A GREAT SPEEDWAY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 26

A GREAT SPEEDWAY

THE WASH PROJECT

MAGNITUDE OF THE SCHEME

The ambitious scheme for building a vast speedway on the foreshore between Boston and Skegness has already appeared in these columns. Now the proposals have been taken a stage far,ther, and the sponsors, the newly-formed Automobile Racing Association, have high hopes of bringing the project to fruition. Since Brooklands is ho longer available for attempts on short-distance records, owing to an international ban there is a very definite need for a suitable track in Britain. At present British-riders who wish to attacking flying kilometre or flying mile records', have to visit Arpajon, irFrance, and to add to the difficulties there is only one .Arpajon meeting •<; year. For car drivers the position ia worse still, since speeds have become so high that for attempts on tho world's maximum speed record only such places as Daytona Beach, Florida, or Verneuk Pan, in Africa, are of use The first proposal of the Automobile Racing Association is, therefore, to build a straight course'of 15 miles; tliin is to be at least 100 feet wide, absolutely flat, and to be surfaced with a non-skid material. But the scheme goes farther than this, and it is now proposed that there shall be a racing circuit as well. This T.T. track is to include part of the main track, ,and bo completed by a loop road 45ft wide and 8 miles in length. Various bends and corners will form part of the loop, so that true road conditions are obtained. Other plans include the building of a motor-boat waterway a mile in length, a grandstand four miles long, to be situated along the middle section of the course, and an aerodrome. Roughly, 10,000 acres of the Wash will be reclaimed if the project is carried out, the width of the area being about a mile. Protection from the sea will be necessary along the whole length, and this will be obtained by means of a sea-bank faced with concrete. THE MONEY REQUIRED. From these details it will be seen that the project is extremely ambitious, Actually, an expenditure of at least £300,000 has been suggested as being necessary, and it may well prove extremely difficult to obtain so large a sum. But, apart from revenue derived from racing and record breaking by cars, motor cycles, and motor boats, there is the land reclaimed, and it is also proposed that the track should form a toll road between Skegness and Boston. At present the road between thes« towns is tortuous in the extreme The foreshoro is at the moment controlled by the Board of Trade, thp Duchy of Lancaster, and tho Commissioners of Crown Lands, and it is understood that these bodies will be willing to meet the Automobile Racing Association in the matter so long as the rights of local residents are not violated. Recently there was an official inquiry into the proposals by the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Agriculture. Captain Malcolm Campbell, giving evidence, said that he saw greater possibilities in the Wash site than in any other he had ever considered. • He had come to the conclusion that the only hope of still higher speed was the construction of a special course such as was proposed; it would be half as long again as the track available at Daytona, and, unlike that of the latter, the surface would not be subject to variations caused by winds and tides. FEW OBJECTIONS RAISED. Captain Woolf Barnato and Earl Howe also gave evidence, especially .stressing the need for somewhere where the British industry could test its products under road conditions. The general support of the local councils was declared, and very few objections were raised, the association stating that it would meet the various points, such as drainage and the interests of those, such as fishermen, using tho coast line. . If the scheme goes ahead, it will give considerable relief to unemployment, and for ■ this reason particularly it is thought, that tho Government Departments concerned will give tho project favourable consideration.

Railway level crossings are doomed in France. Pktns have been suggested for ■ the abolition of the 40,000 crossings in that country at an estimated cost of £20,000,000 over a period of ten years. Official instructions have been given that no more crossings are to b» made.