Green and Pleasant Land

Works for me. Good and interesting TL too!

What about buses in your TL? Particularly in the countryside, where even people being no greater 15 to 20 miles from a railway station could be a big issue for those without cars...
 
It's Happened Again!

I woke up this morning to the news on my alarm that the event that triggered my idea for "Green and Pleasant Land" (G&PL) had happened yet again. A small crash on the M20 in Kent had occurred. Not small to the people involved, indeed one is dead and three in hospital, but in the scheme of things not a massive multi vehicle incident with many casualties.

The event in question took place at approx 2am local time its now 9.30am and the emergency services say the road will be closed until this evening.
The effect of this is that because EVERY single route on the road system is already operating at the limit of its capacity in the south of England there is no space to divert the traffic.

An expanding area of complete gridlock is spreading out from the closed stretch of road that by now extends for over 30-40 miles. This includes all of the road links to the Kent channel crossings. The result is people unable to get to their work, deliveries late and time sensitive material lost for good. The cost to the country as a whole for this particular event will run into at least millions.

Today I am not in the envelope of this event but I should not speak too soon as often there are secondary incidents in the area effected by the first event multiplying the problem. When I am effected I LOSE MONEY! and so do everyone else involved.

This situation is happening in on a regular basis now probably once or twice a month and while siting in the holdups I wondered how the hell we let this happen. So here you have G&PL.

The Timeline I have drawn out here htt//www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=979275&postcount=20
shows how far back the problem began. The post here https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=978457&postcount=14
is written as a publicity handout for the British Transport Commission (BTC) a real organisation set up to deal with these issues. As it is to advertise their 60th anniversary , they only survived 14 years in OTL, they only mention the positive side of things.

I shall be developing the view from other organisations such as motoring organisations and the Freight Transport Association in future posts. I have been sent some ideas for storylines as well that I hope will be expanded on.
 
Due to the increase use of rail transport and greater intergration into Europe do you not think it possible that the UK would switch to driving on the right instead of the left?

Would it be common place for people in your time line to think more socialy because the train system is a perfect example of the kind of system that when handled well can be far more efficient then any conservative/right wing personal responsibility transportation options.

Greater investment has lead to a call on the government to find a solution to the polluting trains, even though business and home use contribute far more to CO2 emissions; there is a public out cry that the government is not doing enough to reduce the number of trains using fossil fuels. eventually the creation of hydrogen based locomotives becomes possible with greater investment in hydrogen technologies, allowing electrical energy sources to be effectively converted into fuel for the trains, this also would replace gas consumption in homes as the pipes are converted to hydrogen gas.
 
This is my take on how transport could have evolved in the UK over the last 60 years given a POD in 1955 when the British Transport Commission decided to start electrification of main line railways.


Green and Pleasant Land


Looking forward to next years 60th anniversary celebrations of the foundation of the British Transport Commission we must began by looking back at the beginning of the Commission's illustrious history.

The first steps that led to trains travelling the length of the country in under three hours every thirty minutes, carrying most of our bulk goods not travelling on the waterways and taking 90% of people to their places of work every day.

It may seem far fetched to us today but back in 1955 there were people considering extending the experimental electrification of the rail network in the South East to cover the whole country. You may ask how these proponents of electrification could justify this extreme expense when over 70% of the energy produced by the fuel used in the generating stations was lost in resistance in the distribution network, when even the oldest locomotives in use could turn 70% of the heat their boilers produced into kinetic energy and the locomotives produced in the British Railways program of 1951 all approached 90% efficiency. Of course compared to the latest model steam turbines, fired by fluid bed solid fuel, gas and oil, with condensing boilers, these were the last of the dinosaurs from the so called “golden age” of steam power.

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British Railway 9F Goods Locomotive developed from the WD 2-10-0 goods engine used by the RASC

Then, of course, the generating stations would shoot all of the pollutants up into the upper atmosphere spreading pollution far more than burning the fuel at the point of use. Also the capital outlay would have been enormous, how they were going to justify this, when the infrastructure to support steam generating vehicles was in place, we can only wonder at.

Looking now at the problems other nations are having in regard to air pollution this is one of the less obvious benefits of maintaining our multi-layered transport system but potentially one of its most valuable. Once it was accepted that transport was going to be achieved by burning non-renewable resources of fossil fuel then it became obvious that it should be done in the most efficient manner. To do this with the least impact on the environment it became obvious that burning the fuel at the point of use was far more efficient and less harmful to the environment. The apparent lack of pollution from electric vehicles ignored the fact the the electricity was generated by burning fossil fuel. Without the luxury of readily available power from a hydro-electric system the electric trains produced more and, by ejecting it up high from tall chimneys, more harmful pollution.

The main problem of the time taken to get the locomotives up to working pressure was being addressed by the introduction of powdered coal and oil fired boilers which also eased the workload on the engineer or fireman as he used to be called back then, when he was basically a labourer feeding the boiler. Now of course it would be possible one person to operate the locomotive, although no rational company would advocate that practice any more than an aircraft operator would use a one man crew on a transport aeroplane.

The phased transfer of RASC rail assets to British Railways over the decade led to an increasing ability to move large loads to within 15 to 20 miles of ANYWHERE in the country. There was not a town or village in the country more than a short journey by road to a railway station. The organisation of freight and personnel transport handling gained from the supplying of the forces in the recent world war became utilised by British Railways.
The heavier industries that required bulk deliveries were already sited on or near existing waterways so it was obvious to modernise the canal system. Once the chains of barges started moving every 30mins it was irrelevant if they took a day or two to complete their journey 250 tons or more arrived every 30mins. The amount of fuel required to move 250 tons 100miles by water was less than one tenth of that required by rail and one hundredth of that by road.

These figures are taken by the simple comparison of the loads that a horse can move. It can for instance on a hard surfaced highway pull one ton on a wheeled cart. On a permanent way, and the first railways were all horse drawn, they could move ten tons on level ground. But on water in a barge they could easily pull one hundred tons all day without any difficulty.

public-trips.jpg


British Road Services together with the private companies Pickfords, Corrals and Charringtons Fuels increased their sitting of depots at railway yards and stations. This formed the final link in the transport chain moving goods around the country.There were railway sidings with access to the road system all over the system dating back to WW1 when vast quantities of munitions and supplies were being transported to the ports for the western front. These became available for general use again by 1950. Large and small haulage and transport companies used these as points of transfer for goods in the initial and final stages of the chain of delivery.

Many industries had their own rail links to the main system and indeed possessed their own rolling stock and even locomotives. By actively encouraging this practice and scheduling trains from these companies into the system the maximum use of the capacity and a high level of efficiency was achieved.
The urban transport system did for some time remain powered by electric motive units both trams and light railways above and underground. Then of course the gas fired condensing boiler steam turbine units replaced electric power on the underground rail systems and eventually, after a short flirtation with diesel power, the trams followed suit.

Now of course monorail systems using magnetic support for the carriages and some even with a linear induction power system are being proposed to save space in urban areas. These however are generating there own power locally with small gas fired generators and using the national grid system for emergency backup only.

After the Suez crisis of 1956 Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser initiated a boycott on Arab countries supplying oil to Britain and France in retaliation for the invasion of the canal zone. This prompted the government decided to adopt a policy of minimum reliance on oil as a fuel which compelled the Commission to ensure that the most economical means of transporting people and materials were employed. This required the layered system we enjoy today to be developed to it's full potential.

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The Royal Navy at Suez

It is strange to think that back in the late 50s there were plans to build a network of freeways or autobahns similar to the American or European systems in our country. One can only wonder who would have used them if their construction had gone ahead. The amount of fuel you would use and drivers you would have to train and employ to transport say, food for a city, across the country when one trainload with one driver could carry it in one journey would suggest that no commercial enterprise would ever be able to operate economically unless the whole system was altered in some way to load the dice in favour of the transport by road.

As for private motorists who in their right mind would want to sit in a confined box for hours on end to travel when you can put your car on a train at say London and drive off in York in an hour or Edinburgh in three whilst relaxing in comfort and, if time allows, enjoying a meal in the dining car.
In 1958 British Car Hire was formed with offices at main stations at the system and if a vehicle was required when the rail journey was completed it could even be hired in advance and paid for with the ticket. If the journey was to a station without an office with two days notice a car could be made available.

Bearing all of this in mind it would be incomprehensible for anybody to suggest altering the rail infrastructure to make roads a viable option for long distance travel within the UK. Indeed you would have to dismantle half of the rail infrastructure and scrap all of the new build engines from the 1951 construction program to make roads a viable option and who in their right mind would have suggested that back in 1955. Why obviously no government would have considered such an illogical course of action and the electorate would have put them out of office at the very next election if they did carry out these peculiar policies.

The main expense in the formative years of the late 50s and early 60s was of course standardising the loading gauges of all of the lines to allow the latest and most efficient rolling stock and locomotives to have access to all parts of the rail network. This was expensive but not as much as the figures proposed for the electrification of the network.

This does not even take into account any savings on not building a freeway system far more suited to a large continent rather than a small island. The ability of mainland Europe to rebuild their road system to cope with extremely large loads was of course mainly due to the fact that there was not a major bridge left standing after the second world war. Any bridge that the Allies didn't destroy to hinder the Axis's supplies the Axis destroyed to hinder the Allied advance.

Introduction.jpg
Bielefeld Viaduct

This of course meant that the replacements could and were built to take far heavier loads than their predecessors. This was actively encouraged by NATO and financed by the Marshall Plan. This, just like Hitler's construction of the autobahns, was to enable tanks to be readily transported by road. In Britain it was not necessary to carry out such reconstruction and as we were hardly likely to need to deploy tanks on home soil, rail transport would be perfectly adequate for any military requirement.

Now after this brief précis of the early history of the Commission we must look at its recent achievements. The monorail systems we have mentioned earlier in South and East London, around Birmingham and Manchester have made the daily journey to work shorter and more pleasant for workers living in these areas. This has left more space on the main line trains travelling through and leaving more capacity on the network for transport of goods. The new computerised signaling and and control system has been installed with an independent duplicate to give an instant backup in any failure situation.
Then the largest recent project has been the upgrade and extension of the inland waterways to rationalise bulk transport of goods around the country. This together with the latest generation of vessels has given the Commission more than enough capacity in the transport system to take us well into the next century and beyond.

Finally the ongoing maintenance of the road system has been kept up to date with the creation of more motorail transfer stations across the country to give the traveller more choice. Making it possible now to drive onto a train in Scotland and in less than four hours drive off in France through the Channel tunnel. Then of course those who actively enjoy the motoring experience can move around the country on reasonably clear roads for the foreseeable future. The latest addition to the system is this boat lift in Scotland which raises the vessels some 24m.

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I would welcome any comments or suggestions on this TL.


Just the picture of that Lock/Lift?, for lack of a better term, made this worthwhile. Kudo's on the work, it was a good read.
 
Introduction to “Green and Pleasant Land”

Introduction to “Green and Pleasant Land”

To begin with I would like to point out the context of my initial entries. The post​
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=978457&postcount=14 is a written as a brochure published by the Commission as a publicity handout for its 60th anniversary in a years time. The immodestly confident title of this brochure I have used as the name for my Timeline. I think this brochure has now reached it's final version. The timeline I posted here as a PDF file https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=979275&postcount=20 is obviously incomplete. I am still looking into the best way to present this on the Forum as I want the comparison between OTL and G&PL to be visible. This will grow and fill in as the timeline develops but the entries in OTL will always be genuine and to the best of my knowledge correct.​

First of all I would like to briefly introduce the major player in G&PL the relatively short lived,in OTL, British Transport Commission. This was a real organisation set up by the post war Labour Government of Clement Attlee in order to implement the policies of the Transport Act 1947 it's brief was to provide "an efficient, adequate, economical and properly integrated system of public inland transport and port facilities within Great Britain for passengers and goods", excluding transport by air.
There was a separate organisation for Northern Ireland the Ulster Transport Authority. As the G&PL timeline develops the status of this may change, I don't know yet.

Its role was to ensure that policies were implemented and it was one of the largest industrial organisations in the world, at one time employing nearly 688,000 people. At first, the Commission did not directly operate transport services: these were the responsibility of the Commission's Executives. These were separately appointed, and operated under what were termed 'schemes of delegation'. The Act provided for five Executives, covering Docks & Inland Waterways, Hotels, London Transport, Railways, and Road Transport. The Railway Executive traded as “British Railways”. In 1949, Road Transport was divided into separate Road Haulage and Road Passenger Executives, though the latter proved short-lived.

Other activities of the Commission were-

Advertising: British Transport Advertising sold space on premises and vehicles

Buses: the Tilling Group sold its bus interests to the BTC in September 1948, as did the Red and White Group in 1950. Midland General buses and trolleybuses were transferred by the British Electricity Authority. From the railway companies, the BTC also inherited non-controlling interests in many bus companies in the British Electric Traction Group. It also manufactured buses for its own use, through the subsidiaries Bristol Commercial Vehicles and Eastern Coach Works. In London and the surrounding area, the BTC ran both the (red) London buses and the (green) country buses, including Green Line Coaches.

Docks: British Transport Docks (today known as Associated British Ports), comprising 32 ports taken over from the railway companies

Films: the BTC had its own film production company, British Transport Films

Hotels & Catering: the former railway hotels and catering departments, later re-organised as British Transport Hotels

Museums: The BTC inherited the LNER's Railway Museum at York and appointed a Curator of Historical Relics to build up a national collection. Eventually, much of this collection was displayed at the Museum of British Transport at Clapham, south London. This closed in the early 1970's and was superseded by the National Railway Museum at York and the London Transport Museum (now in Covent Garden). The BTC also established the Stoke Bruerne Canal Museum.

Police: the British Transport Police was formed chiefly by the amalgamation of the various railway constabularies


Railways: British Railways, including ancillary activities like engineering workshops, and London Underground. The former LMS lines in Northern Ireland (see Northern Counties Committee) were sold to the Ulster Transport Authority in 1949.

Road Haulage: the local road distribution networks of the pre-nationalisation rail companies, plus the removals company Pickfords, which the railways had owned jointly. To these were added numerous smaller independent concerns taken over at nationalisation, comprising all undertakings predominantly engaged in ordinary long-distance work for distances of 40 miles or upwards. These networks were later re-organised as British Road Services (BRS).

Shipping: the former railway steamer services, primarily to France and Ireland and around the Scottish coast, and investments in Associated Humber Lines and the Atlantic Steam Navigation Company

Tramways: the South London tramways of London Transport, all of which were abandoned by 5 July 1952

Travel & Holidays: the travel agents Thomas Cook & Son

Waterways: canals and navigable rivers, mainly taken over from canal companies, like the Grand Union Canal Company, but also including those bought out earlier by the pre-nationalisation railways. The Caledonian Canal was already State-owned. The canals are today run by British Waterways. As well as the canal infrastructure, BTC also managed canal carrying services.

The Commission was permitted to "secure the provision" of road passenger services, although it did not have general powers of compulsory purchase of bus operators. To obtain specific powers of acquisition it had first to draw up, and get approval for, a 'Road Scheme', area by area. Only one was published, the North East Area Road Scheme, though work began on a second scheme, covering East Anglia. The NEARS was never confirmed, as it was fiercely opposed by private and municipal operators.

The structure of Commission and Executives proved to be an obstacle to integration and was largely abolished by the Conservative government with effect from 1 October 1953 (the London Transport Executive alone survived). On 1 January 1955, the railways were re-organised on the basis of six Area Railway Boards, which had executive powers.

Some of the questions people have asked in the thread about road passenger services you can see fall into the broad remit of the Commission and I will be going into that subject in more depth in the future. I still see cars in use but not with families having multiple vehicles. There would just not be the need for every individual to have their own independent means of transport. Most car owners would not use their vehicles to travel to work unless driving was integral with their employment. It would be far more common to hire a vehicle for specific purposes such as a holiday.

As you will see from the TL of G&PL there are a series of small points of divergence gradually building up to quite major changes. Now I have to see what events could have led to the changes I have made.

I have at the suggestion of Thande introduced an outside influence jeopardising the supply of oil to the UK from the middle East. This was a real event in OTL the crisis at Suez. I shall be developing the view from other organisations such as motoring organisations and the Freight Transport Association in future posts. I have been sent some ideas for storylines as well that I hope will be expanded on.

As the policy since 1956 will have been using oil on a last resort and as sparingly as possible, even after the discovery of North Sea oil, air travel will only be used when there is no viable alternative. Subsidies will never happen so nobody will miss them. This would make transcontinental travel less common perhaps putting some traffic back onto ocean liners.I can see the expansion of BTC to include air transport. Air travels virtue will be the obvious one of speed and the BTC (British Transport Commission) actively supported the development of Concorde which became a great success with BOAC.

The Channel tunnel my happen earlier and with the British trains being as advanced as anything abroad there may be exports. Paris will be under two hours from London maybe less. Motorail will be able to get you and your car to anywhere in Europe quicker than fly drive today and you would have your own car to use! Ferries would be used extensively as they still are in OTL. Newhaven, Portsmouth and Southampton car ferry's to France and Northern Spain are usually fully booked up in OTL.

I am hoping that the events in G&PL will point vaguely in the direction we should be moving to improve, that is reduce, the levels of pollution and congestion we are suffering in the urban sprawls developing everywhere we turn. Already some of these actions are belatedly being implemented. The boat lift at Falkirk in Scotland is real the pity of it is it was built for leisure not goods traffic. But British Waterways are now looking into reopening the navigation into East London to reduce the transport problems there for the2012 Olympics.
 
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Havn't read the whole thread but directed here as a result of my 'earlier Ro-ro and containerisation thread'....

Building the Steam Navy, Dockyards, Technology and the Creation of the Victorian battle Fleet 1830 – 1906 by David Evans.

Page 170

Another far sighted plan, this time for containerised transport of coal to the yards, was submitted in December 1846 by the solicitors to the Bristol & Poole harbour railway, who having a floating dock at their Bristol terminus:

…by which means their iron Barges containing the Boxes with Welch Steam Coals...will be placed on the Line and conveyed without shifting, or break of gauge direct to Her Majesty’s Stores either at Gosport or Portsmouth or by means of a Pier alongside of which a Steam Ship may lie and the Coals be placed at once on board – affording thereby a continuous supply of Best Steam Coals in first-rate conditions…

They had submitted a scheme to supply 21,000 tons annually to Mr Russell, contractor for supply of coals at Southampton for the Great Western Steam Navigation Company, the P & O Steam navigation Company, and the Royal West India mail Company, and to the Engineer in chief of the last. And they had agreed to support the plan. There would be a small increase in price, but this would be compensated for by the excellent condition of the coal. This offer was not taken up.

Now this suggest that containerisation could have been introduced far far sooner. There would be less theft and 'damages' which would be of interest to the merchants.

Ro-Ro type vessels were around a lot sooner than the trans Atlantic type Ro-Ro but only on short service type but how sooner could they have been introduced. For that matter, what kind of service could coastal type Ro-Ro provide if introduced sooner.




Same goes for coastal container ship type services - i've seen an interesting Sunday Times document recently that suggests coastal containership services could be very beneficial wrt congestion.

Britain’s congested roads will soon be further flooded by freight. So why don’t we carry everything by river and sea? Richard Girling reveals the transport masterplan that has been far from plain sailing

<img alt="" border="0" height="5" width="1"> A newly hatched coot chick, limp teaspoonful of saturated feather and weightless bone, sprawls on the surface of Waterworks River. Seventy miles away, the 66,433-tonne Chinese container ship Xin Yan Tai, 280 metres long and carrying the equivalent of 5,688 lorryloads, nestles into its berth at Felixstowe, while drivers on the A12, A14, M3, M25, M1, A1 and M6 check the traffic news.


For the coot, now bucking in the wake of British Waterways’ 150-horsepower rigid inflatable boat, there is a miracle. The helmsman, soft of heart as he is craggy of feature, kills the throttle, scoops up the barely alive morsel and returns it to the reeds. For everyone else, it’s business as usual. Felixstowe’s cranes pluck like ravens at the ship’s innards. Traffic on the M3, M25 and M6 closes up, stops, starts and stops again. Such is the UK’s “integrated transport policy” – so good you have to queue for it.




What connects the hatchling to the ocean giant and the clogged motorways is our peculiar ambivalence to our greatest national asset, and a transport system whose presiding geniuses are habit, expediency and chaos. If globalism has a downside, then this is it. Decisions crucial to our quality of life are being dictated not in the mutant, stakeholder English of the UK government but in unfamiliar languages from foreign boardrooms.


The reasons are simple: world trade is dominated by container ships whose statistics are beyond the ken of anyone who thinks aircraft carriers are big. Even the Xin Yan Tai is no contender for the record books. The biggest ship ever to put in at Felixstowe was the 106,700-tonne Xin Los Angeles, also Chinese-owned, which stretches 337 metres from end to end and can hold 9,560 20ft-long freight containers (or 9,560 lorries’ worth). At its Trinity and Landguard terminals, the port altogether operates nine container berths. Eight of the 10 ships that docked there on the same day as Xin Yan Tai were bigger than the Royal Navy’s flagship, the aircraft carrier Invincible.


Owners of such colossi will never run them inefficiently. They want maximum cargoes, direct routes and no hanging about for tides or berths. There is no time for diversions into remote backwaters such as the North Sea. Felixstowe and Southampton may be convenient stop-offs on routes to Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg, but in any language (and especially Chinese) a 250-mile detour to the Tees is nonsensical. If there is no berth available in the south, then they’ll steam straight on to Rotterdam, and the UK can fetch what it needs from there. Hence the concentration of deep-water container berths in what planners call the GSE – the greater southeast – and the scramble to build a whole lot more.


Hence, too, anxiety in the GSE as it anticipates yet more pressure on its overloaded roads, and the clamour from the Freight Transport Association for yet more tarmac. Meanwhile, one of the most brilliantly engineered trading networks in the history of commercial enterprise – Britain’s inland waterways – has been reborn as a linear holiday resort and our coastal waters are ignored. The harder you look at it, the crazier it gets.
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Waterworks River is part of a nearly forgotten web of backwaters, the Bow Back Rivers, following the course of the River Lea north of its confluence with the Thames, which was once east London’s main commercial artery. Never pretty, it drew to its banks the kind of bad-neighbour industries – scrap metal, garbage, chemical works, car breakers’ yards, sewerage – that were unwanted anywhere else (though it also had three handsome mills and a gin distillery). Its concrete banks were last reinforced in the 1930s and barge traffic had mostly petered out by the 1950s.
For all but four hours of the day it’s now all but unnavigable. When the tide turns, it drains right down to the mud (sometimes houseboats get so firmly stuck in it, they are unable to rise on the flood and are overwhelmed). Wherever you look, there is something abandoned, swinging on its hinges or scabbed with corrugated iron. Even the buddleia and Japanese knotweed bursting through the banks appear to extinguish life rather than embrace it. And yet, in a multiplicity of ways, these are rivers of hope.


The half-dead coot made its first attempt to swim right next to the designated site of the 2012 Olympic aquatic centre. Waterworks River and the Old River Lea, into which it transmutes at Stratford, will be the design focus of the Olympic Park, wellspring of a reinvented, self-confident East End. The banks will be terraced; river bed cleared; bridges removed or realigned; new ones built. In all but grid reference it will become an entirely new place, delivered from another planet.
But that is not why British Waterways wants to show it off. The revival of Waterworks River need not be just a landscaper’s dream. There is real work for it to do. The construction of the Olympic site – stadium, velodrome, aquatic centre, basketball and hockey venues, the athletes’ village, food halls, roads and vehicle parks – will require a small mountain of aggregates, asphalt, cement, steel, glass, wood and concrete, thousands upon thousands of lorryloads that, in the Blackwall tunnel and on east London’s already log-jammed streets, would guarantee gridlock. The salving balm, green as you like, is the waterway system.


What the Bow Back Rivers were in the past, they can be again. All that’s needed is a £15m lock on Prescott Channel (no, it’s nothing to do with that Prescott), and for the first time in 40 years the level above Three Mills Island can be controlled and the navigation reopened. This is the plan, which now waits only upon a funding package that British Waterways hopes to wrap up shortly. The lock would enable the passage, two at a time, of 350-tonne barges, each the equivalent of 14 25-tonne lorries. Richard Rutter, BW’s regeneration manager, calculates that the overall saving would be at least 100,000 road journeys at greatly reduced cost and minimal noise and pollution. After the Olympics, the river will make an ideal exit path for east London’s garbage – another 250,000 tonnes a year taken off the roads. It is, as Rutter puts it, “a no-brainer”, and the only puzzle is why water transport was not made a planning condition in the first place.


In continental Europe, waterways have never been swallowed by “heritage”. You would never hear a German say – as an official of British Waterways (not Rutter) said to me – that advocates of waterborne freight were “romantics”. Nor would you stand on a bridge over the Rhine, as I did above the Thames at Westminster, and see nothing but tour boats. In Germany, 64.3% of freight travels by waterway; in the UK, less than 1% does.


Sadly, there seem to be some people within the now leisure-dominated waterways industry who won’t cheer too hard for the Bow Backs in case they are seen as a precedent.


As recently as 1995-6, 3.7m of freight was carried this way, but much of this was coal. With coal out of the picture, the figure slumped to 1.6m in 2004-5, though it crept up again to 1.8m last year. This was due mainly to the aggregate company Cemex, which began using barges to carry sand and gravel on the River Severn. All you need to make sense of this is basic numeracy. Each barge carries the equivalent of more than 20 lorryloads but uses only a fiftieth of the fuel needed by a single lorry. Cemex’s barges on the Severn will save 34,000 road journeys a year.
But the Severn is a very different proposition from, say, the Kennet and Avon Canal. British Waterways’ enthusiasm for the project is real but muted. Restoring the freight-carrying potential of a river or canal, it says, is hugely expensive, and its pockets far from deep. A spokesman slams down the figures like a “position closed” shutter at the bank. “In 2005-6 we received an income of £500,000, compared to £600,000 in the previous year. When you consider that last year we invested £107m in maintaining the waterways – repairing structures, dredging the channels, managing vegetation – the earned income is minuscule by comparison. BW is willing, but it can’t do everything.”
A few other bits and pieces are in prospect – a new wharf for handling waste at a recycling centre in west London; a contract to move incinerator ash on the River Ouse; a government grant to refurbish a couple of barges for aggregates on the Aire and Calder navigation and the Trent. Worthy, yes. But an exciting glimpse into a dynamic new future for water transport? Yawn.
Government policy, not untypically, is Janus-faced. If lip service did any good, then inland and coastal waters would be churning with freight, and the motorways would have reverted to their primary purpose as fast nonstop highways. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the Department for Transport (DfT) and the House of Commons transport committee have all called for a transfer of freight from road to water. They might just as well have called for powers of levitation. In 2002 the DfT announced a “water-preferred policy” for abnormal indivisible loads (AILs) – the giant turbines, transformers and other industrial hulks that straddle multiple lanes and reduce entire motorways to the speed of a pensioner with a shopping trolley.


For a while it looked promising. An £8.5m government grant enabled the transport engineers Wynns to develop the Terra Marique, a huge pontoon capable of carrying loads of up to 1,200 tonnes around the coast and into river mouths. This was launched in 2004 with a 400-tonne daughter vessel, the Inland Navigator, which it could carry inside and release into estuaries, thus extending its reach as far inland as Leeds, Maidenhead, Nottingham, Rotherham, Worcester and York. It seemed the freight industry had received into its sclerotic heart a life-saving shot of ice-cold rationality. But then what is rationality when set against faith in the great god MacAdam?


In July this year the House of Commons transport committee rebuked that faith’s high priesthood in the Highways Agency. “The ‘water preferred’ policy,” it said, “does not appear to be encouraging more freight onto the inland waterways as intended… Little real effort has been made to divert freight off the roads and onto the water… Indeed, we have received evidence that the Agency’s own policies are working in the other direction.”


The blockades to progress are economic self-interest and inertia. On the one hand, the freight industry complains that water transport is more expensive than road. On the other, the water lobby argues that the real cost of road transport far exceeds what hauliers pay in tax. Taking into account congestion, pollution and accidents, the DfT’s own figures suggest that every road mile of freight costs 51p to the public purse, which adds up to very big numbers indeed. In 2005 alone, the 430,000 HGVs on Great Britain’s roads clocked up 13.9 billion miles (22.23 billion kilometres), swallowing £7 billion worth of invisible public subsidy. But this cuts no ice with company accountants. They may “look at” the water option but they seldom take it. In two years, Terra Marique and Inland Navigator have never worked as they were designed to do, as mother and daughter. Operating independently, Navigator has made just three paid-for trips, carrying electricity transformers from Goole to Newark.


Terra Marique has done better – ferrying a complete Concorde from the Thames to Scotland for the Scottish Museum of Flight, and 19 other coastal trips carrying electricity-generating equipment for National Grid. Even so, it has been running at only 66% capacity.
Historically the problem for water has been the lack of a Big Voice to set against the road lobby. In 2003 the DfT itself tried to tilt the balance by backing Sea and Water, a new campaigning body based in London. But don’t expect any nationwide advertising blitz. S&W’s income – £120,000 a year from government and £60,000 from industrial sponsors – won’t stretch much further than running the office and paying its three full-time staff. A measure of the scandal (for scandal it is) is that it’s hard-pressed even to crystallise its own vision. Defining any kind of transport policy is like navigating in a fog with the radar switched off. Somewhere over the horizon, Utopia lurks. But you don’t know where. You are starved of facts. So devout is the faith in MacAdam that, despite the self-evident truth that road transport in the long term will throttle itself to death, the government has made very little effort to push the alternative.


The bigger the question, the unlikelier it is to be answered. What proportion of freight could be switched to water? How many lorries would this take off the roads? How long would it take? How much might the government be prepared to invest to make it happen? Who knows?


The DfT certainly doesn’t, and there is nobody else with the will or the resources to find out. “Nobody is putting up the money to get that knowledge,” says Sea and Water’s director, Heather Leggate, who is left having to talk in general terms about “a lot of potential”. Crucially, too, it means it is impossible to work out accurate like-for-like cost comparisons between road and water, without which the case for water cannot be proved. (Ironically, the DfT assures me at the same time that it is “funding Sea and Water to… identify all existing research on the potential for water freight… and identify knowledge gaps…”) Where, then, is the vision? Britain’s coastal waters are variously described as a “conveyor belt” or “ring road” – zero maintenance, uncloggable, environmentally friendly (60% less carbon emissions per tonne/kilometre than road transport) and free.


From rivers like the Thames, Severn, Mersey, Ouse, Humber, Tees and Clyde, it has access to a network through which modern vessels can reach inland towns and cities. Yet it’s one of the emptiest ring roads on the planet. In 2004, 120.5m tonnes of freight was hauled from southern to northern England by road or rail, and just 8.2m tonnes, or 6%, by sea. “It concerns us,” says Heather Leggate, “that two-thirds of the containers coming into Southampton will be delivered by road north of Birmingham. To us that seems absolutely ridiculous. We are trying to encourage more transhipment around the coast to ports which at the moment are underused. There are 300 commercial ports in the UK, so that’s a lot of potential.”


To her the solution is obvious – a “feedering” service of smaller ships ferrying containers from southern hubs to the north, whence they would finish their journeys by road. David Cheslin, the chairman of Coastlink Network, a campaigning body for shipping professionals, is promoting the idea of a daily service up the North Sea coast from the Thames or Felixstowe, and up the west coast from Southampton. One small ship alone would carry 300 standard-size containers, so two on each route would take 1,200 off the road every day, plus 1,200 return journeys no longer needed. Suitable vessels are available for charter, and the need for infrastructure would be minimal. Unlike the mega-ships, which draw up to 15 metres of water, coasters need no more depth than an old-fashioned collier. All it takes is a bit of vacant quayside and a mobile crane.



Cheslin concedes that such a service at first would not be fully utilised, and so would not be profitable from day one: “It would need some government subsidy but it wouldn’t be enormous, certainly not compared with the cost of building a mile of motorway. It would build up volume to make it viable, and could be self-sustaining in six or 12 months.” Thereafter it could expand to three, five, maybe even 10 ships a day. “We could run as many container services as you like.”


I put this to Andrew Traill, until recently head of rail, maritime and air cargo policy for the Freight Transport Association. He was not enthusiastic. The problem, he says, is “a lack of companies willing to invest. They won’t do it without a long-term guarantee of volume”. As switching from road to sea would mean a 20% increase in customers’ freight bills, such guarantees would be a long time coming.


But the added cost is not the will of God. John Ford, director of operations for the Felixstowe office of the shipping agents Johnson Stevens, explains how the system is slanted towards road. “The ports charge a fixed handling cost of £75 or £80 per container. This includes lifting it from ship to quay, and lifting it again onto a lorry. But it does not include lifting onto a railway wagon or other ship, which carries an extra charge of £40-£50. With a further charge at the destination port, it puts up the cost by £100 a container.” All this would be solved by switching to the continental system – one charge for delivery to the quay and a separate one for lifting onto any other vehicle, be it lorry, train or ship, so that sea and rail users don’t pay over the top for a road service they don’t use. “That would level the playing field.”
The practicality of feeder servicing has been shown over the past three years by the do-it-yourself chain B&Q. In the past it used to truck imports for its northern distribution centres all the way up to Warrington, Scunthorpe, Doncaster and Worksop from Southampton. Now, in the absence of any regular feeder service from the south, it transships from Rotterdam into Immingham. Result: an annual saving of 6m road miles. It works.


The slow pace of a ship is not an issue. Most of the stuff heading in and out of British ports – 438m tonnes of it in 2004 – is basic raw materials: oil, chemicals, petrol, coal, ores, liquefied gases, timber, grains and feedstuffs. “Finished” goods include vehicles, food, iron and steel, building materials, machinery, shoes, clothing, computers, “white goods”, televisions, furniture, books, carpets – you name it. Pretty much anything you can lay a hand on is shipped in or out in some form or other. But very little of it is perishable (and even perishables can ride in refrigerated containers). Once the conveyor is running, journey times are irrelevant. A daily delivery is a daily delivery, never mind how long the load has been on the road or at sea. And what makes sense for imports must equally make sense for domestic deliveries within the UK. Heading south on the M1, you’ll see trucks driving from Aberdeen to London. Aberdeen! A seaport! Where is the sense in spending two days clogging the roads with expensive lorries when you could load the stuff straight onto a ship?
But John Ford is under no illusion that transport is a forum in which the best argument always wins. “People get set in their ways,” he says. “Nothing will be done until the system gridlocks. The government doesn’t have the will.” For all these reasons, Sea and Water has some heavy weather ahead. The Freight Transport Association has joined up as a member, but it looks more like infiltration than wholehearted support. “They will say to you,” says Heather Leggate, “that we are anti-road.” (She’s dead right – that’s exactly what they do say, and with the implication that it disqualifies Sea and Water from grown-up debate.) British Waterways has also signed up, but – Bow Backs apart – they are more likely to sell wharves for redevelopment than they are to reopen them for trade. In the words of one industry insider, this is “like running a railway without stations”.
Nobody, and certainly not Leggate, believes the ocean giants can disgorge straight onto the old narrowboat system. You might as well expect an airbus to land on a grass aerodrome in the Weald, or the Arctic Monkeys to take up the shawm. There may be an increased role for canals in carrying aggregates and waste, but the real, pragmatic thrust is towards the sea.
Leggate’s discipline is economics, not romance. By day she is director of the Centre for International Transport Management at London Metropolitan University, and she is an adviser on ports policy to the House of Commons transport committee. This means she is uniquely placed to recognise the disconnection in policy. “DfT don’t seem to talk to Defra,” she says, “and they don’t seem to talk to the Department for Communities and Local Government. We’ve been fighting quite hard to achieve an integrated approach, and we feel strongly that there should be some sort of water freight or transport group that crosses government departments. Transport is not just an issue for DfT. It’s an environmental issue, and it’s an issue for the regions. We really need to achieve joined-up thinking, but we’re finding that very, very difficult.”
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The difficulty is about to become even more acute. Faced with dire warnings about the cost to “UK plc” if container capacity in the south falls short of Chinese demands, the government has agreed to a brand-new container port in Bathside Bay, Harwich, and an extension of its near neighbour, Felixstowe. It has also said it is “minded to” approve a new port on the site of the old Shell Haven refinery on the Thames estuary near Stanford-le-Hope. All three are not just in the southeast but in the same county, Essex, and all are foreign-owned. P&O Ports, developer of Shell Haven, was taken over earlier this year by Dubai Ports World. Bathside and Felixstowe are owned by the Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa. (Most of the rest, including Southampton and Immingham, belong to Associated British Ports, which was taken over this summer by a consortium led by the American bankers Goldman Sachs.)


All three schemes involve rail improvements for which the port owners themselves must pay, but this will do little to alleviate pressure on the roads. According to the DfT, an “acceptable” freight share for rail at these ports is just 25%, and there is an ambition to crank up water’s share to a meagre 10%. All the rest will hit the tarmac. Shell Haven alone would handle the equivalent of 3.5m containers a year, which stacks up to 9,615 every day. Using the DfT’s own formula, this means 6,250 extra loads on the A13. Felixstowe will add another 1.5m to its current annual total of 2.7m, and Bathside Bay will pile another 1.7m on top of that. Whether even this will be enough is a matter of conjecture. The DfT is conducting a policy review which, for as long as it continues, renders its officials mute. “It would be premature to speculate at this stage on what conclusions the review will reach,” was all it would say when asked how long the planned new capacity would suffice.


Before gridlock eventually forces the government’s hand, the best shot in sanity’s locker is road pricing. There is no argument about whether or not it will happen. The DfT is committed to it, and both road and sea lobbies have pledged their support. Their motives, however, are very different. Sea and Water is pushing for hauliers to pay the full cost of their impact on the roads. “Certain [sea] routes,” says Heather Leggate, “aren’t competitive because road users don’t pay the full cost. And when road pricing comes in, I think water will become more competitive. We’re trying to get the DfT to look at this and level the playing field. There are grants available for start-up operations, but really in the long term they’re only sustainable if road users pay the full cost.”


It’s this kind of talk that makes the transport industry gag on its Yorkie bar. “We support road pricing,” says the Freight Transport Association’s Andrew Traill, “so long as it’s cost-neutral.” In other words, they don’t object to a change in the way road use is taxed, provided it doesn’t cost any more. In their opinion the main benefit would be to catch foreign drivers who currently use British roads for free. “What we have a problem with,” says Traill, “is that there are too many people around that organisation [Sea and Water] who see road freight as a whipping boy. They want to put up road freight costs so that everyone goes to them. By all means find alternatives, but don’t punish road freight and drive it out of business. If that happened, all the prices in the shops would go up. Economic growth would stop and you’d drive business down the drain. What’s the point of that?”


This is an old, old tune, played whenever hauliers perceive a threat to their interests. They play it despite the fact that road congestion, which the new port developments will surely make worse, already costs UK industry £20 billion a year, and that pouring more and more money into roads is not the answer – history has shown that traffic simply grows to fill the space, with no advantage gained. I ask Traill about recent hold-ups on one of the routes to Felixstowe, and the answer rings like a knell.





“The A14 gets very congested at times,” he agrees. “The solution is to increase the number of lanes and upgrade it to a motorway.”


HOW OUR WATERWAYS COULD WORK FOR US
This is how Britain could use its coastal waters and its canals and rivers — one of the most brilliantly engineered trading networks in history — to carry freight and prevent the nation’s road network from becoming choked by HGVs. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the Department for Transport and the House of Commons transport committee have all called for a transfer of freight from tarmac to water — but is anybody listening?


HOW ONE COMPANY DID IT
The benefits of switching bulk freight from road to water have been amply demonstrated by Cemex, a leading manufacturer of cement, ready-mix concrete and other building materials. Every year the company shifts 275,000 tonnes of sand and gravel on the River Severn from its quarry at Ripple to a processing plant at Ryall in Worcestershire. In 10 years it will save 340,000 lorry journeys, at huge benefit to the company’s fuel costs and impact on the environment, and its endeavours will contribute to government targets to divert 3.5% of all road freight to the waterways. It makes economic, and ecological, sense: the fuel used in road journeys is 50 times greater than the amount needed to shift the same load by water. Put another way, this means the fuel previously used by HGVs in a single week is enough for barges doing the same work to run for a whole year. It is for this reason, and to relieve the pressure of freight on the roads, that campaigners are now calling for more industrial development on land that can be served by water.


CONGESTION CHANGE
While our waterways are being underused, Britain’s roads are becoming increasingly congested. According to the Department for Transport, road freight is growing at an annual rate of 2.5% per year. Domestic freight transport on our roads has increased by around 60% in the past 20 years. In 1986, 105 billion tonnes of goods were transported by road; today it is more than 160 billion tonnes.


WATER POWER: THE FACTS

The UK offers 11,072 miles of coastline, connected to more than 300 commercial ports and 2,000 miles of freight-carrying estuaries, rivers and other inland waterways.
95% of freight (by volume) and 75% (by value) is moved to or from Britain by water.
In 2004, 573m tonnes of cargo was handled in the UK — an increase of 3% from 2003.
Water freight makes up 24% of all freight (in tonne kilometres) moved within the UK.
Carbon emissions are reduced by 80% when you take freight off the roads and onto water.
Water freight uses significantly less fossil fuel than other modes of transport.
Cory Environmental transports 700,000 tonnes a year — or 15% of Londoners’ household rubbish — along the Port of London Authority-operated River Thames in Essex. By doing so, they remove the equivalent of 100,000 lorry movements a year.
The industry employs more than 200,000, contributing £6.2 billion to the UK economy.






 
I suspect that no matter how good the mass transport system is, as soon as other countries rebuild and start to increase their use of personal transport - the car - there will be a big call for more roads so those in the UK have what everyone else is getting, the call will be 'we fought for personal freedom'.

This doesn't necessarily mean ripping up the transport system for thousands of miles of new roads, but I do think you would see a diversion of resources. How much the roads take off the mass transport system will depend on how much the government is prepared to spend on it.

A side effect of course is whoever is in No11 Downing Street will have to find something other than road tax to use as a piggy bank.
 
Thanks for the input PMN1 this is the sort of information I need to develop this idea in a realistic form.

I suspect that no matter how good the mass transport system is, as soon as other countries rebuild and start to increase their use of personal transport - the car - there will be a big call for more roads so those in the UK have what everyone else is getting, the call will be 'we fought for personal freedom'.​

I only envisage bulk and long distance transport staying off the roads. Short haul and multi-drop would be still on roads. This would not require a motorway network or vehicles over 16 tons. Car ownership I still see happening but more for leisure purposes rather than essential transport except in remote areas.

This doesn't necessarily mean ripping up the transport system for thousands of miles of new roads, but I do think you would see a diversion of resources. How much the roads take off the mass transport system will depend on how much the government is prepared to spend on it.

This is where I am seeing no massive spending on building a motorway network the rail system maintained and the waterways modernised instead.

A side effect of course is whoever is in No11 Downing Street will have to find something other than road tax to use as a piggy bank.

I don't know the exact figures, if somebody cannot help me there I will find out myself, but I don't think road tax is a significant percentage of the exchequers income. Rather the fuel tax, which is 75% of the price of petrol at the pump at present is the main source of revenue from the motorist. This could be obtained with a levy on tonnage using the system.
Once again thanks for the input let me know what you think of my ideas here please PMN1.
 



I don't know the exact figures, if somebody cannot help me there I will find out myself, but I don't think road tax is a significant percentage of the exchequers income.

I was thinking more along the lines that what is currently spent on the roads in TTL only a fraction of what No.11 gathers in Road Tax, Fuel Tax is off course another big earner for No.11.

I might have missed it but I assume the track gauge is the same as it is in TTL???
 
I was thinking more along the lines that what is currently spent on the roads in TTL only a fraction of what No.11 gathers in Road Tax, Fuel Tax is off course another big earner for No.11.

I was thinking along the lines of a payment to use the transport system based of tonnage per mile. This would be varied for different modes of transport. Goods on waterborne transport would be the cheapest rate. Then a higher charge levied for goods on rail and an even higher charge for transport by road.
This could be done by charging the rate for waterborne transport when there was no available route for the journey and rail was the only option. Then the same could apply if there was no rail route and road had to be used the lower rate applied. Journeys using mixed modes of transport would be charged at the lowest rate that the bulk of the journey used.

I might have missed it but I assume the track gauge is the same as it is in TTL???

Now this had not occurred to me but yes I did assume there would be no change of gauge. The experience of the Great Western in running their broad gauge in parallel with standard gauge worked for many years but was a logistic nightmare and they did give up in the end.
Brunel was adamant that broad gauge was more logical and contemptuously referred to Stevenson's railways as using "that cart track gauge". He was referring to standard gauge being based on the rails being spaced for a horse to walk between them to pull the wagons. Brunel did not see any reason for his "Iron Horses" to be limited by the constraints of the flesh and blood variety. Stevenson however worked on a commercial basis and the railways he gave his customers extended their existing infrastructure.
It is thought that technically Brunel was correct, indeed the Russian system uses a broader gauge successfully. Perhaps when the BTC in my TL build their new dedicated high speed lines the might adopt a wider gauge for greater stability and safety?

What do you think?
 
Now this had not occurred to me but yes I did assume there would be no change of gauge. The experience of the Great Western in running their broad gauge in parallel with standard gauge worked for many years but was a logistic nightmare and they did give up in the end.
Brunel was adamant that broad gauge was more logical and contemptuously referred to Stevenson's railways as using "that cart track gauge". He was referring to standard gauge being based on the rails being spaced for a horse to walk between them to pull the wagons. Brunel did not see any reason for his "Iron Horses" to be limited by the constraints of the flesh and blood variety. Stevenson however worked on a commercial basis and the railways he gave his customers extended their existing infrastructure.
It is thought that technically Brunel was correct, indeed the Russian system uses a broader gauge successfully. Perhaps when the BTC in my TL build their new dedicated high speed lines the might adopt a wider gauge for greater stability and safety?

What do you think?

That what I was thinking, it could be designed with double deckers in mid 'future proofing it'.
 
I'd forgotten about those European/American style double decker trains.

I was planning on BTC having to build proper high speed routes along the same lines as the TGV in France. Making it broad gauge would make perfect sense and double deck as well would be obvious now PMN1 has mentioned it.
Another thing I had in mind was widening a lot of the narrow cuts on the canal system. If the inland waterway system was just returned to its highest previous mileage it was an extensive system. Making more of the system able to take 12ft width boats would mean a large increase in capacity. What do you think?
 

Thande

Donor
I was planning on BTC having to build proper high speed routes along the same lines as the TGV in France. Making it broad gauge would make perfect sense and double deck as well would be obvious now PMN1 has mentioned it.
Another thing I had in mind was widening a lot of the narrow cuts on the canal system. If the inland waterway system was just returned to its highest previous mileage it was an extensive system. Making more of the system able to take 12ft width boats would mean a large increase in capacity. What do you think?
Canal reform is probably necessary, yes.

Would using double-decker trains require enlarging a lot of tunnels?

Also, how will the different attitudes in your TL change how the London Underground is treated? I'm guessing no privatisation. What about Underground systems being established in other British cities, like French metros?

And have we discussed trams and trolley-buses yet?
 
Would using double-decker trains require enlarging a lot of tunnels?

I would not propose using double deckers until the dedicated high speed routes were constructed and these would be built to accommodate these.

Also, how will the different attitudes in your TL change how the London Underground is treated? I'm guessing no privatisation. What about Underground systems being established in other British cities, like French metros?

And have we discussed trams and trolley-buses yet?

I f you look at this pdf G&PL Timeline Table.pdf this is the latest update of my TL and as you can see trams and London Transport are taken into consideration. I would envisage a larger spread than OTL of light rail systems not just in London, Glasgow, Newcastle and Birmingham. Also the models of Sheffield, Manchester, Croyden and the Dockland Light Railway being in more widespread use.
The funding and land requirement for these would be less than the motorway system used in its construction.
 

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You mean those?

What would be good would be if these could use the channel tunnel which I do believe they could now with the loading gauge in the channel tunnel but that would mean no broad gauge. I cannot see SNCF being persuaded to change their gauge however good the theory might be. The gauge of the track is the distance apart the rails are set which a separate item from the loading gauge.
The upgrading of the permanent way I mention in the TL mainly the standardisation of the loading gauge is probably the most expensive part of the modernisation. The loading gauge means how much clearance there is around the track therefore dictating the size of the train. Headroom under bridges and tunnels, space between and beside tracks and into loading areas, stations. All of the different companies in the pre-nationalised rail network had different loading gauges "doh" as Homer would say. Transport is too fundamental to leave to commercial pressures it needs to be organised in a co-ordinated manner.

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Thanks for all of the suggestions

i am about ready to submit this TL to Timelines and Scenarios. So I would like to thank everybody who has given me their opinions and input.

Just one more thing before I finally write this up. I am proposing that after the oil embargo imposed in 1955 caused by the Suez crisis the BTC adds air transport to its responsibilities. The area I would like to see them pioneer is the readoption of lighter than air flight using contemporary materials and technology. This would follow the US Navy/Coastguard use of airships for long range patrol work.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Is it too unrealistic?
 
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