So, why exactly did....................

Of course there's more of them

 

Well that makes you a "N.N.N." (No, No, Nanette) rather than a "Nimby" I suppose. In France a community protested that the Channel Tunnel rail link did not go close enough to them. However, in order to avoid damaging the Vouvray vineyards, a similar line was put into a tunnel which would otherwise be un-necessary. They "order these things differently in France." Alas.

PH

 

And probably manage to spend about 1/10th of what our projects do on lawyers, executives, management consultants, and pr wonks, but much the same on engineers and construction workers...

 

We are not drifting but sprinting off topic.

 

It makes VAT look munificent.

 

[QUOTE="The Green Howards, post: 1736437, member: 26987 "............. And wouldn't an eight-lane motorway through the Chilterns have far more of an impact.......?[/QUOTE]
Only marginally more than the six-lane motorway they swallowed a few years ago. Of course that was useful to the natives because they could do their long-distance driving on it before taking to the Chiltern lanes to worsen the peace and safety of those.

 

And - realising just how OT this is getting! - there were different rates of P.T. for different items, and it could - and indeed, did - change on a monthly basis. It was a major tool in the 1950s and 1960s of controlling the economy.

Now - where were we?! (And nobody answer 'Ah yes - virgin!!' )

 

Ten to twelve years ago there was a proposal in Texas to link Houston, Dallas and (I believe) San Antonio with high speed rail. It was costed at $5 billion. The farming lobby objected on the grounds that the trains would frighten the cattle and milk production would dry up.

Despite the proponents producing video evidence of French cattle completely unfazed by trains passing them at full speed, the farming lobby won and the project was scrapped. There's nimbies in them there hills.

Recently the proposal was revisited, but a reduced scheme (Houston-Dallas only) would now cost about $15 billion. The original decision now looks rather foolish.

Dave

 

A more local example was the landowners of Northampton who objected to "this fearsome connivance" and refused to sell their land to the railway company. Result Northampton is now by-passed by the main line and sits on a loop hence has not become as important a town as it thinks it should be.

 

It took many years of travelling the WCML before I finally went round the loop. Strange that trains that stopped at tiny Oxenholme did not stop at a big place like Northampton. Back on topic the manic desire to modernise does not always produce the most cost effective solution.

 

Not so. Northampton was bypassed because the railway would have been too steep for the locomotives of the day.

 

They couldn't "refuse to sell" if the railway company had obtained an Act of Parliament. The more usual theory is that the townspeople certainly objected. Stephenson had doubts about the practicality of tunnelling through the hills south of Northampton and felt that he would have difficulty convincing Parliament that such was practical with the tunnelling technology of the time. Subsequently the line was built and after four tracking of the LNWR main line effectively became the independent slow lines. EDIT: Both this and Simon's comment may have been true.

 

I think yours is the fuller version of what I wrote.

 

Meanwhile, trying to get back onto topic, the Beeching closures, presumably, meant that there were less locos needed so BR had a surplus by the late 60s and they could afford to withdraw steam as they had sufficient diesel and electric traction to operate the reduced network

 

They certainly had sufficient diesels to throw away those that were useless.

 

Apologies - stand corrected although this was said by many when I lived in the area.