Not heard of this one. Wonder if the aim was to segregate District Line services from the LSWR ones. However, given there would have been conflicts at Wimbledon I can only speculate that it was to shift all ECS moves to/from Wimbledon Park off the Mainline and/or possibly link to the West Croydon services (high level / low level platforms?).
I'll check the book when I get a chance (LSWR in the 20th century). I believe you are right that the tracks would be segregated, with the (Metropolitan) District Railway tracks to the west. Wimbledon station would also have been enlarged. I believe the only part of this scheme that came to fruition was an extra (M)DR platform at Wimbledon.
Not only that - Woodhead was seen as a testbed for mainline electrification at 1500V DC. If successful, the ECML was to follow, probably starting with Kings Cross to (at least) Doncaster. WW2 delayed Woodhead and stopped everything else.
The LNER was very pro-electrification in the 30s and had been encouraged by the success of the MSJ & A 1500V DC scheme in Manchester (jointly with the LMS). It did get as far as commissioning reports for the ECML to Leeds / York , GE to Norwich and London Suburban, but it was always financially precarious and would have required substantial government assistance. There were no plans to electrify the GC Extension.
The LNER was no stranger to 1500V overhead electrification, having inherited the Newport/Shildon line from the NER. The infrasructure was life expired in 1935 and not renewed (curiously, given the number of "New Works" schemes elsewhere), but the locomotives were mothballed with a view to using as them as banking engines on the Woodhead line. However, because of the delay in completing that project, the locomotives were nearly 40 years old by the time it was complete, and had been standing idle and uncared-for in sidings for the previous ten years, so they were scrapped.
The original order for 27 EM2 Express locos illustrates this point nicely.
...........although the M stood for mixed traffic. The EM1s were better suited for freight though.
This idea was still floating around as late as 1965, when the Major Trunk Routes Report suggested it as part of its justification for retaining Woodhead while closing Hope Valley and Peak Forest.
I don't know how many times it has to be stated that the GC "London Extension" never reached London. Access to it's meagre four platform terminus was via the Metropolitan Line, with the later option of the GW/GC joint line via High Wycombe, which route was nearly ten miles longer to Leicester than the Midland.
Also the GC didn't serve anywhere of major importance between Aylesbury and Rugby, whereas the Midland served Luton, Bedford, Wellingborough and Kettering between London and Leicester. It was a no-brainer really!
Was this an accounting / approval fiction, though, in the same way as classifying the Bulleid Pacifics as MT locos - during the war and austerity that followed, the chances of getting approval for a purely express passenger loco were diminishingly small.
The EM1 loco design was under Gresley, the EM2 locos were a fresh start under BR , the original LNER intention for Woodhead passenger locos were not the EM2 design, the LNER requirements were put out to tender, the LNER may have had coupling-rod crocodiles from private builders, the original BR order was for 27 of the EM2 loco, the paperwork for the reduction to 7examples has the signature of J F "Freddie" Harrison
Wasn't there a 1930's scheme to quadruple the WCML as far as Weaver Junction too? I can't find a reference to it now. Sadly most of the quadruple track that did get built has now been removed.
Perhaps the London Extension should be considered not merely as a means to secure the Manchester Sheffield and Lincolnshire's independent route to the capital, but as one part of the much more ambitious vision of its Chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, to connect his various railway enterprises so as to link Manchester with Paris. Being a director of the MS&L, the Metropolitan and the South Eastern as well as railways in France helped. Had he been able to pull it off, his Channel Tunnel would not only have created the missing link, but may well have altered the course of European history. Quite a few schemes in all of this which never happened.
Beeching et al were not just comparing the GCML and the MML to each other, but to the WCML as well, and in that analysis both came up wanting.
A link between Tat Cnr and Epsom Downs would be challenging as the former is higher than the latter as I recall.
Yes indeed. Epsom Downs is now at an even lower altitude since the station site was sold off for housing and the station resited in the former station throat. To make it work, perhaps there would need to have been Tattenham Corner platforms at high and low level - now there's a thought!
Discussed on this thread at some length already.
