What effect will Crossrail east-west rail have on London, compared with the 19th-century rail-powered expansion of the city?

A photo of The East Portal, Primrose Hill Tunnel, London's first railway tunnel, constructed by Robert Stephenson and completed in 1837. Considered the architectural achievement of the day (e.g. the Crossrail tunnel of its era?). Photo by the very accomplished Louis Berk Flickr photo  Louis Berk Website and blog


Railways transformed and are still transforming the London landscape in ways that cars could never approximate. Before the railways, London was a compact, walkable, city. Click here for a map of London at the beginning of the 19th century  By the late 19th century London was a truly modern heaving metropolis, thanks to the spread of the railways Click Here for 1883 rail map
and read http://provokehistory.blogspot.com/2011/04/growth-of-19th-london.html
The BBC had a recent radio programme comparing Marc Brunel's first tunnel beneath the Thames with that of a massive rail project, designed to reduce (for instance) Canary Wharf rail times to Heathrow, at a cost of around 15billion GBP For more on Crossrail click here   To Visit the Brunel Museum on the south side of the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe Click Here


click for BBC IPlayer Long View Programme on Brunels Tunnel and Crossrail

Jonathan Freedland takes the Long View of the fate of grand building projects at times of economic uncertainty.

The importance of major transport infrastructure schemes is much in the headlines, with the Government's confirmation of plans to build a new high speed rail link between London and Birmingham. But while the reality of an HS2 line is still some way off, a very real project is now well underway beneath London, carving out the massive London Crossrail network, which will link Heathrow Airport with the financial heart of the capital.

This scheme has taken many years for work even to start. But, as Jonathan discovers, such struggles have a long history.

Back in the 1820s, a similarly grandiose scheme - a North-South tunnel under the River Thames - was getting underway, and hitting problems and protestations.

Jonathan is joined by contributors including leading columnist Sir Simon Jenkins, and former Transport Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequeur Alistair Darling, who gave Crossrail the green light.

Is the 'can-do' attitude of the great Victorian engineers something we can learn from today - or was it really little more than a myth?

Morecambe: after the cockle pickers, reeling under cuts, but will there be a revival?

Morecambe Bay Cockle Pickers, a photo by Ian Bramham on Flickr.
I listened with horror to the radio in february 2004, as 18 Chinese cockle pickers drowned in Morecambe Bay. My mom grew up there and had taken me there as a child. The landscape had helped form her brusque manner, we were out on the bay and I remember her just grabbing my arm and shouting "RUN!", no questions, arguments, explanations, just do as your told, run. we ran through water to get back to beach, the tide had surrounded us. So I knew what was happening as radio reports came in...

The Chinese were perpetuating a trade that dates to the formation of Morecambe itself; an amalgam of villages united by the coming of the railway, which could then take the cockles to the growing towns of Lancashire or bring the workers to the seaside for a treat. Cockling was then often (but not exclusively) an occupation of women and older girls, as memorialised in this mural in Poulton. 
The resort of Morecambe has been in decline for a while now - for multiple reasons - but the latest blow is particularly harsh as it arrests recent attempts to revive the town.

These latest cuts are on top of earlier ones which robbed the town of its lido and took away many of the facilities enjoyed by visitors. Is there a future for resort towns? Maybe, fuel price rises mitigate against air travel and even car journeys. Rail  - as a fuel-efficient mode of transport -  may become increasingly competitive. Whilst the present round of cuts are hard I would not bet against a revival of the town that gave us Eric Morecambe, Brucciani's ice cream and cafe and Albert Modley .  My grandpa pronounced - after seeing Thora Hird acting aged 14 - that she would never make a professional actress because of her strong Lancashire actress. How wrong could he have been. Her Lancs inflected tones mellifluously floated performances which became more poignant and powerful though time. Her career grew from strength to strength the older she got. She should be the patron saint of Morecambe -her home town- inspirational

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Morecambe in 1901