1949 London Railways Plan

From what I remember trying to research this about 2/3 years ago, there's a copy of the original report in the British Library, though you'll need to email them to book a viewing.

There may also be copies of Modern Transport magazine from 1949 at the LT Museum, but I can't be sure now-again, it was 2 or 3 years ago & I didn't save the emails.

There isn't a book about these plans retrospectively, but you can buy the original report:

British Transport Commission, London Plan Working Party Report to the Minister of Transport. With maps


On Amazon, ex-libris, for £80.

I would also be interested to see what you discover... not just the Moorgate services but for instance the deep level tube train route through Olympia to Yeading, which is a part of London that is still not served by the railways.

Simon

I took the liberty of ploughing through all 46 pages of this section this morning & even with a few entertaining diversions along the way, I can say we haven't had a thread on the 1949 plans as yet.

I'd suggest at present, if mods are happy, I'll post when I've read the book listing all the schemes in the report/plan, so we all know the full context. Unless one of our fellows already has that info at hand in this sort of format:


Line X Croydon <========> Cricklewood (+ names of proposed intermediate stations if these were actually therein).

I'd then propose, again subject to mod approval, that we start with those schemes which came to gestate into the Victoria Line in part, ditto The Fleet/Jubilee, because it should be possible to dispose of those fairly quickly, as there's quite a bit already around on those. Meaning there's a limited amount of historical commentary to research.

As for the others, again subject to mod approval, we might need a separate thread as a group or individually, but only if someone's research turns up contemporary commentary on these, because we musn't forget they may have gone down the Swanee in 1949 simply because the country was on its' uppers paying the USA back for lend-lease, but, when things improved later, there doesn't appear to've been too much of a rush to revive the rest of them, perhaps because they were useless suggestions to begin with.

Let's hope we can find something beyond the report.

Ben

No, that knock off the rail bridges idea initiated with our old mate Sir Patrick Abercrombie & his Plan For Greater London in 1944.

There was also, I think, an interim/follow-on 1946 report/proposals, possibly from the LCC, before the working party report of 1949.

And, just for once, I've found it & a link:

1946 report


Well, well, there's your bridges still going! From the dates on there, it appears a committee was set up during 1944 to consider railways vide the original Abercrombie report. Glad to see it did indeed report in 1946!

Have checked out the maps for the link on the 1949 plan though was hoping for the maps to be more transparent particularly in Central London where the high priority routes overlap with each other or failing that go into more specific details on the other lower priority routes that were considered in a similar format to how the schemes were listed as mentioned by theblackferret.

Thanks for the link to the 1965 plan, it has some interesting proposals.

One of the bits I found when a former wife worked for a property company in Kingsway was a copy of the parliamentary papers for the authorisation of the Aldwych-Waterloo extension, dated about 1963. This power was granted but never used. I've already posted that on here before so won't repeat it verbatim.

Right, a bit more about the 1949 plan.

It differed from the 1946 plan in several respects, one important part of which was rejecting the idea of demolishing all London's railway bridges bar one. They specifically amended their schemes from the numbered 1946 routes to take account of keeping Charing Cross & Cannon Street bridges, on the basis that demolishing those two would be creating complete chaos for passengers.

They were quite happy, on the other hand, for Blackfriars bridge to go, as it indeed eventually did in 1982(?), because its' usage was comparatively small. And now, of course, they've had to reinstitute it.

A couple of the routes:

Route B was a freight route & replacing the 1946 proposal in tunnel between Loughborough Junction & Farringdon (to compensate for Blackfriars Bridge being reduced to rubble) was now a scheme for going in tunnel under the Thames from Hither Green marshalling yard to a point north of Canning Town (former GE) with connexions to the former NLL near bow, passing under the river in the neighbourhood of Greenwich.

Route L, titled Waterloo/Holborn connection, simply proposed promulgating the existing Aldwych shuttle on to Waterloo & simply mentions the connexions Aldywch would have with other new routes (later post on that) and with the District at Temple. No detail is given as to whether a platform or new station would be considered at Temple, or whether they expected people to hoof the 250/300 yards from Aldwych, it all depends on what they considered was interchange facility compared to how we now term it.

OK, Route D, described as a new passenger route from Raynes Park via Wimbledon, Clapham Junction, Vauxhall, Millbank, Westminster, Charing Cross, Holborn, St Pauls, Liverpool Street and Dalston to Clapton, thence over former LNER Chingford Branch.

Detailed alignment to the West End now proposed is from Chingford & Enfield Town to underground junction at Hackney Downs and thence via:

Liverpool Street (interchange with Eastern Region & Central Line)
Bank (interchange with WCR,Central,Northern & Route F)
Ludgate Circus (interchange with Route A)
Aldwych (interchange with extended Aldwych Shuttle-Route L)
Trafalgar Square (interchange with SR @ Charing X, Bakerloo & Northern Lines & Route F)
Army & Navy Stores
Victoria (interchange with SR, District & Route C)

new stations underlined-Army & Navy stores were taken over by House of Fraser in 1976, in 1949, the London store was situated at 105 Victoria Street.

Stations west of Victoria (again new Stations underlined):

Knightsbridge (interchange with Piccadilly Line)
Albert Hall
Kensington High Street (interchange with Circle Line)
Olympia (no interchange annotated in the plan, possibly because of the next station mentioned)
Goldhawk Road (interchange with Hammersmith & City Line-interesting, everyone else called it the Met, but does at least suggest the BTC had some idea of operating actualities when they drafted this!)
then along the Uxbridge Road with stations at

Askew Arms
Ealing Common
Ealing Broadway
West Ealing
Hanwell Broadway
Southall Broadway
Yeading Lane (terminus).

with a depot east of the terminus. The western outlet beyond Victoria, however, requires further consideration. In this connexion the requirements of the District Line branches to Wimbledon, Richmond, Hounslow and Ealing must be borne in mind (blow South Acton, then!!!), together with the requirements of workers and sightseers at London Airport. The needs of the suburban services on the Western Region main line and the Castlebar loop (which would have pleased at least two of our fellow contributors alone) should also be given consideration.

I'll just repeat that-SIGHTSEERS at London Airport. Don't know if they meant what we now call tourists, or genuine sightseers ie the typical nuclear family of the time, where Dad is an ex-RAF pilot with handlebar moustache who helps twins Timmy & Tommy spot the incoming 'planes from other countries whilst Mother & daughter Margaret do useful things like pouring coffee from the Thermos to go with their egg sandwiches-sorry about the rampant sexism there, but this is 1949 & the seven other geezers who made the report up with Sir Cyril Hurcombe are listed in the letter to the Minister than forms the preamble to the report & geezers they all are, so the sightseers can hardly be painted as proto-feminists!!

Your bus reg is from 1951-53, so probably first registered early 1953? Definitely it was Heath Row to start with & didn't change from London Airport until 1966. But, I can't find, yet, when it became one word, though I have discovered the last row of cottages in the ancient agricultural village of Heath Row was demolished in 1944 by the Air Ministry.

I wonder if Mum & Dad & Janet & John went sightseeing in your bus-hope so, I can just picture them with the thermos!

Croydon didn't get a mention in the plan, though closure wasn't announced until 1952, because the number of weekly flights had already reduced to 64 from 218 by the end of 1947, so it must have clear the future was somewhere in Middlesex!

I can quite believe that 'Excursions To London Airport'. I believe there was also a 1954 film starring a young Frankie Howerd-The Runaway Bus, in which Margaret Rutherford insists on being driven from London Airport to Blackbushe to catch a flight to Dublin, with Petula Clark acting as a trolley-dolly on said bus(don't ask!).

And here's a wee clip from Out of The Clouds just to show what Sir Lancelott Spratt did on his days off:



And, from the previous year's The High & The Mighty, a great example of how not to fly a plane, no surprise as it involves John Wayne:




Incidentally, it's not Roy's vehicle used in The Runaway Bus but it is a BOAC bus, registration number HYV 617, issued between January & August 1947

Roythebus. '...it's entirely possible that people went sightseeing at airports'. One of my earliest memories is of being taken (on my father's shoulders) to Northolt to spend the afternoon watching the aircraft. At that time there was an entrance at the end of Wingfield Way and a short distance away a large concrete square on which were a collection of metal chairs where the spectators sat. It was quite near the taxiway and without any form of fencing. When I served at Northolt as a Sqn Ldr up to 2000 I was delighted to see that the concrete square was still there.
As a teenaged plane spotter (when taking a break from bus spotting) I often cycled to London Airport (LAP) as it was then called. The Roof Gardens on top of Queen's Building were the favoured vantage point.
Does anyone remember the 2 Bedford OWBs that operated a round the airport sightseeing route? It started in the Central area, near to where the LT Tours parked up (John Tuthill - as I recall they were quite extensive and from a number of garages) and included both the North side apron and the engineering areas - places not normally accessible.

I regret to admit that I was even taken on a sightseeing trip to Heathrow at some tender age in the mid-fifties - but then my "host" was a friend of my parents who worked for Fairey Aviation. Can't say it meant much to me at the time, never having been in an aircraft of any sort. There was a central observation tower from which you could view the operations.
In the same vein, people went for nights out at the first motorway service stations (yes, really) although I don't recall any organised tours...
We were simple folk in the 'fifties and our pleasures were those of the unsophisticated.

Apparently there was an aerodrome at Fairlop, which was one possibility other than the old RAF aerodrome at Heathrow.

Fairlop was mentioned as a possible Airport site in the 1944 Greater London plan.
www.antiquemapsandprints.com/ekmps/shops/richben90/images/greater-london-plan.-railways-electrification-airports.-abercrombie-1944-map-232082-p.jpg