AHC: Keep Scapa flow as the main base of the RN

Have the Royal Navy Cheat on their Washington Naval Treaty tonnage allocations and need to hide the details. Scapa flow is a good place to insure privacy.
 
The UK is based on old infrastructure though, it might be a hundred miles drive which im sure is easy in the wide open spaces of the US and Australia on new decent roads that are well laid out, it's not like that in the UK, even now many main roads go through town centers and it only gets worse as you head north in the UK.

There are very few good roads past Edinburgh and Glasgow, certainly no motorways and the A roads are all single carriageway and quite narrow. There is very little space for new roads or even road improvements even if you could get permission.

I think you’ll find that the country roads in the UK are Better then the roads in regional and rural Australia.

Higher population density will see to that if nothing else.
 

hipper

Banned
The UK is based on old infrastructure though, it might be a hundred miles drive which im sure is easy in the wide open spaces of the US and Australia on new decent roads that are well laid out, it's not like that in the UK, even now many main roads go through town centers and it only gets worse as you head north in the UK.

There are very few good roads past Edinburgh and Glasgow, certainly no motorways and the A roads are all single carriageway and quite narrow. There is very little space for new roads or even road improvements even if you could get permission.

Dual carriageway all the way to Aberdeen! , two motorways to Stirling

Two current projects involving dual carriageways to Inverness from Stirling and Aberdeen.

In the 1940’s things were worse. However the majority of the RN had spent far too much time in Scapa and there never was any inclination to retain a base there, too little civilian population for one thing

After WW1 the RN did have a fleet base at Invergordon but it’s a loog walk to Inverness for a nights dancing as a relative of mine did once.
 
During WW1 there was, of course, the "Jellicoe Express" from Euston to Thurso in about 22 hours.

For our foreign correspondents that is a railway journey from Euston railway station in London to Thurso at the very top of Scotland. That is a 720 mile journey by train ( actually 720 miles and 20 chains if we are getting all train spottery)

It was, apparently, a very basic service: No food, no toilets and often vastly overcrowded. The train left Euston at 18:00 and arrived at Thurso at 15:30 the following day. Southbound took an hour longer. There are memorial plaques at both Euston and Thurso that were recently installed.

The service was revived in the second world war & today the journey is still possible. You could leave tomorrow from Euston at 06:43 and arrive in Thurso, changing only twice ( at Edinburgh & Inverness) at 22:20. Or you could have a lie in and get the 10:00 from Kings Cross arriving at the same time but requiring 4 changes!

On th either hand you can actually drive from Sydney to Perth, drive up to To scapa is a tad damp.

there are two ferry routes that will take your vehicle. I have just come back from a holiday using both.
 
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Ramp-Rat

Monthly Donor
The basic problem is after WWI, with the demise of the German High Seas Fleet, Scapa Flow has no use. Until the expansion of the German Fleet in the late nineteen thirties, the principal focus of the RN was the Mediterranean and the Far East, look at the money spent on upgrading Singapore. Nor post WWII, did the Soviet Fleet present a significant risk that required the stationing off a large British/NATO Fleet in Scapa Flow. Scapa Flow only became useful because of the expansion of the German Fleet at the turn of the century. No German Fleet or other major threat, and Scapa Flow is a anchorage in the back end of nowhere, that has no facilities or long term use.

RR.
 
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