(TRIVIA) Useful lines never built because of geography

[Bald Rick]

A straight line from London to Glasgow is 346 miles, and passes through Derby, Rochdale and Dumfries.
Somehow, the West Coast Main Line manages to add 53 miles of indirectness.
HS2 will be a bit worse.

Strictly speaking, a straight line from London to Glasgow passes quite a long way under Derby and Rochdale, but we know what you mean.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

One of my customers is a retired cartographer who used to work for Ordinance Survey and she helped me with some of the detail.
I'm quite pleased with the results, obviously I've just concentrated on the area that I know best and I'm not that good at taking criticism but hopefully that won't be a problem...

That's truly excellent. Now all you need to do is start giving lectures about how everyone else's railway maps are terrible, as A Certain Other Railway Cartographer does.

 

[Cowley]

That's truly excellent. Now all you need to do is start giving lectures about how everyone else's railway maps are terrible, as A Certain Other Railway Cartographer does.

Good idea. It's amazing what a couple of pints does to your technical drawing skills (although being a doctor you probably already knew that).
A bit disappointed that I forgot Lundy, it would have been useful for strategic Puffin purposes.

 

[NorthernSpirit]

A line that was planned but never built (or completed) that comes to my mind is the disused viaduct near Dewsbury. The Midland Railway attempted to reach Bradford, but soon after constructing the viaduct, they ran out of money. The Midland Railway decided to switch to Leeds instead for their main hub in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

The viaduct in question is the one near Horbury Bridge, just at the bottom of Netherton. Prior to the newbuilds being built you use to be able to look across the top of the viaduct.

 

[lejog]

The Lancashire & Yorkshire planned a second Sowerby Bridge to Rochdale line, but the tunnel under the Pennines was never built and the line only ever reached Rishworth.

When the L& Y submitted plans for this branch in 1865 they envisaged continuing beyond the head of Ryburn Valley, through a long tunnel under Rishworth Moor, to rejoin the existing Calder Valley line near Rochdale so reducing the distance from Sowerby Bridge to Rochdale by five miles. Difficulties in building the tunnel and landslips delayed opening until 1878 and progress with the extension west of Rishworth never got beyond the planning stage.

A century later the route (without the tunnel) was used by the M62.

 

[snowball]

If the only aim of HS3/NPR was to link Manchester and Leeds, then a tunnel from near Littleborough to near Sowerby Bridge would be my favourite route. Manchester to Littleborough is well-aligned for high speed.

 

[Andrew1395]

I can think of many Underground lines not built in South London due to that dodgy chalk formation...

Is that because of geology or geography? Belfast to Glasgow line failed due to the geography.

 

[Old Yard Dog]

The Lancashire & Yorkshire planned a second Sowerby Bridge to Rochdale line, but the tunnel under the Pennines was never built and the line only ever reached Rishworth.



A century later the route (without the tunnel) was used by the M62.

A friend of mine once owned a house in Sowerby Bridge over the portal of a tunnel on the Rishworth branch. It thus had a huge drop at the bottom end of the garden.

The house was a former pub which closed in the 1920's.

I have subsequently found out that the pub was the Albion on Scarr Head Road. The pub was successively owned by John Naylor, Victoria Brewery, Cote Hill, Halifax Brewing Company [May 1898], Windmill Hill Brewery, and Ramsden's.

The pub closed in 1950.

The branch line was closed to passengers on 8 July 1929. The section between Rishworth and Ripponden closed for freight in 1953 and Ripponden to Sowerby Bridge closed completely on 1 September 1958.

 

[absolutelymilk]

A straight line from London to Glasgow is 346 miles, and passes through Derby, Rochdale and Dumfries.
Somehow, the West Coast Main Line manages to add 53 miles of indirectness.

There is a big detour on the WCML near Kendal from Meal Bank to Low Gill (goes about 8km to the east before turning back North). Were there ever plans to build a tunnel to cut this out?

 

[Senex]

There is a big detour on the WCML near Kendal from Meal Bank to Low Gill (goes about 8km to the east before turning back North). Were there ever plans to build a tunnel to cut this out?

This is the point where two different schemes were combined into the south part of one and the north part of the second.

 

[Senex]

Back on topic, a line that was planned but never built (or completed) that comes to my mind is the disused viaduct near Dewsbury. The Midland Railway attempted to reach Bradford, but soon after constructing the viaduct, they ran out of money. The Midland Railway decided to switch to Leeds instead for their main hub in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Bradford was never going to supplant Leeds as the MR main hub in the West Riding, but as the scheme was originally planned it would have become a through station on a slightly shorter route to Scotland avoiding the Leeds reversal. By the time the scheme reached its final form (and even that was never fully built) it would have provided a through route but certainly not one that could have competed as an Anglo-Scottish main line.

 

[randyrippley]

An interesting thread. My fantasy routes would have been a line linking Exeter, Sidmouth, Lyme Regis, Weymouth, Swanage, Poole and Bournemouth (Exeter to Bournemouth is an awkward and slow journey however you do it)............

Wasn't the original plan for the LSWR main line something like Swanage-Dorchester-Lyme-Sidmouth-Exeter? My understanding though is they gave up when they realised how many river valleys they would have to traverse rather than follow - with a lot of tunnels between them.

 

[randyrippley]

There is a big detour on the WCML near Kendal from Meal Bank to Low Gill (goes about 8km to the east before turning back North). Were there ever plans to build a tunnel to cut this out?

Don't think so. The "detour" is the route requiring least in the way of tunneling to get you from the River Kent valley into the upper River Lune valley. Those old engineers preferred to build along river valleys rather than across them: it minimises gradients. Tunnels got you from one valley to the next, were expensive and kept as short as possible.

 

[Pigeon]

It could have gone up the Lune all the way from Lancaster through Kirkby Lonsdale - indeed lines along most of this route did get built, though they didn't form a direct alternative. Would probably have been less of a struggle gradient-wise as well.

There was a proposal involving a tunnel - through Kendal instead of bypassing it, up Longsleddale, tunnel through to Haweswater and then out to Penrith. If it hadn't been for elitist poets wanting to keep the plebs out of the Lake District then Kendal could have had a proper main-line service from the start instead of having to wait until it expanded far enough that Oxenholme wasn't really "out of town" any more. Again, the gradients probably would have been easier too.

What we ended up with was a half-arsed compromise that didn't really do anything particularly well, in line with standard British practice.

That seems to be what the usual effect of adverse geography was - not to prevent a route being built altogether, but to delay it and/or make it suck. So we got things like Sheffield being 30 years late getting a through route on the Midland, or a choice of wiggly upsy-downsy trans-Pennine routes but no fast direct ones.

One major exception, I think, is Wales. North-to-south connectivity in Wales has always been terrible even before all the closures, and I don't think there was ever any proposal - or at least not a serious one - that would have improved it, not with that fierce grain of SW-NE valleys across the entire country. Carmarthen to Aberystwyth was probably more use than the unbuilt Llangurig connection would have been - although more so if it hadn't been afflicted by the half-arsedness and inherent daftness of the whole M&M idea.

The other sort-of exception is perhaps less obvious because it is related to the overall geography of Britain rather than any one part of it, and to human more than physical geography. It is that we have a network which is highly focussed on getting to and from this big dungheap down in the south-east corner and a lot less useful for movement at right angles to that orientation. To be sure we have lost a lot of lines that once mitigated the situation, but most of them were never really that great compared to what might have been built along pretty much the same alignments if urbanisation had been more evenly distributed.

 

[Jonny]

Given the geography, I can't imagine that would've been much faster despite being a good few miles shorter.

Unless you have a straight(-ish) run something with a lot of power to climb the hill...

Prior to 21st century EMUs it wasn't really do-able.

 

[DarloRich]

In my opinion, a main line between Hellifield and Darlington

Would that not duplicate the Stainmore line?

 

[Y Ddraig Coch]

Definitely a nice shiny bridge that goes from Talacre to West Kirby would be nice large numbers travel to Liverpool from the North Wales coast. I'm sure more would if the journey time was slashed. I can drive to Liverpool in an hour it's two on the train.

North Wales to Liverpool is painfully slow.

 

[oglord]

Point of order - is Stainmore summit not in County Durham? We have much harder weather than your Yorkist stuff

Actually it is in Westmorland, just shy of the Yorkshire border.

 

[DarloRich]

Actually it is in Westmorland, just shy of the Yorkshire border.

No: Darlington is in County Durham ( pedant alert - technically it is in a unitary authority)

 

[RLBH]

It could have gone up the Lune all the way from Lancaster through Kirkby Lonsdale - indeed lines along most of this route did get built, though they didn't form a direct alternative. Would probably have been less of a struggle gradient-wise as well.

There was a proposal involving a tunnel - through Kendal instead of bypassing it, up Longsleddale, tunnel through to Haweswater and then out to Penrith. If it hadn't been for elitist poets wanting to keep the plebs out of the Lake District then Kendal could have had a proper main-line service from the start instead of having to wait until it expanded far enough that Oxenholme wasn't really "out of town" any more. Again, the gradients probably would have been easier too.

Some of the original deliberations from 1840 can be found here:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...AQ#v=onepage&q=gatescarth pass tunnel&f=false

Short version is, the contemporary assessment was that George Stephenson's route around the Cumbrian coast was a stupid idea, and there wasn't much to choose between going up the Lune Valley and over Shap, and going up Longsleddale. Shap was cheaper than Longsleddale, so was the preferred route, but cut off Kendal.

Going via Oxenholme then cutting across to the Lune Valley route offered the possibility of building the cheaper route and still serving Kendal, so was what ultimately got approved.

Had the Lune Valley route gone ahead, there would presumably have been a branch extended from Lancaster to Kendal and Windermere at some point. It's hard not to wonder how far along the branch the buffers would have been put in in the 1960s.

Equally, had the Longsleddale route gone ahead, it would have made Haweswater Reservoir impossible and the good people of Manchester would have had to find their drinking water elsewhere. Much fun can be had speculating about alternate developments of the Lune Valley route in this scenario.

 

[urbophile]

Actually it is in Westmorland, just shy of the Yorkshire border.

Another pedant speaking: Westmorland no longer exists. It is in Cumbria.

 

[apk55]

The Clayton West branch was intended to join up with the Leeds Sheffield Line, it was built to be converted to double track. Would not have been difficult but was there Landowner opposition

I gather the Alston Branch was intended to be extended to join up with the Wearhead line but this would have involved a very long tunnel. However parts were built for double track, so there was extension in mind

 

[Esker-pades]

Fort Augustus to Inverness allowing a railway link from Fort William to Inverness.

Far North:
Dornoch Link over the Dornoch Firth (unable to be bridged when the line was built).
Coastal route from Helmsdale to Wick via Lybster.

 

[muddythefish]

The formation south of Bridgnorth on the SVR is double track (including the tunnel I think) for a mooted line to Wolverhampton that was never built. Shame really as there wasn't alot of traffic heading north-south down the Severn valley yet a commuter link from Bnorth to Wolves would have been very useful today.

 

[bastien]

Wasn't the original plan for the LSWR main line something like Swanage-Dorchester-Lyme-Sidmouth-Exeter? My understanding though is they gave up when they realised how many river valleys they would have to traverse rather than follow - with a lot of tunnels between them.

Easy: Just build it on a long viaduct, like they do in China.

 

[adamedwards]

Scotland: Inverness to Ullapool plus the Ben Nevis Rack Railway.

 

[Esker-pades]

Scotland: Inverness to Ullapool plus the Ben Nevis Rack Railway.

I always thought the Garve to Ullapool line was to do with funding.

 

[Calthrop]

Fort Augustus to Inverness allowing a railway link from Fort William to Inverness.

Wasn't this due to -- at least as much as geographical difficulties -- strong opposition from the Highland Railway, which very much didn't want a rival fairly direct route from the south to Inverness, to come into being?

 

[AY1975]

There is another thread on lines proposed but never built, or where a line should have been built, at https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...r-where-a-line-should-have-been-built.153074/

 

[Eric]

Quite a few things around Bradford.

Agree. it's a travesty we've never seen the two stations linked.