Sydney Carton

Yesterday I travelled into Canary Wharf  courtesy of the Docklands Light Railway. It is now a tried and tested part of the London transport infrastructure and it links the East End to South London using a series of disused and rebuilt railway tracks as well as some complex interchanges which have been built especially for the job.

It is a very effective way of getting around, the trains are driverless and the system is cashless as it utilises the Oyster card payment system. It links with the Croydon tram system which runs from Wimbledon to New Addington as well as the underground system at Bank, and the overground at Shadwell among other interchanges.

Compare that then with the efforts of Edinburgh to build and operate a tram line through their great city. SWMBO and I went up there this weekend to see the giant panda as well as have a couple of days break. Given it is two years since we were last there, we expected to see the trams buzzing up and down Princes Street crushed with people hanging on the sides like they do in San Francisco.

Lo, not a tram did we see. The engineering work started in 2008 so you would have thought that the route would be finished by now. The project, however, has been blighted by bad management, bad planning and constructor disputes which have several times put the whole project at risk.

For those not familiar with the topology of Edinburgh, the plan was to initially  run from Gogar in the West to Leith in the East. A single line would run through Haymarket, Princes Street and St Andrews Square  before joining Leith Street on its journey to the Forth and the Royal Yacht Britannia.

Why it did not start at the airport which is only a short hop from Gogar, I have no idea. It had no fans amongst the taxi drivers of the city, and as time went on, amongst the population either.

To save money, the line was modified to go from Gogar to St Andrews Square, where it could link with the mainline station and the bus depot, but now it has been reined back to stop at Haymarket, a projected eleven stops before St Andrews Square, and frankly, in the middle of nowhere.

The lines remain in place along the route, and this weekend the trams were tested at the Gogar marshaling yards. When they will start taking fee paying passengers remains to be seen. The project has over spent by an enormous amount. I just wonder if Scotland are to be trusted with their independence if this is the sort of project they would have control over.

Bayko to Lego

The book of maps which I was given for Christmas represents a smartly bound volume  of extracts relating to Lorne Road.. It commences with the Landranger series from 2011 before moving through a range of  National grid series maps. In this case it shows 1982, 1954, 1938, 1913, 1899 and 1882.

I know from other sources that the house was built during the early 1870's and it is interesting how there was little or no development across the road from the house until 1900. There was then a steady increase in development in the 1960's and 1970's as the Birkenhead conurbation moved towards the newly constructed M53. The M53 now acts as a development barrier and the land to the West of it still remains predominantly green belt.

One thing that did surprise me was the lack of war damage shown on the maps, although there may not have been specific cartography during 1938 and 1954. It is also iinteresting that trams ran past the house from early in 1900 to the late 1950's.

I am now researching The Architect journal which was published between 1869 and 1926 to see if there is any reference to the Shrewsbury Estate development in Oxton, on which we sit. A few days in Collindale at the National newspaper library should sort that out.