If you could go back in time and build Britain's railways from scratch...

[Mcr Warrior]

As a general principle, siting the station as near as possible to each town or village’s main thoroughfare or High Street.

Reminds me of the old story of the intending passenger asking a member of railway staff as to why Dent station (on the Settle & Carlisle line) was quite so far from the village that it purported to serve.

"Happen they wanted the station to be built next to the railway line" came the reply.

One of the problems with many lines and stations was (still is in some cases) that they were too far away from the populations they purported to serve, often because landowners insisted on their re-routing so as to stop the line spoiling the view.

Believe that was the case at the village / spa town of Strathpeffer in North West Scotland, one of the few locations of any substance on the route of the Kyle of Lochalsh line when originally planned. The most direct route for the line was that through Strathpeffer, but disagreements with local landowners initially prevented the railway from crossing their land.

Strathpeffer did subsequently get a connecting branch line a couple of decades later, but this subsequently closed in 1946. If the station at had been on the through route, likely it would have remained open a little longer.

 

[Irascible]

As a general principle, siting the station as near as possible to each town or village’s main thoroughfare or High Street.

Might have been interesting if the original railway companies had picked up on the concept of building housing where ther railway was - the entire map of the country could be rather different.

 

[cle]

Look at any statistics for transport and rail's share of trips and journeys is a small proportion of transport activity compared to road transport (2% of trips by rail, 9% distance by rail, pre-pandemic). Sure Milton Keynes has London commuters, but its dependence on road transport will be similar, and most of the local employment is in office, retail and logistics types roles, with people travelling into and around MK from surrounding areas. MK and Northampton both have extensive employment in logistics, all built upon their location and proximity to motorway and major road routes.



And I would not expect a railway mania of routes and services radiating outward in all directions, but if you were building a railway network from scratch, designed to meet the needs of 2022 rather the 1880, then you would certainly connect MK to Luton. You would certainly mirror the route of the M1 Motorway to link MK and Northampton to Leicester and Nottingham. You would likely fill-in the gaps to have a route along the Nene Valley, to connect Northampton, Wellingborough, Kettering, Corby and Peterborough.

Your first point I take, but that is all local employment. MK is very car dependent, and has high local employment. So yes it tracks.

People aren't driving to London or Birmingham for work though. And certainly not to work in places which have no bearing on the MK economy, like Leicester. We're talking about the railways also, specifically. So the MK railway needs good London links above all else, which it thankfully has. It's the biggest deal for miles, people aren't commuting at scale into great opps in Northampton for example.

 

[Basil Jet]

Another is a true London orbital railway linking all the mainlines without having to go into central London.

Where exactly? It's no good crossing all the mainlines unless all, or most, of the trains on all of the mainline call at the crossings.

 

[NoRoute]

People aren't driving to London or Birmingham for work though. And certainly not to work in places which have no bearing on the MK economy, like Leicester. We're talking about the railways also, specifically. So the MK railway needs good London links above all else, which it thankfully has. It's the biggest deal for miles, people aren't commuting at scale into great opps in Northampton for example.

This thread is about building the railways from scratch, a clean sheet, so regardless of local commuting patterns, faced with routing a railway line south from Milton Keynes to London any engineer or railway entrepreneur in 2022 would take that line via Luton (200k+ population) rather than Leighton Buzzard (37k population). I can't see anyone building the WCML along its current alignment today, if it wasn't already built.

Same with further north, if you were bringing the MML south from Leicester toward London it would be routed via the major towns and cities, so Northampton and Milton Keynes, you wouldn't go wandering off through the countryside via Kettering and Wellingborough. The current network only follows the route it does because of a series of historical decisions and situations which applied at the time it was built, no body would ever build again from scratch along that route today because it's illogical and poorly optimised.

 

[PTR 444]

So basically if the WCML and MML were built today, they would merge at Rugby and head to London on a single (presumably 4-tracked) alignment via Northampton, MK, Luton and Watford.

In this scenario what would happen to places like Hemel Hempstead, Leighton Buzzard, Bedford and Kettering? Would they get their own branch lines off this super-WCMML or be relegated from the rail network altogether?

 

[cle]

Also, if the railways doesn't exist in this scenario, who is to say the M1 does? And the M1 arguably followed the MML. So it's all a little jumbled and multiverse.

You wouldn't route Watford - Luton - MK I'm sure. Watford is a more important place, and more used railway station - not saying population size before people baulk. Population rarely equates to rail usage and is a common red herring on this forum. Many Luton folk don't leave, especially those behind the popn boom. Even with the Airport - which has become the busier Luton station, Watford is busier and more of a destination for employment and so forth.

Historically Dunstable was a larger place than Luton, but today - if you're not on the railway, you may as well not exist. Same with Daventry for instance.

In this scenario what would happen to places like Hemel Hempstead, Leighton Buzzard, Bedford and Kettering? Would they get their own branch lines off this super-WCMML or be relegated from the rail network altogether?

Would new towns have happened without the current rail alignments? Doubtful. So Hemel wouldn't matter certainly. LB 'boomed' due to a great rail service, especially since the WCML upgrade.

 

[The Ham]

I found a feature of UK rail system is that there are many flat junctions, compared to Japan, a similar island nation where has a complex rail network, it seems there are too many flat junctions in UK.

This is certainly something that I would have done.

Also having access points to stations from any nearby road bridges (where that's not too crazy).

The other thing would be more interchange options; so either nearby stations being as close together as possible (sometimes that may have been as simple as having a second entry point, whilst others may involve or even one major station.

Sometimes all of the above would be needed (so a interchange station at/near a grade separated junction with an access point to the "wrong" platform from a road bridge).