1949 London Railways Plan

I hope this wasn't a serious suggestion. Quite apart from the problem of getting aircraft from the arrivals airport to the departures airport, you would need two Tube lines, each of which would be running at half its capacity (all trains out of the departures airport, and all trains into the a
arrivals airport, would be virtually empty)

(Reminds me of the suggestion, when a road tunnel under the Channel was under consideration, that to help drivers acclimatise to the respective rules of the road, motorists travelling from England to France should drive on the right, and those travelling from France to England should drive on the left.........)

All you need do with 'turning' the aircraft-there were a few sizeable ex-WWII aerodromes around in 1949, short hop out there & then on to your 'new' departures airport. Simples! And there's a service airport for free, as it were.

As for the Tubes, airport workers didn't then & still don't live at the airport & may've wanted to come home, not to mention industry exporting or importing from the respective departure/arrival airport, said industries also using workers who'd have been likely to want to go home after work.

Not to mention leisure facilities etc. and tourists on the lines.

One step forward anyone with the first name of Scratchwood.

I'm speculating here in the spirit of the 1949 plan, so am deliberately working without the benefit of hindsight.

On the same basis, if we ran this idea of two London Airports a few years on from then, maybe a separate airport for European & Middle Eastern destinations & one for America & the rest, or even one each for BEA & BOAC might spring up as something that could have been pursued more rigorously?

And, if it had been, would we have had two new Tube lines, one of which would have replaced today's Gatwick Express, unless Gatwick became London's initial domestic-flights-only airport?

Was there a lack of co-ordinated transport thinking in the 1949 plan, or was it simply not recognised beyond the tentative nationalisation that produced British Road Services in 1948, and was thens extinguished by 1951's change of government?

Gatwick was, I believe, a civil airport before WW2. Heath Row was originally built to the north of Bath road as a test airfield for one of the wartime plane makers, I forget which. The government bought far more land than required with Other Things in mind. the trouble is I now can't remember where I read the history of Heathrow, maybe online? Meanwhile, Croydon was still a Very Useful Airport until closure; the observation area at Heath Row was on top of what became Terminal 1.

The Commer coaches mentioned and used by BOAC were introduced in 1952 and replaced earlier stepped roof Commers and similar Leylands used by BEA were replaced by the handsome BEA 4RF4 coaches of which I have two. MLL721 was licenced in November 1952, MLL738 in February 1953. Those were eventually replaced with the front-entrance Routemasters towing luggage trailers. BEA had their registered offices at Northolt.

Remember too Hornchurch had quite a big airfield next to the railway. And at the other end of the District, the huge corrugated shed at Wimbledon Yard on the down side was originally a hangar for the flying boats next to Southampton Water. It was bought by the Southern Railway and moved to Wimbledon.

Quite why it has taken the UK so long to realise that airports need railways is debatable.

Either the 'Fairy Aircraft Company' their factory was where the Heston services site is. Or, the Gloucester Company who had a factory at Langley,just adjacent to the M4 turn off. After the war it was an assembly plant for Ford trucks, since long gone.

Filton airport closed in 2012…

As for the M25, a different set of planners thought London needed four ringroads, including an elevated motorway through the heart of Camden, Highbury, Hackney, Camberwell, etc.

Fairey's Great West Road aerodrome it was - requisitioned by the Air Ministry in 1940.
www.heathrow.com/company/company-news-and-information/company-information/our-history

The Gloucestershire Aircraft Company was re-named Gloster in 1926 to make it easier for potential customers to pronounce it.

I remember seeing a documentary many moons ago, where the original conception for the M25 was just to link with other motorways, until other "local planners" decided that other A roads could link to it as well.The one I could never understand not happening was the original concept of the elevated M4 being double decked

@ the black ferret

Yes, there were 3 reasons why the west end of the Picc was underutilized then

1: Airport coaches from the notorious West London Air Terminal were the planners' choice for us to travel to Heathrow. Even more bizarre as although the District's Cromwell Curve ran directly underneath it, it had no link to the UndergrounD system running below for passengers !!

2: The planners and LT (hence no Picc extension) felt that those who did want to travel to Heathrow by other means, would happily Get to Hounslow West then with all their luggage, wait there for the 81B bus (!!)

3: 50/60 years ago, many airport workers lived in Southall, Hayes, Heston & Cranford. The Picc would be of no use to them.

These are reasons why it took so long for the planners to admit they'd got it wrong (yet again). Then, it was "How did we ever do without it"?

Yet again, another profoundly accurate and interesting comment from roythebus

He mentions "planners in the 1970s". . . . .Sometime during the 1970s, an aspiring politician in the Ealing - Greenford area had an idea, which would be policy if elected, that the Greenford - Ealing Off peak rail service (that had more 'dwell time' than actual service), (it didn't extend to Paddington in those days), should be extended to Acton, then Kensington Olympia and Clapham Junction, using the WLL.

The "no business case" mantra was repeatedly rolled out, and the politician didn't get elected.

But, on these boards a few years ago, somebody posted a reason for the squashing of this idea. Just exactly as roythebus says above, "more trains on the West London Line, they will abstract revenue from the Underground". Yes, L.T. did not want revenue being extracted from "long way around" UndergrounD services which would then go to B.R. if a direct service was to operate.

Unfortunately, there was a post-war mindset of finding reasons why not to do something, than finding ways how to do something. It seemed to be a case of don't do something that might not work, if there's only an 90% chance of success, just say "there's no business case" and file the idea (in the shredder if possible) . .Don't forget, this was at a time when politicians and even BR (especially BR(W)) were keener on rail closure proposals than opening new routes- - even as in this case, the track was already there!

Some of these people, subsequently retired with knighthoods. You couldn't make it up

I agree with all that, Simon

Even in more recent years there was a call, well supported by the local borough council, for a "Ruislip Chord" enabling some Central Line services to run to Uxbridge (details on much earlier threads and NOT to be re-examined here, nor are new maps invited).

However, in the last couple of years, (seems to coincide with Boris becoming their MP), this one seems to have gone quiet too.

Nonetheless, the culture is much different these days. Even 30 years ago, most governments were still anti-rail. Don't forget a famous Prime Minister (I shall not mention her name) preferred to link England with France via a ROAD BRIDGE). . Her ministers were also required to have the same mindset, and hence the Marylebone conversion to express busway fantasy

I wonder with the 1949 plan, whether it was the lack of money, or a lack of imagination in government circles, or a combination of both that killed nearly all the ideas. Not everything made perfect sense, by any means, but there are still some glaring holes today which their ideas could have filled, not only the lack of tubes in Camberwell!

Of course, the anti-railway thinking was planted in the 1950's & the car took over from there.

Equally, though, could you say the turnpike trust & canal people were just as obstructive towards railways in the beginning-how else would you get the House of Commons Committee saying in 1846 or whenever that there was no need for any other railway terminus on the South Bank & no need to connect what termini there already were to each other-makes you think.

Yes, from what I remember about Marples, it was his missus who came with the road-building portfolio, though I'm sure he fell for her for other reasons. He, however, always looked like someone who'd be at his happiest selling stuff that'd fallen off the back of a lorry, but for the fact that he himself looked even more like something had fallen off a lorry!!

To go on a few years, the infamous BR modernisation plan was foisted on BR by the government of the day. And took less than a decade to lead to the Beeching Report, when it unsurprisingly turned out to be a turkey.

And today, what happens whenever a motorway is suggested between two others in an effort to relieve congestion on the existing pair-vide M41 & M62?? Always gets built, always costs oceans more than first envisaged, and gets clogged up like the first two inside the first year.

Yep, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!