New Railway Or Old Idea?

So there was this chappie, Sir Edward William Watkin,  a Liberal MP, that the present UK government is attempting to ignore – so it looks that they have a new idea, instead of re-inventing the wheel. Oh, how embarrassing for them … well that’s New labour, no old Liberals allowed.

Watkin’s dream,(or Watkin’s vision, depending on how you interpret the thoughts) was for a railway that would allow a person to board a train in Manchester and alight from that train in Paris on the same day – including the creation of a Channel Tunnel.
Some of his ideas to achieve his dream were actually realised. The Channel Tunnel project was started, but died soon after his death in 1901. The high speed service  from Manchester to London was built, but the railway management morons never saw the point of it, so it was killed in the Beeching closures of 1967.

The Channel Tunnel idea was killed by the first World War. The rapid service from Manchester to London, also known as the Great Central Railway, was one of the great Victorian inventions – it would never be appreciated unless the rest of the dream was realised, the route through London to Paris. And that had been killed by Beeching’s Axe.

In the 1930s it was often commented how exceptional it was that one could board a train in London and alight in Rome less than 24 hours later. Remarkable as that was at the time, I can almost hear Watkin muttering “they could do better” in my ear. His route was designed to eliminate speed restrictions, eliminate level crossings, and provide unrestricted high speed travel between major cities in England.

Now we have the situation of the UK government attempting to set up a high speed rail link from London  to Birmingham and beyond, using the remains of the Great Central line that Watkin commissioned and had built as a high speed line without level crossings or impedances – artificial inclines and bridges over the line to give unrestricted speed.

I can live with the government claiming Watkin’s idea as their own – but can the government “sleep easy” when they are re-inventing an old idea?

LOL this smacks of Hitler inventing the Autobahn to create work for the working classes  … except that Hitler was building on a new idea, not reviving an old one …

So there was this chappie, Sir Edward William Watkin, that the present UK government is attempting to ignore – so it looks that they have a new idea, instead of re-inventing the wheel. Oh, how embarrassing for them …
Watkin’s dream,(or Watkin’s vision, depending on how you interpret the thoughts) was for a railway that would allow a person to board a train in Manchester and alight from that train in Paris on the same day – including the creation of a Channel Tunnel.
Some of his ideas to achieve his dream were actually realised. The Channel Tunnel project was started, but died soon after his death in 1901. The high speed service  from Manchester to London was built, but the railway management morons never saw the point of it, so it was killed in the Beeching closures of 1967.

The Channel Tunnel idea was killed by the first World War. The rapid service from Manchester to London, also known as the Great Central Railway, was one of the great Victorian inventions – it would never be appreciated unless the rest of the dream was realised, the route through London to Paris. And that had been killed by Beeching’s Axe.
In the 1930s it was often commented how exceptional it was that one could board a train in London and alight in Rome less than 24 hours later. Remarkable as that was at the time, I can almost hear Watkin muttering “they could do better” in my ear. His route was designed to eliminate speed restrictions, eliminate level crossings, and provide unrestricted high speed travel between major cities in England.

Now we have the situation of the UK government attempting to set up a high speed rail link from London  to Birmingham and beyond, using the remains of the Great Central line that Watkin commissioned and had built as a high speed line without level crossings or impedances – artificial inclines and bridges over the line to give unrestricted speed.
I can live with the government claiming Watkin’s idea as their own – but can the government “sleep easy” when they are re-inventing an old idea?

LOL this smacks of Hitler inventing the Autobahn to create work for the working classes  … except that Hitler was building on a new idea, not reviving an old one …

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