 An obscure bit of history...
Peter Lawrence wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:58:31 -0700 (PDT), Tim
> <timgreeningjackson@> wrote:
>
> Not authorative, but a crude count of the Pre Grouping Railway Atlas
> gives about 8000 stations in 1923. So there are likely to have been
> at least 7000 in 1956.
>
> This is confirmed by C. Wolmar's book which quotes over
> 7000 stations in 1962. It seems the authoritative source is a bok
> on Railway Statistices1900-1970.
Cheers. Thanks for that.
> I suspect the exercise was part of the British Transport Commission's
> attempts to 'rationalise' fares and charges. The LT History records
> that many fare anomalies were removed, and then gradually reinstated
> following complaints. (I recall that about this time the one fare
> from Epsom to the SR London termini was replaced by six different
> mileage-based fares!)
I presume, though, that the push to calculate the distances at that time
was either due to the modernisation programme or -- perhaps more
prosaically -- due to the fact that the means to calculate them (LEO)
had just come to hand.
From my calculation, to calculate the distances between 7,000 separate
places would require 24,500,000 calculations. So a computer -- even one
with only 2,048 words of store like LEO would be attractive. |