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R.o.B Alternative Rail Systems

The George Bennie Railplane System of Transport

Including:

The Glasgow and Milngavie Junction Railway

By the beginning of the 1920's the Railways of Britain were being turned towards speed and comfort for the passenger with the London Midland and Scottish and the London North Eastern Railway companies trying to achieve the fastest scheduled trains to Scotland from London, the only problem was that freight trains kept getting in the way. George Bennie an inventor  born in Auldhouse near Glasgow in 1891 soon showed an interest in engineering as his father was an engineer, he is often reffered to as an engineer himself but he never underwent any formal training. He was very interested in developing public transport and by 1921 Bennie had come up with the idea for a new principle of tranport. This involved a high level monorail system known as the 'The George Bennie Railplane System of Transport' which he believed could be further developed to travel between Edinburgh and Glasgow in 20 minutes at speeds up to 150mph. Bennie's idea was that the adoption of the Railplane would enable the separation of high-speed inter-city passenger express traffic from slower moving main line local passenger and freight traffic by using the same rights-of-way. Over the next 9 years Bennie tried to raise interest in his design and even went so far as to build a One Hundred and Forty Two Yard long test line at Milngavie, (pronounced 'Mul-guy'), 9 miles north of Glasgow and what today forms the outermost point of the city, the test line opening for demonstrations to interested parties and engineers on 8 July 1930. The track employing a vehicle designed by Consultant Engineer Hugh Fraser

The site for the test line was over the branch line from Milngavie to Burnbrae Dye works which came off the Glasgow and Milngavie Junction Railway opened on 28^th August 1863 having been granted Royal consent in 1861, just south of the station throat. The single track 'main line' had been built to connect Milngavie with the Glasgow, Dumbarton and Helensburgh Railway (opened from Buchanan Street to Helensburgh in 1855) at Milngavie Junction. The town received a three road station and large goods yard when the line opened allowing frequent services to and from Glasgow as well as allowing a good frequency of goods train that served the textile mills that were in the growing town and surrounding area. Before the opening of the Glasgow City and District railway in 1886 trains from Milngavie and Helensburgh, on what became the North British lines from 1873, served the congested Glasgow Queen street station but with the opening of the low level railway from Charring Cross to High Street trains started to serve the Queen Street low level station. The building of the Glasgow City and District line allowed North British trains to travel from the east of the city to the west without reversal at Queen Street. In 1880 the Drumbraye branch was built to the west of the Milngavie line to Burnbrae Dye works which was owned by the railway company and allowed the produce to be distributed by rail. At the mill, a goods-shed was sited and still remains today, though the mill was later replaced by a bus depot. When the Milngavie line was doubled in 1900 a new connection to the mill branch was formed with a north to west curve rather than the original south to west curve meaning that trains had to approach the station and reverse in to the works branch. At the same time as the opening of the Burnbrae Dye Mill branch another branch was added extending north of Milngavie station to the Ellangowan Mills paper mills, by leaving the line south of the station. The line was electrified in 1959 though Milngavie station lost one of its platforms and presumably its goods lines in the 1980's the whole line becoming rationalized in 1992 returning to single line from Milngavie Junction to just south of Milngavie station. The line is still in use though the sidings to the Dye works and to the paper mills have now long gone.

There are a large number of accounts of the Railplane many of which give varying different accounts of the vehicle and track known as the 'Railplane Test Line' though this is probably down to the life span and experimental nature of the project. The test track was of 'lattice girder' construction and was supported in the air by large steel trestles spaced 80' apart with their bases set in concrete, resulting in very little actual ground being required for the structure, a big cost for conventional railways. The base of the upper lattice frame was the site of the running rail with the car suspended and guided from it by four double flanged wheels. The wheels were sited in two bogies, two wheels to each bogie, which also housed the mechanical parking brake, the bogies attached to the top of the car by arms. The mechanical parking brake was necessary as braking when the car was in motion was carried out by reversing the propellers that also drove the car, see below. An extra rail was placed underneath the main supporting rail beam to allow the mechanical brake shoes grip not only the running rail but also the under rail so that enough force was created to hold or slow the car to a suitable amount governed by the driver who applied the brakes by way of a sprung gripper. Interestingly the structure had a double track formation though it is not known if the second running line was ever used, though it is doubtful as only one car seems to have been built. A lower triangular lattice girder frame was also used to support the car this time as a means of ensuring balance, with two rubber-tyred wheels directly attached to the base of the car which would run along the side of a guide rail, springs allowing buffering of the wheels thus minimising bump. The system was planned to have the lowest part of the support frame and car at a height of about 16 feet above normal railway lines over which it was to run. The  principle behind a suspended monorail such as this was that vehicles could  negotiate bends at high speed as lateral sway was restricted by the horizontally opposed guide wheels, where conventional railways have to use super elevation to lift one rail higher than the other on a curve to guide the bogied wheels round. To also minimise the risk of de-railment the double flanged wheels, where there is a flange either side of the running rail in an 'n' shape, were of a depth deep enough so that it was virtually impossible to get the flange at a high enough height for it to come of the rail.

The Unpainted car was designed by consultant engineer Hugh Fraser, and was built at the Dalmuir Works of William Beardmore and Co Ltd of Inchinnan, who also built the R34 airship, was of a cigar shape looking very much like an airplane fuselage especially when the two large drive/brake propellers at either end were taken in to consideration, and the design was of very much airplane principles constructed in a light weight aluminium alloy known as Duralumin. The interior of the car was luxuriously made out to impress financiers and other interested parties fitted out with expensive carpeting, curtains and even tables with lamps. Due to the Railplane not using adhesion for propulsion through its wheels it meant that it could be extremely light when empty at just 7 1/2  tons which also helped in the economy to power the vehicle as well as to allow rapid acceleration and braking, and was comparable to an airliner of the 1930's in passenger/weight ratios allowing the cars to reach proposed speeds between 100 and 120mph. At the test site passengers had to climb up stairs to the car where there was a platform and control booth entering the car by one of the two doors that were situated to either end.

In his patent, GB 191,760, Bennie refers  to an 'engine' and all subsequent references are to electrical power collection of which would be by a shoe and third rail manner, both methods powering the propellers, which were originally two bladed though were soon changed to four bladed, at the front and rear of the car. Not only did these specially designed propellers give acceleration which could be varied according to the size and shape of the propeller used but they were also the brakes as when a change of speed or stop was required the revolutions would be reversed.  Stories of the Railplane range from it being electrically operated to it being powered by petrol engines though the only references in various patent specifications are to electrical propulsion and that is how it was designed by Hugh Fraser and built. There is nothing in subsequent literature to suggest it was ever powered by either diesel or petrol engines. Bennie also incorporated a signalling system in to his test track using multi aspect colour signals which was intended to also partly control the movements of the car. The only reference Bennie ever made to linking the Railplane to another vehicle was in patent GB 328,601. " An emergency device is preferably provided outside the nose of the car or airship which will permit the car or airship to be easily towed or pushed when necessary..."

The idea went down so well that several ideas were floated for the use of the system apart from the one to connect Glasgow and Edinburgh one of which would have seen the system installed over the busy Southern line between London Victoria and Croydon Air Park (Croydon Airport in South London). Croydon had also been home to an experimental form of pneumatic propulsion in the 1840's before it was abandoned. Several other schemes were proposed for building over Southern Railway lines, including one at the invitation of its General Manager, Sir Herbert Walker to survey the route from London Bridge to Dartford via Blackheath and Bexleyheath. Funding for such revolutionary ideas however was not forthcoming because Southern Railway refused consent for the construction of Railplane lines over their rights-of-way. Perhaps his dream is still not entirely laid to rest as the Labour government of the present time May 2006 is considering the building of a new high speed rail link from London up through the midlands and then to Scotland. Despite the fact this is the third time the idea has been floated since the 1960's and despite the closure of the Great Central main line millions of pounds are being spent on the consideration of the idea. Perhaps Bennie was too early with his proposals and perhaps in the years to come the 'The George Bennie Railplane system of Transport' may find itself running between England and Scotland in a 21^st century form.

Many thanks to Malcolm Thwaite for corrections and amendments to the original version of this article. Malcolm is the Author of, 'The George Bennie Railplane and Hugh Fraser Airrail Systems of Transport', Transactions of The Newcomen Society, Vol. 75, No. 1, (2005).