Heathrow Airport (UK, west of London)

[Anthony Appleyard]

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_London_Heathrow_Airport

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathrow_(hamlet)

OTL: The UK Government starts building the airport in 1944, pleading (allegedly falsely) military necessity as a way to avoid a long public enquiry. The Heathrow farmers are summarily evicted in late 1944, and many are not compensated until the 1950's. The Heathrow farmers celebrate VE Day scattered in exile over southeast England.

ATL: Someone blows the whistle and spills the beans, not liking the idea of seeing all that construction vehicle fuel (which had been imported at risk past the U-boats) wasted on a big project of no use to WWII, and thinks that the Heathrow farms are best left alone to help the war effort by growing food. There is a big public rumpus and questions asked in Parliament, and the airport project is shelved until after the war and after a full proper public enquiry. The Heathrow farmers celebrate VE Day on a field by the Cain's Lane junction in Heathrow village, with their farms and orchards still intact. Someone lends them an Arab stallion: they mate it to some of their cob cart mares, producing foals of good hunter type: these they send to the Army, and one of them (when adult), used as a dispatch rider horse, carries a vital message 25 or so miles fast over country too rough for a motorcycle.

 

[Dan1988]

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. Would Gatwick become the main gateway in this case, or is that also doomed?

 

[Alex Richards]

There will be a major airport built for London at some point, but TTL it may be constructed at OTL Gatwick or some other site North/South of the city as a larger airport, thus the East-West axis no longer creates a flight path passing over the centre of the city itself.

 

[Devvy]

A significantly larger Gatwick is probably likely then. 2 or 3 runways, several terminii. It's not going to attract the same opposition being out in a more countryside area.

 

[tonsofun]

Gatwick is a good site. Barely anyone there. Crawley has about 100000 living there but it is recent.
Would be nice for me too as I can reach gatwick in under 45 minutes.

 

[El Pip]

There will be a major airport built for London at some point, but TTL it may be constructed at OTL Gatwick or some other site North/South of the city as a larger airport, thus the East-West axis no longer creates a flight path passing over the centre of the city itself.

If no Heathrow and Gatwick keeps its OTL role as the reserve/cargo airstrip then I'm guessing post-war the government go for a bigger Stansted, which was the original plan before Heathrow turned up.

As you say when London needs a new airport the the two realistic options from OTL were either Cublington (north west-ish of London) or Maplin Sands (East of London, Thames Estuary Airport basically). Cublington got canned due to environmental and political concerns and Maplin Sands was just too pricey due to all the new connections. The OTL choice was 'neither' and they went for a bigger Stansted and Gatwick (plus the oil shock brought some more time, which they used to kick problems into the future)

TTL, with even less capacity due to no Heathrow and Stansted already expanded the problem comes up earlier, maybe earlier enough that the environmental issues aren't yet a big feature. In that case it's Cublington, if not then someone has to bite the bullet and just go for a Thames Estuary airport.

 

[Anthony Appleyard]

I suppose that a Heathrow Airport idea may be re-started later. Wherever the airport is built, it destroys farmland, unless it is built on saltmarsh or reclaimed tidal sand. OTL every building of the old rural Heathrow was flattened. With more public attention, would any of them be kept as airport buildings? For example, Heathrow Hall kept by the terminal could become a restaurant.

When Manchester Airport http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Manchester_Airport was built in 28 November 1935 onwards, Firtree Farm on the south side of Yewtree Lane was not summarily obliterated but was kept as airport buildings.

OTL, in 1925: Norman MacMillan, an RAF officer, made a forced landing and take-off at Heathrow. He noted the flatness of the land and its suitability for an airfield. The land around was at the time used for market gardening. That called airforce attention to Heathrow. Another ATL: what if his plane behaved itself and he landed where he intended? (That plane's wings (probaby an old biplane) must have cast the longest shadow ever over the area's future!)

If no Heathrow Airport, would the Heathrow area be kept as a "green lung", or would it by now be continuously built over with yet more suburbia?

For info about the old Heathrow, see
Photographs of the now lost village of Heathrow in 1935
Heathrow The Lost Hamlet, annotated map of Heathrow area as in 1935, images, descriptions, poem
map

There was a small airport/airfield at Heathrow before WWII: about a quarter of a square mile (c.150 acres) tucked into the southeast corner.

 

[Pikers3]

You would seriously change the whole area around it. For example I would say the western suburbs that are not directly near the airport like Hillingdon, Hounslow and Ealing would be much poorer. Also I doubt that the Thames Valley (Slough/ Maindenhead/ Reading) would be high tech and distribution hubs that they are now. So maybe poorer also.

The suburbs like Hayes, Harlington, Hounslow, Feltham and West Drayton directly around Heathrow basically depend on it for all their jobs, so they would change, it would probably mean that they are a bit richer and middle class, due to the fact that they don't have planes flying a few meters above their houses. They would be also a lot less multi-cultural due to the fact that immigrants aren't housed there that come off the plains. (A Somali and indian community has developed near the airport)

I think that London would have developed a different airport that isn't too far out from the centre like Luton, Stansted and Gatwick are. Maybe Biggen Hill? or Croydon way.

If Heathrow wasn't built then that farm wouldn't have been saved, it would be under the suburbia that all of that area is under now. That farm is going whether they like it or not!

 

[tonsofun]

If you stop Heathrow and concentrate on Gatwick then Stansted would need to be developed too. As nice as a location Gatwick is in, it is too far south from London.

sidenote: I remember when I used to work at Gatwick a few years ago. I would often get asked by Americans and Canadians which way to walk around London. They used to look at me as if I was an idiot when I used to tell them that London is miles away.

 

[Justin Pickard]

Gatwick expansion? Not in my (counterfactual) back yard!

 

[Dan1988]

If you stop Heathrow and concentrate on Gatwick then Stansted would need to be developed too. As nice as a location Gatwick is in, it is too far south from London.

Lydd Airport (which at one time was called London Ashford) is too far south from London, and Stanstead is too far north. Of those three options, Gatwick + a domestic airport akin to a *London City Airport probably makes the most sense.

 

[Anthony Appleyard]

... ATL: Someone blows the whistle and spills the beans, ...

If the resulting row in Parliament results in the Minister in control of this being forced to resign, that may affect future events.

 

[Martin23230]

Also I doubt that the Thames Valley (Slough/ Maindenhead/ Reading) would be high tech and distribution hubs that they are now. So maybe poorer also.

a) That would cause all sorts of butterflies, including my probable non-existence.
b) Maidenhead. Grr, Grumble, etc. At least you didn't confuse it with Maidstone.
c) Berkshire has always been pretty well developed, especially following the Great Western Railway. Arguably there could be two other outcomes - the east of the county remains smaller with less of a focus on London, probably resulting in Reading growing and hopefully the county remaining together under a county council. Or, without Heathrow in the way, London development takes over the land anyway and there is more of an expansion of houses over the Heathrow site, this might well end up in more expansion west so as far as Slough ends up as a borough of London.

 

[Dunois]

The problem with Gatwick and especiallu Stansted is that both airports are too far off the main centre of population of the United Kingdom. Stansted airport is too far away from most of the South East region, especially places like Southampton, Basingstoke and so on.

Gatwick is better but it is quite a trek for people from north of the country to go to the airport.

Cublington was only proposed in the sixties, and I believe that it was the best site where to build a proper third airport for London. As HS2 goes close to it, it would be a waste not to use it and to waste money on Boris island ...

Don't forget that back in the late 1940s, some places near Aylesbury, High Wycombe or north of Heathrow may not have been as populated as they now are.

 

[El Pip]

Cublington was only proposed in the sixties, and I believe that it was the best site where to build a proper third airport for London. As HS2 goes close to it, it would be a waste not to use it and to waste money on Boris island ...

Well actually some would say it would be a waste of HS2 sending it to Cublington. Conventional wisdom holds that high speed rail needs nice big gaps between stations to be worthwhile so putting a station between London and Birmingham makes it even more marginal.

That said as HS2 will probably come it over cost and with lower than expected fares and benefits, pretty much all high speed rail the world over has, I guess it doesn't matter too much.

 

[Dunois]

That said as HS2 will probably come it over cost and with lower than expected fares and benefits, pretty much all high speed rail the world over has, I guess it doesn't matter too much.

The Paris-Lyon high speed line was actually built under budget and paid off its initial costs in less than twenty years.

The picture was however very different with the other lines, especially the recent high speed line to eastern France and Strasbourg.

I am optimistic that HS2 can make a lot of money, provided that it is not operated by "planes on rails". The design speed of 250mph or 400km/h is excessive and it has the major disadvantage of increasing building costs considerably and also of making slower services much harder to run on the line.

The one mistake that France did when building the TGV was to design it as an airplane on rails. It is sad to see that this exact same mistake will be made when building HS2. There is in my opinion a very strong case for building at the very least a station in Aylesbury. Coupled with a reopened Oxford-Cambridge Line, this could turn said station into a strong interchange and draw extra patronage into the high speed trains this way.

Another obvious thing to do in my opinion would be to include many services continuing beyond the high speed line into the timetable. This is what has been done quite successfully with the TGV in France and this would also widen the benefits of the line to a larger catchment area.

 

[El Pip]

The Paris-Lyon high speed line was actually built under budget and paid off its initial costs in less than twenty years.

The picture was however very different with the other lines, especially the recent high speed line to eastern France and Strasbourg.

I am optimistic that HS2 can make a lot of money, provided that it is not operated by "planes on rails". The design speed of 250mph or 400km/h is excessive and it has the major disadvantage of increasing building costs considerably and also of making slower services much harder to run on the line.

The one mistake that France did when building the TGV was to design it as an airplane on rails. It is sad to see that this exact same mistake will be made when building HS2. There is in my opinion a very strong case for building at the very least a station in Aylesbury. Coupled with a reopened Oxford-Cambridge Line, this could turn said station into a strong interchange and draw extra patronage into the high speed trains this way.

Another obvious thing to do in my opinion would be to include many services continuing beyond the high speed line into the timetable. This is what has been done quite successfully with the TGV in France and this would also widen the benefits of the line to a larger catchment area.

What you are describing is not a high speed rail line, it's just a new main line. HS lines have to be run as airplanes on rails to make any use of their speed, thus you cannot put the stations too close together and you cannot run slower services on the same line. Big gaps between stations and segregation of services are pretty much compulsory for high speed rail lines.

That said I don't think your wrong, HS2 would be a better scheme all round if it was High Capacity 2. Lower speeds allow tighter curves and don't need such elaborate tunnels/bridges/etc, so the route can be less disruptive and cheaper. As it wouldn't be segregated it would also be easier to link in more local or stopping services.

However all that is a much harder sell to the politicians and public, it's not as exciting as a High Speed line and the benefits less dramatic. Compare "Cut 30mins of journey to Birmingham" vs "More trains per hour to Birmingham", the second sounds a marginal improvement, the first however sounds like a big step forward. Hence the lure of High Speed rail whatever it's many, many drawbacks.

 

[Stanegate]

Never sure why North Weald never developed. Very close to Railway, now central line underground. M11 runs alongside. Much closer than Stansted.

 

[Grey Wolf]

What about expanding Northolt to be a civilian air transport hub?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

What you are describing is not a high speed rail line, it's just a new main line. HS lines have to be run as airplanes on rails to make any use of their speed, thus you cannot put the stations too close together and you cannot run slower services on the same line. Big gaps between stations and segregation of services are pretty much compulsory for high speed rail lines.

I think the comment was directed at the overkill of 400 km/h. 300km/h or even 250 probably takes less engineering, and is still 'high speed' by anyone's definition.

Just as long as you don't drop down to American 'high-speed', so called