When little-used railway lines began to be closed in the
1950s, some people suggested they should be converted
to roads. In the '60 and '70s some extremists, including
The Economist magazine, suggested that railways were
obsolete and that all the railway lines should be so converted.
This idea was repudiated by most sensible people and some
motoring organisations pointed out that railway routes were
not wide enough to be suitable for main roads.

Recently, while driving in rural Buckinghamshire, I came to a
very new-looking overhead bridge. I knew the railway line
had been closed several decades ago so I climbed up the
embankment . . . and found a new single lane road! It is
built on the track bed of the disused railway line which once
ran from Grendon Underwood Junction on the Great Central
Line to Ashendon Junction on the Great Western Line.

I was so intrigued I investigated where it began and ended.
The road runs north from the A41 a few miles north west of
Waddesdon. (South of the A41 the railway route is still
abandoned) The road ends more or less at the old junction
with the Great Central Line where there is now an industrial
estate; and I don't mean trading estate or retail park. The
only vehicles using the new road are heavy goods trucks.
The road is single lane with passing lay-bys every few
hundred yards.

This road is not shown on the current Ordnance Survey map
Landranger series, 2016 Crown Copyright, so presumably it is
very new.

Although the road is narrow and therefore has limited capacity,
because it follows the alignment of an old railway route, it has
no sharp bends or steep gradients and is far better than many
rural roads. It may be that the old notion of converting some
abandoned railway routes to roads was a good idea after all.