Before its time?
Table 1: Barbara Millar

Tootling along the M8 to Glasgow, tuned into Radio 2 (in the hope that I might recognise a gramophone record or two, by a popular beat combo of yesteryear), I caught a bit of banter between DJ Ken Bruce and 'Sally Traffic'. They were reminiscing about science programmes from the 60s, which promised that, by now, we'd be zipping about in our hover cars, or soaring through the skies attached to jet packs, or zooming between cities at breakneck speeds on monorails. What happened to the transport of the future? Sally mused, triggering a memory for Ken of something called Bennie's Railplane. This, he said, was a futuristic monorail service between Milngavie and Strathblane, which never worked because people in Milngavie didn't want to go to Strathblane, and vice-versa. Ken's memory was playing tricks. Bennie's Railplane never actually left Milngavie station. Perhaps it was an idea before its time. George Bennie, born in 1892, the son of a Glasgow engineer, had, like many small boys, a passion for trains. But, in 1920, he had a better idea – to create a track suspended above the ground, with a railcar travelling at 150 mph, driven by propellers, like an aeroplane.
     The 'Railplane' was to be made of stainless steel and glass, with comfortable chairs inside, electric lighting and curtains at the windows. There was to be a safety-conscious double-braking system and, with tracks built above existing railway lines, Bennie reckoned costs of installing the system would be about 50 per cent lower than conventional railway track. He estimated his Railplane would cover the journey between Edinburgh and Glasgow in 20 minutes, at 150 mph (it is a 50 minute journey today), and he won a gold medal at the 1922 Industrial Exhibition in Edinburgh for his innovative design.
     In 1930, a quarter-mile experimental track, 30 feet above the ground, was built at Milngavie and George Bennie gave many public demonstrations to great acclaim. But the track was too short to achieve anything more than a modest 50 mph and the financial backing Bennie needed to bring his revolutionary idea to fruition was never likely to materialise in the hungry 30s. The demonstration track remained in place until 1956 when it was sold for scrap. The following year Bennie died, bankrupt, having spent £150,000 of his own money on one of history's great 'might have been' experiments.