The Unbuilt Tube Line to an Imaginary Airport

at present it seems that the next big project for the underground or at least the one that's been grabbing the headlines is extending the baker L line into Southeast London now this is nothing new as a matter of fact I did a video a while back on Old schemes to extend the bakero line and I think we came to well over 20 proposals for extending it since about 1909 but the other day I came across one I'd never heard of a plan to extend it to lullingstone airport which was particularly interesting because I'd also never heard of lingon airport so I guess the first question is what was lingon airport between 1920 and the second world war the main airport for London was cuden but this had its problems firstly it wasn't very conveniently located for travel into London the roads weren't well suited for high levels of traffic there was no railway station within easy reach and it tended to suffer from fog furthermore the 20th century had seen Cen develop as a residential district and as a result there was little room for expansion plus the people living there didn't much like the fact that there was well an airport by the late 1930s word started spreading that the air Ministry was going to designate somewhere else as London's main airport British Airways which was a different company to the current British Airways started flying from hon in 1938 and it seemed that others might follow suit but another airport was in the early planning stages which could could potentially Trump both Cen and hon in 1935 the Southern Railway had expressed the idea of building an airport next to the Maidstone line in Kent in fact so serious were they that they built a station to serve it and planned a branch line for it as well they had recently electrified the line and their thinking was that they could provide the kind of fast frequent trains into London that Cen was sorely lacking they also figured that the airport would attract housing which in turn would provide them with more traffic furthermore the planned Dartford Road tunnel would emerge nearby meaning that the airports would have good Road Connections lillingston would have been 400 acres in area and had four runways although I've also seen 800 acres given as the area which is a pretty big difference there would have been a train service from Victoria Imperial Airways one of the largest Airlines at the time indicated that if it went ahead they'd definitely be up for using it but it seems that they never made a firm commitment unfortunately it appeared that the Southern Railway had bitten off more than they could chew it was way more than they could afford and they said so in 1938 in 1939 they officially abandoned the idea but the air Ministry was still interested and continued sniffing around the site during the second world war it came closer than it ever had to actually being built a phony Airfield was built on the site complete with phony aircraft in the hope of tricking the German forces following the second world war the concept was resurrected but as part of a much larger plan London was to have 10 airports cyen and hon would be two of them and lingon would be a third additionally there would be Gatwick Hatfield phop West maling matching and bovington and one that opened in 1946 named Heathrow well as we now know that became the big International Airport for and it's still the biggest hon closed in 1947 and Cen in 1959 Gatwick remains and just as lullingstone was planned to be it's served by electric trains from Victoria as for lullingstone well it just never happened post-war Green Belt regulations put paid to any sort of development on that scale in that area the fake Airfield was dismantled and the station was demolished in 1955 so where does the underground fit into all this well as I said there have been many plans to extend the bakero line to the southeast and several of those have centered on digging from elephant and Castle to camberwell at camberwell one of the ideas was that they would run onto the main line and then go to Dartford or and finally this becomes relevant to lullingstone airport now I'll be quite honest with you this never seems to have been planned in any great detail as far as I can tell it was an idea thrown around while London transport was still high off the positive reception of the new works program in 1935 all I've been able to find out about is are a few odd references here and there never in anything more than passing this diagrammatic map or cartographical diagram whichever you prefer is purely speculative there are a number of things that would have made it tricky the most obvious being that the line would have had to share with Mainline trains tube trains ride much lower than conventional trains and they run off a different power supply they could run off the same power supply but it would involve laying a fourth rail for the return current and the trains then in use on the Baloo were not happy over long distances with higher voltages and of course the elephant in the room is that nothing was going to happen unless there was an airport to serve and there never was well I hope you enjoyed this Airy fairy tale from the tube if so please do leave a like and consider subscribing for more I'd like to thank my donors on Kofi On patreon and Here on YouTube for your support you are the fake planes to my fake Airfield and I'll see you all again very soon cheerio

Channel: Jago Hazzard

Views: 64,400

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Id: cQZgi1O1Vb4

Length: 6min 8sec (368 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2024