Without doubt one of the biggest hazards, for car drivers anyway, is the every growing number of heavy lorries using the roads. Not only do they take up a lot of room, their lack of speed on main roads causes inevitable tail backs, often prompting the ill advised overtaking manoeuvres that cause many accidents. However, armed with the benefit of hindsight, could this be looked upon as another example of the law of unintended consequences?
Because upon reflection a study will show that history is littered with decision making crossroads and, from time to time, I find it thought provoking to ask what might have happened if the people involved had “turned left rather than right”? If only.
Early in the nineteenth century Brunel, master engineer and creator of the Great Western Railway (GWR) built the tracks for his locomotives to a gauge of 7 feet. Elsewhere other engineers favoured having a gauge of 4ft 8 inches. Arguments still abound whether this gauge was originally used by a horse drawn tramway, or older still as the wheelbase of a roman chariot! Who knows but, either way, differing gauges meant that a nationwide integrated railway system could not be possible. The “gauge war,” as it was known, rattled on for several years before Brunel finally accepted 4ft 8 inches for his railway. For the enquiring mind evidence of the broad gauge can still be seen today. For example, note the distance between some platforms on the original GWR lines, or perhaps ask why the cutting, at Sonning near Reading, was dug out to such a width?
Having therefore standardised the railways, so to speak, one hundred or so years later a well meaning, but vastly short sighted Doctor advocated tearing up miles of track and closing hundreds of stations, in the interests of economy. (Nothing changes much) This was probably done in the mistaken belief that the UK would benefit from endless supplies of oil and that petrol would not rise above four and nine pence a gallon. (That is about 25p to all you post decimalisation readers.)
Now, looking back, imagine the effect of merging these two decisions and then reversing them. Had Brunel and won the “gauge war” and the good Doctor stuck to matters to which he may well have been more suited, might we now have a magnificent railway system serving every corner of the UK? A system handling huge freight trucks up to eight or nine feet wide, bringing every item required by shops, businesses and households right into the centre of every city, town or village!
Might we just have ended up with our roads free from legions of heavy lorries and the associated problems they bring with them?
