still I suppose it makes a change from WIBN and hearing PH wail and gnash his teeth about anything he personally doesn't happen to agree with

 

Biggest one has to be if North Eastern Scrap Yards weren't so hungry to put the torch through everything that came through, wanting the cash that was there to be had. Its a shame that they didn't have the space to stockpile areas like Barry, instead it was a fact that its arrived and its getting cut. Then in with the next while the going was good.

Then, I think we would have some excellent examples into preservation. It would be fantastic to see more than one of some Eastern region designs. Its more than envious when you can park up 4 WC/BB or 4 Castles next to each other, mixed in with Halls, etc to make a decent mixed fleet scene.

Id love to see 4 Q6's, to see B16's preserved. Even smaller engines like J25 and J21 to be in number, shunters such as J71 and J72 being numerous. Even bigger ones such as A1 Saint Mungo surviving, alongside others, like 60147 North Eastern. Tanks like the L1 would have been great to see in some strength too.

Only way I'll see that is using a Blue phone box...

 

Wars in general tend to accelerate all sorts of changes. There's a wondeful book, "The Invention that Changed the World", which talks about all the spin-offs from the radar work of WWII - including the computer (the technology in the earliest computers used a great deal of radar practise). WWI and WWII vastly sped up developments in the aero field. And Ulysses Grant's autobiography talks (at the end) about how the U.S. Civil War had sped up the development of the country (e.g. the Trans-Continental Railroad). Those are just a few off the top...

Noel

 

and of course, the First World War resulted in the formation, on April 1st 1918, of the World's first independent Air Force (which later gave me 24 years of interesting times!)

 

Also, suppose part of the Waverley route had been saved by a preservation society? Maybe, we'd have a B1 hauling tourists from Hawick to Galashiels, or Hawick to Newcastleton.

 

....... and endless discussion on the viability of a commercial passenger service.....

 

PS Bristol Queen had been bought by Bristol City Council and preserved

Manxman had remained in service

 

The Lochaber Narrow gauge line survived, along with the Invergarry and Fort Augustus line........

 

What if, what if the GW Route to Plymouth had been the one down graded to secondary line status from exeter, and the Southern Route had been upgraded to 125 mph from Basingstoke and remained double track throughout to Plymouth .

 

There was talk a few years back of reviving a few miles of the Old Puggy Line, though AFAIK it's all gone horribly quiet and there are two websites (neither updated for some time) on a project at Invergarry Station.
http://www.stationproject.org.uk/
http://www.invergarrystation.org.uk/
A few bridges on the Puggy Line were too much trouble to dismantle, here's one of them:

 

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One day a bit of co-operation between the SVR and vintage trains results in the 'Elgar Explorer' Steam between Snow Hill and Worcster, change at Kidderminster for connections to Bridgnorth? Or maybe a direct train from Snow Hill to Bewdley now and then.

 

...Woodhams didn't sell dozens of tenders (and in many cases the striped motions) to Briton Ferry Steelworks as ingot carriers, the restoration of many a ex-Barry engine would have been accelerated.

 

With regard to this thread we must be grateful of the "What Ifs?" that didn't happen. I have a 1969 book by David Joy , the Whitby and Pickering Railway which states quote "Beyond Ellerbeck the Whitby and Pickering Railway may well have been reduced to a weed infested trackbed by the time this book appears in print." In 1973 I caught a train to Grosmont from a temporary platform to the north of Pickering station. I was told the reason was the local council wanted the site . We would never have now had one of the finest stations in preservation especially since it got its roof restored. I have recently visited the Swanage Railway and read that the local authority wanted the trackbed at Corfe Castle to build a bypass but thankfully dropped the plan. Thank goodness none of the aforementioned happened.
Charles B