Another useful UK historic map site

Found this one recently whilst perusing some old mainline UK lines.

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17&lat=51.5647&lon=-1.7918&layers=168&b=1

It's produced by the National Library of Scotland, but includes all parts of the UK. The link I've selected should open over a highly detailed OS 25 inch map 1892-1905 of Swindon in Wiltshire, (once you've cleared the opening help screen). You can move the map to all parts of the UK. You can also select different scales and years.

I've used old maps before, but the advantage of this site over others is that it has a slider which allows you to fade the historic mapped detail in and out over modern satellite imagery, and merge it to your preferred transparency.

I used to flip between the "Old Maps" site and Google Earth to identify current locations of old railway infrastructure. This new find makes it so much easier to locate exactly where things used to be.

Hope users will find it useful.

Worth mentioning....
Been using it for around 6 months, it is extremely useful, think it has been mentioned before on one of the forums might have been British Trainz I think who put me on to it, coverage seems to be constantly improving as well.

Actually got it on the other PC at the moment, trying to sort out Barnstaple Junction, so far I've got about 4 different track layouts trying to sort out 1930 ish! Actually modelling the Lynton and Barnstaple however I'm including all Barnstaple stations as well.

Thanks, Mezzoprezzo, that is a really good find. No one believes me when I tell them Warminster Station had sidings when I moved here some 40 years ago now I can show them. Peter

I'm not from the UK obviously, but heck this is a cool website to explore. I just looked at two towns I lived in and live in here and their namesakes in the UK, Andover and Haverhill, respectively. It's sad to see the extensive railways missing. Andover lost a branch connection, engine yard and two turntables, while Haverhill lost everything!

Wow!

yes an excellent link. I looked at my original part of where I lived here in Glasgow as a wee boy and found some things I didn't know.

John, I grew up in London in the late 40's and 50's with nothing but steam trains, which was both dirty and great. In 1963 a guy called Dr Richard Beeching on behalf of the government looked at the railways with the aim of making it more efficient and his first report identified 2,363 stations (55%) and 5,000 miles of route miles (30%) for the chop the majority of which over the years happened. Most of the locos and rolling stock have been lost but while a percentage of the track was lifted, land reused, bridges demolished etc. a lot remained resulting in quite a number of privately owned railways being created and run by enthusiasts. Some of these have been so successful they link into the nation railways and other are slowly being extended and perhaps will also in the future. The national railways have also opened in recent years parts of some of these old routes so while seeing the past slowly disappear at times is sad, it has not been all gloom. Peter

Fantastic! Found a map with the planned Lymington to Freshwater tunnel. If only that had happen, how different West Wight would be today.

wilts747 said:

John, I grew up in London in the late 40's and 50's with nothing but steam trains, which was both dirty and great. In 1963 a guy called Dr Richard Beeching on behalf of the government looked at the railways with the aim of making it more efficient and his first report identified 2,363 stations (55%) and 5,000 miles of route miles (30%) for the chop the majority of which over the years happened. Most of the locos and rolling stock have been lost but while a percentage of the track was lifted, land reused, bridges demolished etc. a lot remained resulting in quite a number of privately owned railways being created and run by enthusiasts. Some of these have been so successful they link into the nation railways and other are slowly being extended and perhaps will also in the future. The national railways have also opened in recent years parts of some of these old routes so while seeing the past slowly disappear at times is sad, it has not been all gloom. Peter

Click to expand...

I remember reading about these massive cuts. They happened here as well around the same time, but our tracks haven't been returned. We're still to in love with our automobiles.

You are very lucky with lines being restored, though not as many as there once were. I have to remember that the railway to our Victorian forefathers is what the interstate is for us today. The roads back in the previous centuries were not as nice to drive on, and the only way to move goods quickly was by rail. Today, though, our roads are becoming clogged and not as good to move on so we're looking back to the past and rebuilding railroads. As much as we mock those in the past, we're finding they were quite smart after all.

I have found the National Library of Scotland website very useful. As to cuts, Beeching is quite the villain for the 1960s but there were lines, stations and services which were cut in the 1950s, before Beeching was appointed, as well as lines, stations and services that were cut in the 1970s and 80s, long after Beeching departed. Swanage was a 1970s casualty and Woodhead a 1980s casualty (the Settle and Carlisle almost became another). The LNER certainly cut services in the 1930s and 1940s. The Amble branch passenger service went in 1931, the Lanchester Valley passenger service went in 1939, the passenger service between Ferryhill and Leamside I believe went in 1940. The section of the old Stanhope and Tyne between East Stanley and Pelton Level was lifted by 1945.

Under British Railways there were some dirty tricks under way, and I personally can't exclude the hand of the treasury in condoning, if not forcing BR to them. Altering services to miss connections or run at awkward times, then reporting that passenger numbers are inadequate was one such trick. The running down of the GCR after it was assigned to the London Midland Region is almost the epitome of that trick. Another was to use dubious figures for costs, revenues or the costs of running replacement bus services at public inquiries about withdrawing services. I believe that at one in scotland, BR used very old out of date costs for running the replacement bus service. After withdrawal it became evident they had done that because the actual operating costs of the replacement buses were much higher.

It did not help the 1960s railway that the Transport Minister in power between 1959 and 1964 was Ernest Marples (co-founder of the Marples Ridgeway motorway Construction Company). He appointed Beeching. In my opinion Ernest had a serious conflict of interest. It later turned out that to comply with the letter of the law on Ministers and share ownership he sold his shares in Marples Ridgeway, but completely broke the spirit of that law by selling them to his wife. Later, in 1974, he fled to Monaco to avoid a tax bill.

The magazine BACKTRACK has part one of an article on UK Transport Ministers in its September issue.

The dubious revenue thing was used here as well to force cuts in service. The infamous Penn Central did that and so did my local railroad the Boston and Maine. They wanted out of the passenger business and used whatever sneaky tricks they could to force the hands in control. The Penn Central went as far as to deliberately run dirty trains, the carriages were so filthy that passengers wouldn't ride in them, and sometimes broken down with no heat or air-con. The trains also ran late and on such horrible schedules that no one could ride them even if they were running and clean. Imagine catching a train at 3:00 am which ran only twice a day if that, and was late running most of the time. The other railroads too were just as mean, and eventually Amtrak came along and is still hamstrung but trying to pick up the pieces.

We also lost lines before the 1950s and 1960s. Like the UK there were lines which served such a low population that it wasn't worth the business, yet important commuter routes too were cut. The New York Central Harlem Division was cut back from Chatham, NY in the 1950s. Today the line is a short commuter line, which ends many miles from the main connection in Chatham. In my own area, the Central MA, Eastern RR, and other major lines were chopped in the 1950s through 1970s. Once hacked the NIMBYs moved in, shopping malls and parking lots built across the ROW, and there's no way of running anything there except a bicycle on what is now a trail. Even if there was a chance to restore rail service, the NIMBYs now come out and fight the line restoration.

Anyway... Yeah back on topic. This is a great resource and fascinating to explore even from afar.

Good to see that others are finding this mapping site useful.

@clam1952. Thanks for the tip about the sites frequentupdates. I’ll be looking out for new additions.

@rjhowie. It was your thread about the Scottish Borders Railextension in the Prototype section of the Forum, and my exploration of theroute, that led me to finding this mapping site. Thanks.

@ amigacooke. I hadn’t realised that there had been plansfor a mainland to IOW rail tunnel link. Though it was 1st April, until I checked. What an interesting plan that was. One of the alternative maps clearly shows the intended route, and has made for an interesting piece of history to research, raising lots of questions over the intended route. I’m not sure of the wisdom of building the tunnel entrance over the top of tidal mudflats near Lymington though. I’ve sailed over that area at high water!