EXPRESS ELECTRIC RAILWAYS

At the turn of the nineteenth century there were many great trunk railways from the North and the West of England to London and these tend to have followed roughly the routes of the great roads which also all converged on the same city. From south of the Thames the position was similar with these shorter lines again all terminating in Central London. Neither in the south nor further north was there any equivalent fast way to travel from East to West – from the Eastern Counties the fastest services tended to run via London. There had certainly been routes across the Pennines for many years but none of these could be described as being fast and even in 2020 there is still only talk of creating one in conjunction with the HS2 proposals and the ‘Northern Hub’.

Across the country

Therefore when a proposal for not just one but two entirely new railways which might have radically altered this position was put forward in early 1901 it is not surprising that great interest was shown in the daily newspapers. As an example of what was in prospect the Dundee Courier & Argus on 14th February described the main scheme as being one to run from Harwich on the north east Essex coast to Port Dinlleyn in North Wales. A second proposal would find a brand-new line from Hull to connect with it at Leicester. The cost of both schemes was estimated at £20 million which was to include creation of ‘dock accommodation’ at Port Dinlleyn. Now the importance of these new railways was not only in their being the first specifically designed trunk routes across England but that they were to be worked electrically.

As proposed the scheme was nothing if not ambitious for the whole of the 270 miles of new-build railway was to consist of quadruple track. Two of these tracks were to be dedicated to express passenger traffic running at up to 100mph while the