On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 20:37:45 -0800, Aurora wrote:

On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 18:43:58 +0000, Guy Gorton
wrote:

On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 08:01:44 -0800 (PST), wrote:

An interesting article about plans to convert railways into roads, going
back as far as the '50s, and then more recent proposals for Marylebone.

"Looking at the frequent services operated today by Chiltern Railways,
it seems hard to believe that the rail lines into Marylebone were once
seriously considered for closure. Yet back in the mid-1980s
under-utilization of the route led to proposals to convert the line into
a dedicated bus route, with the site of Marylebone station being
converted into a bus station, or sold off to raise an estimated £10
million. Today this proposal and others like it - such as a plan to
convert much of what now forms London Overground north of the
river into roads - are mostly forgotten. Yet for a time the possibility
was very real, and London may have been left with a rail landscape
very different from that which exists today."

http://www.londonreconnections.com/2...ad-conversion/

Not time to read it all yet but I was deeply involved in the campaign
to keep Marylebone open. BR on the other hand was deeply involved in
the campaign to close it, although in some aspects in a very disguised
and underhand way. One strategy was to keep incredibly inefficient
track layouts to lengthen journey times. One example is Neasden Jct
where line speed, outside the main rushhour, was limited to 15mph.

IMU not so much an inefficient track layout as the junction being
previously designed with the Amersham route as the main route, that
route now being the branching route.

Now I think it is 100 mph. There were other examples too.
I will leave it that for the moment and see what develops in this
thread.

Thank you for being there and taking a stand. I was thousands of
miles away at the time. The prospect of Aylesbury being served by a
shuttle from Amersham was not a happy one.