100 years ago

Today would see the end of what was believed to be the only passenger train service in the country maintained by horse traction – that on the North British Railway between Drumburgh Junction (a few miles west of Carlisle) and Port Carlisle, a seaport on the Solway Firth, formerly of considerable importance.

The following Monday a locomotive-drawn train service would supersede the horse-drawn trains, which had run daily since 1856. Engines had been used on this line from 1854 to 1856, when horses were first introduced and had been used ever since.

 

50 years ago

Britain’s cities should get their water supplies from distillation of sea-water rather than the drowning of more river valleys, said Lt-Col GG Haythornthwaite, of Sheffield, in his presidential address to the Ramblers’ Association National Council.

“We can no longer drown a valley to provide Manchester, or for that matter Leicester, with water, without removing some essential part of our natural environment,” he said.

“We all need Bannisdale or the Manifold Valley just as Manchester needs water. This country is too small to lose any more of its resources of natural beauty.”

Distillation plants could be run economically with power stations and Col Haythornthwaite suggested that all new stations should be powered by advanced gas-cooled nuclear reactors located in existing centres of industry. Such power stations could also provide the motive power for water distillation plants at a centre point of demand for both commodities.

Left to itself the electrical supply industry would probably continue to build huge, coal-fired power stations of 2,000 or 3,000 megawatts which also generated traffic, ash and poison gas nuisances.

 

25 years ago

Hull had been branded one of the ugliest cities in Europe.

Economics boffins at Reading University rated the city 18th from bottom in a new Euro league table-based on general attractiveness to businesses and tourists, and prosperity, population and employment trends.

But the city’s council hit back at the research findings, compiled after five years of study to help the European Commission allocate money for improvements.

The boffins had reportedly already had an ear bashing for only visiting half of the 117 cities featured in the survey. And council spokesman Mr Ian Johnson stormed: “It is time people got off their backsides and came to see what is happening in Hull. We have got problems – and we are tackling them. For example, we have got seven miles of derelict waterfront which we are spending £350 million on. I would say we are changing our image.”

He pointed out that Hull’s unemployment rate had fallen from 17 per cent to just 10 per cent in two years and that house prices in the city had risen rapidly.