Most effort/work spent on a non-railway project that ultimately never happened?

[OVS Flatbottom]

The R101 must also be considered, at the time it was the largest airship in the world. Constantly modified after trial flights, perhaps the worst decision taken was to slacken the wiring cradles to increase the volume of gas. This had a disastrous effect on longitudinal stability. The airship crashed on its maiden overseas flight being virtually uncontrollable, killing nearly everyone on board, at a cost of half a million pounds to the taxpayer as it was one of a pair, the R100, the capitalist ship and the R101, the people's ship

True, although I'd say the Imperial Airship Scheme as a whole, not just the R101, was a costly project that never happened in the sense that it never reached the intended stage of carrying revenue passengers and freight. (There was one successful intercontinental round trip by the R100, but even that ship would have needed a new outer cover and replacement of parts of the structure just to fly again, and would have had to be lengthened like the R101 before it was any practical use). Ironic that one reason for the dual sourcing, which most commentators tend to believe was pretty disastrous, was that it would supposedly let the programme continue in the event of one ship being lost - however, I think politics had more to do with it.

 

[cb a1]

True, although I'd say the Imperial Airship Scheme as a whole, not just the R101, was a costly project that never happened in the sense that it never reached the intended stage of carrying revenue passengers and freight. (There was one successful intercontinental round trip by the R100, but even that ship would have needed a new outer cover and replacement of parts of the structure just to fly again, and would have had to be lengthened like the R101 before it was any practical use). Ironic that one reason for the dual sourcing, which most commentators tend to believe was pretty disastrous, was that it would supposedly let the programme continue in the event of one ship being lost - however, I think politics had more to do with it.

Tim Harford did an interesting podcast on the R100 and R101 - https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/the-deadly-airship-race/