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e27002 aurora

On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 14:33:48 +0000, wrote:

On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 11:33:29 +0000, e27002 aurora
wrote:

The Metropolitan Railway was a fine organization. Would that it had
survived.

The Metropolitan was a full service railway with staffed stations and
trains. It was a freight, livestock, and parcels carrier. It used
rolling stock suitable for the services in question.

All those services will have dwindled away post WW2 to more efficient
road distribution for the relatively small area it served.

Quite so. But, in 1935 the Metropolitan lost its ability to evolve as
a Railway and Property company. The LPTB stripped its assets and
reduced it to an "Underground" style line with indecent haste.

No thought was given to how parts of the Metropolitan Network outwith
London's immediate environs could be utilized. A joint LNER LMS
service from Marylebone to Banbury thru Verney Junction would have
maintained the local links thru the County of Buckingham.

In conjunction with the LNER many of these services could have
continued.
They didn't elsewhere so why should the outskirts of London be any
different , at least in other areas Container and mineral traffic in
bulk provided some freight revenue on the British Network but In don't
think there would ever be a need for intermodals or bulk freight
movements in to Harrow or Baker street.

Had it survived it would have gone to Marylebone. But you are 15
years into the post Metropolitan Railway future.

Certainly over time it would have evolved into a modern
suburban railway.

In that case a business with nothing else but intense passenger
operation with the need for expensive capital assets to handle the
morning and evening passenger flows which are then underutilized for
the rest of the time so to it needs subsidising by outside means.
Whether the Met could still make a sufficient return to investors as a
whole railway or just as a TOC running on government* owned tracks we
will never know.

Indeed, having survived municipalization the Metropolitan would,
probably as part of BR, face Barbara Castle. So, this is a no win
situation.

In today's conditions with many more passengers traveling even outside
the peaks then possibly, but in the 50's 60's 70' and into the 80's
trains in mid morning would be fairly empty.

Indeed.

* not necessarily the national government, could be whatever was
governing London.
in that case could the Met have shrunk back further than Amersham.

That may yet happen. It is not hard to see a future were the Met Line
runs to Watford and Chiltern take over the service to Amersham and
Chesham.