This plaque on Main Street in Milngavie on the outskirts of Glasgow marks the site of George Bennie's remarkable, but experimental, Railplane. Invented in the 1920s, this was a zeppelin-shaped carriage suspended from an overhead track and powered by propellers. The aim was to create a two-tier railway with slower freight trains using the ground level track, while faster passenger railplanes would fly along above them on a higher level track at speeds of up to 120 miles an hour.
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Bennie was born in Auldhouse near Glasgow in 1891, and began development of his railplane concept in 1921. A 119 metre long experimental track was built in Milngavie in 1929 (on the current site of Kelvin Timber). While a fully operational line was proposed between Glasgow and Edinburgh, it failed to attract enough financial backing and in 1937 Bennie, who had paid for most of the development himself, was declared bankrupt. The prototye railpane was eventually scrapped in 1956.
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On a side note, it's hard to avoid thinking that Bennie was been inspired to create his railplane by a ride installed in Kelvingrove Park for the 1911 Glasgow International Exhbition, which consisted of airship-shaped gondolas flying across the River Kelvin suspended below an aerial track.
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