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Schedule of street name changes in 1886

Seems no one has anything to say on this, so here's my take on it. Assuming World War 2 hadn't happened and the railways hadn't fallen into such a dilapidated state, and Labour didn't win the election, they Big Four would probably have survived, at least for a while. By the 1950's travel was changing, with an increase in road freight competition and the rise of the private car. Could the companies have competed any better than BR? Railways had to compete on a national scale as far as freight went, to keep the long haul stuff and let local distributors deal with the town areas. The trouble with the smaller depots like Darnall and Attercliffe was they were incredibly labour intensive, and costs were rising, so pushing the traffic onto the roads where fewer people were involved , hence lower costs. With the onset of containerisation new facilities would have to be built, but would each company want to go to that expense? Tinsley was already pretty redundant by the time it opened as the freight traffic had changed in just a few years. The electrification scheme started by the LNER would probably have been extended to London, there was originally a large order for the EM2's which was cut back to just seven, so it was obviously on the cards. How long the companies would have lasted is another matter, falling passenger numbers, falling freight loads, all due to road traffic, would probably have led to amalgamations and takeovers, and assuming the Government didn't get involved, we would probably end up with a couple of large private companies, like First and Stagecoach. Non profitable routes would have to be cut (just like local bus services are these days), so some rationalisation would be inevitable. It's difficult to say if Sheffield Victoria would still be with us today, there are so many variables, remember its staple traffic was coal, and that's gone, passenger numbers from the intermediate stations wouldn't be high enough to keep it viable so we are left with just the through traffic from Sheffield to Manchester. The alternative via the Hope Valley has the stone and cement traffic to keep it viable, so the Woodhead would probably been closed, but probably not as early as the 1980's. It's all conjecture, and others may have a different take on it.

A question that seems perfect for this thread. Would Victoria Station still have been here if the big four railway companies not been nationalised in 1948? My take on it would be yes it would be still here. The LMS and LNER would have been in competition still with each other. The LNER had the better and faster route to Manchester and there would have been no need to get rid of the over duplication of routes. Plus being private companies the Conservative party would have let them compete with the private road haulage firms and would have been more willing to invest in improvements, rather than moaning about how much public money was being used to top up the national railway system. LNER before the war had already made investments in the electrification scheme, so they would have continued to invest in electrification probably faster than British Rail did. The route to London from Victoria was much better than the Midland's. And I suspect the electrification scheme would have gone all the way to London King's Cross. In many way Nationalisation of the railway was disaster for it. Since it meant that someone looking at the whole system could see where two stations serving one place wasn't cost efficient. And even though the rail unions wanted it, they would have thought different I think if they could have seen how many staff lost their jobs because of it. And they lost jobs not because lines lost money. But because one person could view the entire system. And also the National system was easily undercut by private road transport arguing that the British Rail had more advantages over them. When they knew how to bypass them. Had the four railway operators still been running the system, they could have got as much investment as what the road lobby did. And things like building road bridges over the Humber without having a railway on it too, would have been unlikely to have happened. But BR could have never argued the case, since it would have been seen as asking for more public money to invest in the bridge scheme. Because Victoria had a good connection route with the suburbs of Sheffield that emerged later at Halfway, Mosbrough and Killamarsh, I believe that improvements to the stations, including a new one for Halfway itself would have taken place. Especially as the main line to London also would have still used the route. This would have cut the traffic down using the main roads into Sheffield, which was the argument for the expensive Supertram Scheme. Thus eliminating Supertram. Whereas under BR keeping the route open, when the London link had stopped, wasn't economic. Indeed running trains out of Midland station going North then diverting South would have been silly. And London trains coming down from the North from Rotherham and Leeds for example, again would not making sense turning them around to go via Nunnery Curve to get them back on LNER line to London. Ending up for the need of Supertram from Halfway to Sheffield. I rather doubt the Tinsley marshalling yard and depot would have been built though. The two railway companies would have looked at the long term economics of the scheme. Darnall depot would have continued in operation for the LNER and the Midland would have used the one at Attercliffe. The people at British Rail were thinking on a national scale for the movement of freight. Whereas the private road operators were on a local level on that subject, responding to what was needed by private companies. I suspect the four railway companies would have done the same. So would have built yards on the demand that was there already.

Since the first post you quoted was written, I’ve joined the Traffic Dept at Crich and become a conductor. We use the Tardis in summer to store bottled water in for the crews to grab a drink in between trips. This summer (my first season) it has been packed out down there and the tardis has had many admirers. Some one mentioned, a few weeks back, that they though it was the last of its kind in existence.