Reflections on ArransiaPrevious fantasy countries I have created have tended to experience some very dark historical episodes in the 20th century. Thurland had a quasi-fascist government that was overthrown in the midst of what was becoming clear was an unwinnable war; Borroland was governed by a military dictatorship from 1962 to 1966 after nearly sliding into Communism, while Canoldrin only managed to bring its version of the Second World War to an end after detonating several nuclear bombs over its enemy, killing hundreds of thousands rather than the 50 who died in Mayenne. Arransia occupies a somewhat cosier and more comfortable world, and also differs in that it is one of a group of countries on the continent of Sabrantia which have been created by different people. Our shared interest is in roads and transport, and so we have a world where there has been a lot of roadbuilding, but no major military conflict for over 50 years. Had I been doing this on my own, I suspect the prospect of an “Arransian Falklands” would have proved irresistible, with Brunswick trying to remain publicly neutral but giving lots of assistance behind the scenes while trying to restrain the Arransians from doing anything too rash. Arransian politicians may bicker and squabble, but the country has never suffered a violent change of government. Arransia is not in any sense a personal utopia – had I been in charge it would, for a start, be much less protectionist, and would have built a lot more new roads. If you’re writing fiction, it is more interesting to invent quirky, flawed characters than perfect, goody-goody ones. Arransia is an attempt to create a slightly tongue-in-cheek country that retains a surprising variety of quirky and old-fashioned transport and military hardware, and also, compared with modern Britain, has a much greater element of the old economy of coal-mining, shipbuilding, fishing and heavy engineering. In a sense, Arransia has made a niche for itself in these areas within the overall economy of Sabrantia, and so is more prosperous than you might expect. It has its share of grim industrial zones, but there is far more to the country than that. Some aspects of Arransia, however, such as its traffic enforcement policy and labour laws, are not all that far from what I would implement myself. I would also find Arransia very enjoyable as a tourist. Arransia has also thrown up a number of interesting characters, such as Paul Nordstrom, the intense and un-Brunstrom-like traffic police chief, Danny McArthur, the militant, self-deluding union leader, and Philip Leslie, the clever and politically astute but vain and pompous Admiral of the Fleet. Most notable of all is the sympathetic, sensitive Princess Fiona, who went through something of a wild child phase while struggling to come to terms with her destiny as the future Queen, but now seems to have found a steadying influence with Alex Morton. Fiona has realised that if she approaches the role in her own terms she can actually quite enjoy it and at the same time subtly wind up a lot of stuffy people and vested interests in both Arransia and Brunswick. I’m not a religious person, but in general have tended to identify more with the Protestants than the Catholics in the 16th and 17th centuries, and so my fantasy countries have generally experienced their version of the Protestant Reformation. Arransia, in contrast, is a mainly Catholic country, although one that continues to enjoy a unique dispensation of allowing married clergy. This probably helps explain why the country has never had serious religious conflict and why it has a much higher level of church attendance than modern Britain. Arransians, however, tend to wear their faith lightly and can’t be said to be a very pious nation. It is sometimes said of Scotland that it is a country that defines itself by what it is not, i.e. it is not England. Arransia stands in a similar relationship to Brunswick, smaller, with worse soil and climate, and not quite as prosperous. However, the crucial difference is that Arransia is an independent country and so has to stand or fall by its own efforts – it cannot blame Brunswick for its misfortunes, as many Scots do England. There remains a kind of low-level niggling antagonism between the two countries which is often stirred up by the popular press, the Brunswickians regarding Arransians as chippy, drunken and stick-in-the-mud, while Arransians consider Brunswickians to be arrogant, materialistic and humourless. Although on an individual level people generally get on very well, this division can be quite bitter and rancorous, and the annual Arransia vs. Brunswick football match tends to be a very bad-tempered affair, with the Arransian supporters bringing along giant inflatable whisky bottles and singing “we’re more pissed than you’ll ever be” and other similarly enlightening ditties. (Other popular inflatables are badgers and “John Brodie” peg-legs). Many older Brunswickians still find the role played by Arransia in the Great War hard to forgive, and the fact that immediately afterwards Brunswick, wishing to cultivate her as an ally, gave Arransia lots of surplus military hardware, very much stuck in the craw. The military sphere is now of course the prime example of co-operation between the two countries. In 1949, rather than simply concluding a harsh peace treaty and allowing Arransia to fester, the Brunswickian government of the day controversially, but farsightedly, decided to embrace her as an ally. The new regime in Arransia, well aware how ultimately disastrous the Great War had been, were more than happy to go along with this, and the hard-fought but chivalrous battle between the Badger and Marblehead, and the subsequent friendship that developed between Captains Scullion and Paxton, was seen as a touchstone for the future. It obviously makes sense for Brunswick and Arransia, which underneath the niggling have a lot in common, to be allies and economic partners, and it is regrettable this was not realised earlier. The military commanders on both sides have always stressed that there should be no more than friendly rivalry between the two countries’ forces, and the spur of outdoing the other has often been used to encourage better performance on joint exercises. The close co-operation is demonstrated very obviously by the fact that many of the people who have risen to senior naval and air force ranks in both countries have married partners from across the border. In 2001 a Brunswickian tabloid rather malevolently pointed out that 5 of the top 10 officers in the country’s navy, including the Commander-in-Chief, and 3 of the top 10 in the air force, had Arransian wives or husbands, with a veiled implication of disloyalty that predictably drew a very sharp response. Admiral Leslie, the Arransian Admiral of the Fleet, is also married to a Brunswickian. The Arransians like to believe they have through history demonstrated a unique courage and tenacity as naval fighters, citing examples from the Battle of Ugglesby Head to the sinking of the Revenge in 1944. Closer examination suggests their record is realistically only on a par with the Brunswickians, although Brunswick has often enjoyed material or technological superiority and has not actually had to fight in a backs-to-the-wall manner anywhere near so often. However, the combined naval record of Brunswick and Arransia over the past four centuries is undoubtedly well ahead of that of any other country. Mayenne has over the years built some magnificent ships but all too often has used them in a timid and ineffectual way. Most Brunswickians never have cause to visit Arransia, dismissing it as a place that offers a cold climate, warm beer, stodgy food and unfriendly locals. Those who do visit the country as tourists mainly fall into two categories – steam enthusiasts and “National Trust visitors” – between whom there is obviously a substantial overlap. Arransia has a very large number of publicly-owned monuments (generally administered by the counties, not by a national body, and less manicured than British ones) and also a lot of impoverished Earls and Barons who will be happy to show people around their ramshackle ancestral homes one or two afternoons a week in the summer. A lot of Brunswickian people become very fond of Arransia’s close-packed, higgledy-piggledy market towns with their variety of independent shops and cosy, quaint pubs. Despite the lack of speed limits, the pace of life often seems much more gentle in rural Arransia. Of course quite a lot of canny Arransian business owners, especially in Teviot and Marchwood, rather play up to this quirky image – and any sizeable Arransian town now has an identikit retail park sitting alongside the bypass, often dominated by Brunswickian-owned businesses. Arransia is also a country where public transport enjoys a significantly greater role than in Britain, which in view of my strong support for the private car on SABRE some may find surprising. However, in some ways I am a public transport enthusiast, and Arransia has achieved this not through playing off the two against each other, but by consciously developing public transport in the roles for which it is most suited. In the early 1950s, it made much sense to base transport policy on cheap domestic coal rather than expensive imported oil, and so the country went ahead and electrified virtually all its main-line railways, and also retained tram systems in its major towns. Arransian towns are typically more densely-packed than those in Britain, and so are better suited to tram use, and also local authorities have been able to insist that where new development goes, the tram lines must follow. There is also no requirement for competition in local transport, so local authorities run their own bus and tram operations and sell good-value go-anywhere season tickets which are the best way to maximise ridership. The city of Stainton is held up internationally as an example of an efficient and well-used modern tram system. The relative percentages of transport passenger-miles are approximately:
Arransia is not big enough to have domestic scheduled air services, apart from to the outlying islands, and one between Danby and Howick which is a route poorly served by road and rail. The proportion of passenger rail in Arransia is not much greater than the UK as the country does not in general have the dense suburban networks seen for example in London. Arransia also has a lower proportion of driving licence holders, 64% of all adults as opposed to 70% in the UK, although more under-21s are now learning to drive in Arransia. Arransia also transports far more freight by rail, canal and coastal shipping than we do. Virtually all the canals have at least some commercial traffic, and the wharves of upriver towns like Ormsby and Wrangle still see numerous coasters, where in the UK ports such as Preston and Gloucester have long since closed down. Far more industrial premises have rail sidings than in the UK, and the railways have managed to create an efficient system of wagonload freight distribution with a number of modern computerised marshalling yards. If you sit beside the four-track electrified main line at Kirtlebridge between Danby and Petersburgh, the amount of freight traffic is staggering compared with the UK, including regular immensely long coal trains heading for the two big power stations on the Esk estuary. Steam locomotives have become something of a double-edged sword for Arransia. On the one hard, they bring a large number of tourists to the country, but on the other hand they perpetuate an image of the country as living in the past. Although steam only accounts for about 1% of scheduled passenger journeys, and 4% of freight, more than one Brunswickian has boarded the sleek air-conditioned Danby express at Ynysforgan imagining that a steamer will take over at the border. The retention of steam on ANR was more by accident than design. While Britain scrapped many steam locomotives that were less than ten years old, Arransia sensibly enough wanted to get a useful economic life out of them and planned a phased programme of withdrawal that would see the last leave service in 1978. The last regular steam in Brunswick had gone in 1973. However, the 1970s recession, which cut funds for new investment, also relieved the labour pressures that had been driving conversion to diesel, causing the final date to be pushed back and then, in about 1980, effectively indefinitely postponed. By the late 1980s ANR had recognised that steam was bringing tourists to the country and riders to the railway and started marketing it as a positive feature. A particular attraction to genuine enthusiasts is that, while many countries are awash with preserved locomotives, Arransia is now the only place in the Northern hemisphere were you can still see (and hear) steam being worked really hard. Detailed plans have now been drawn up for the electrification of the routes between Holborough and Howick that are now the main stronghold of steam working, but after this the focus of main-line working will probably move to the Stainton-Aldminster route, and a few other pockets will remain such as the branches from Howick to Cleave and Barkwith, the Verne Island route and the line to Croy and Skelwick. Limited “heritage” workings are also being run on other lines and it currently seems that there is no prospect of scheduled steam workings disappearing from the Arransian railway network in the foreseeable future. Ironically, most of the steam locomotives in regular service on ANR are based on Brunswickian wartime standard designs with a few Arransian details such as chimneys and cabs. Arransia’s fragmented private railway companies had tended to build small batches of often over-complicated locomotives, and in 1932 when they were nationalised still had many engines over 40 years old. During the 1930s, some progress was made towards evolving standard designs, but very few were built, and even these were still more complex than they needed to be. From 1944 onwards, all that was built was basic 0-6-0 freight locomotives of a proven, robust design dating back to 1904, plus a few shunting tanks, so in 1949 there was a severe motive power crisis that in the short term could only be plugged by basically taking Brunswickian designs off the shelf. Apart from a handful of shunters, the X3 Garratts are the only genuine “Arransian” locomotives still in regular service, and even they were built under licence using a Brunswickian patent. It never seems to have occurred to anyone in Arransia until 1949 that their steam locomotives would run much better on Brunswickian coal with its higher calorific value. ANR has set up a steam locomotive operating agency which they may part-privatise in the future, and have established a separate pool of steam locomotive drivers and firemen. Of the trickle of new footplate staff who have been trained, over 75% are Brunswickians, who tend to feel they are in railway heaven, although it must be said that hand-firing a hard-worked P3 on a biting, frosty day is some of the most demanding physical work still to be found in Sabrantia. Many of these enthusiasts would happily do it for the minimum wage, but in fact a fully-qualified driver receives basic pay of at least $22,000, which enables you to live pretty comfortably in South Teviot. Brunswickians are often heard complaining about Arransia’s terrible roads, but this is somewhat missing the point. In fact Arransia’s roads are very well constructed and maintained, certainly far better than is usual in the UK, and to see a pothole is a rarity. But they have been designed and planned to meet different objectives to those of Brunswick. In the 1950s, when the country was concentrating on railway electrification, it made sense to adopt a policy of bringing all main roads up to a decent minimum paved two-lane standard, and building a limited number of sub-motorway trunk road improvements. In the 1960s the explosive growth in car ownership put a lot of strain on the system, but Arransia, as much through lack of funds as anything else, did not engage in a Brunswick-style dash for growth, but steadily plodded on with a long-term programme of piecemeal Expressway and bypass construction. Brunswick, of course, now finds itself saddled with heavy repair bills for some shoddy 1960s construction. In fact, apart from a few notorious bottlenecks, the network generally functions reasonably well. The only major rush-hour jams are in Danby (where the County Council have set their face against new road building) and at a few locations around Stainton and Hebburn. As well as the Expressways, about 500 miles of “first 99” A-roads have been upgraded to 3-lane or 2+1 standard. The generality of rural main roads have, however, not been improved to any significant extent and usually consist of a rather winding and undulating strip of 18- or 20-foot tarmac. This results from an unspoken policy that the county highway authorities will upgrade roads for safety or capacity, but not in general for speed. They are assiduous in carrying out minor safety improvements, especially improving sightlines at junctions, and listen very carefully to hauliers about which stretches of road cause difficulties for lorries. They also consult far more closely with the traffic police than their counterparts in the UK. But they are not really interested in smoothing out roads so that car drivers and motorcyclists can do 70 or 80 mph. This means that even the best single-carriageway Arransian first 99 road is of no higher standard than, say, the A34 between Alderley Edge and Congleton, and away from the Expressway network it is difficult to make fast progress across country. They do, however, take seriously the responsibility to provide overtaking straights at reasonable intervals, and indeed in some areas have even put up signs saving “Overtaking Straight ½ mile” – although there always seems to be a lorry coming the other way when you reach it. In the 80s and 90s, many Arransian towns have received straightforward single-carriageway bypasses, but rather than the sweeping, landscaped alignments often seen in the UK, these are generally just a contour-following road skirting the edge of the town, frequently with T-junctions with minor roads and farm accesses. It is now recommended, however, that new construction of S2 A-roads should generally be to a 24’ standard with 6’ verges. There remain a number of substantial unbypassed towns on major routes, of which Clive on the A7 between Danby and Ellerdine, and Dacre at the crossroads of the A20 and A9, are two of the most notorious.
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