From 1936 onwards under instruction from the Air Ministry's Sir Kingsley Wood, in a programme headed by Herbert Austin many key industries in London and the industrialised Midlands, had created a shadow factory to enable production should war break out. Many of these shadow factories, plus a number of Royal Ordnance Factories, were located in Cumbria and the Northwest coast, out of range of the bombers of the Nazi Luftwaffe. Consequently, when World War 2 did break out, staff moved and additionals were recruited to these facilities. The raw materials going in and requirement of distribution of output, the transport result was a relative boom in both freight and passenger traffic.
