railways

What would it take to have steam locomotives still being produced by multiple developed nations until at least the end of the 1970s? Not just temporarily built due to the oil crisis but in continuous production through the 1960s and 1970s.

I recently read there was a concession granted for a railroad to be built between Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico, and Mexico City in 1837. Of course, that didn't happen. How much possibility was there for it to have actually happened, and what would have been the impact if it had been?

The title mostly says it all. That both countries in their populated areas have inter-city passenger rail networks as dense as France and Germany have at the same time. Like east of 100°W in the USA, the Pacific Coast, southern Ontario, southern Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, plus...

For anyone who knows railways will know that Ireland has a rather different rail gauge to the rest of the continent of being 5ft 3in, a gauge that can also be found in Australia and Brazil. However Ireland's first railway, Dublin and Kingstown, was built as standard gauge but it found itself in...

Compared to many places in the world that use standard gauge, Britain has by the far the most restricted loading gauge which in many ways is due to the past of small tunnels during the early days of collieries and horse drawn coaches. But what if the British rail network had sometime during the...

East Coast Electrics-An Alternative British Railway An artists illustration of a class 81 electric loco, presumably at London Kings Cross awaiting departure for Leeds. Yes, this is my third timeline on the go. I just can't help myself. If your wondering what has become of Thatcher...

I know that until the late 50s, the two railroads were rather close to each other. To the point I wonder why the former never bought the latter. What would have happened if this were the case? Would the PRR be able to escape Penn Central and bankruptcy? What would happen?

Link for those wondering what I'm talking about: (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_gauge). Considering how dual gauge railways can join lines of different gauges, could this be used to create a more unified American rail network in the pre-Civil War period and the years following it? In a...

The first railway in this country was right here in Melbourne, between Melbourne town (now our CBD) and Sandridge (now a suburb called Port Melbourne). It was built to the track gauge mentioned above, also the track gauge used in Ireland. New South Wales originally agreed to build to this gauge...

What it says on the tin - what if the 1923 grouping of Britain's railways had looked like this: http://spellerweb.net/rhindex/UKRH/AlternativeGrouping/AltGroup.html John Speller, the article's author, postulates a grouping into five (instead of four) companies. He emphasizes grouping competing...

I was thinking, as I lay there in an alternate reality of sleep, about this What if the devastation of the Blitz to central London is so severe that it is decided during post-war Reconstruction to drive the mail rail lines through London? Marylebone could link to Victoria Euston to Charing...

This timeline will look at the development of Wales’ railways in the context of serving a distinct Welsh nation. Key ‘Points of Divergence’ for this alternative history are: Victorian Railway Mania - A few railway routes proposed in the 1850s/60s are successful, notably the Manchester and...

Over a year ago, I wrote a thread entitled 'British Railways develop radically differently' in which I imagined a rather ASB scenario (being a year younger) in which British Railways are nationalised very early on in the Victorian Era (Gladstone once proposed this) but in a very different way...

In this scenario, the Cambrian and Heart of Wales lines simply aren't built, so that the only East-West routes to be built are the North and South Wales lines, along with the Barmouth-Ruabon line,. The only way to get to say Aberystwyth or Machynlleth from England is via Barmouth, Swansea or...

The first railway in this country was right here in Melbourne, between Melbourne town (now our CBD) and Sandridge (now a suburb called Port Melbourne). It was built to the track gauge mentioned above, also the track gauge used in Ireland. New South Wales originally agreed to build to this...

I live in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and our metropolitan are has an unusually large number of level crossings for a major metropolis. Now I've heard we had plenty of money to remove level crossings at that time, but it was instead spent on the Great Ocean Road, which seems to have been...