Beeching discussion

[whole diary]

[Cynthia]

But I have seen in quoted that the cost of maintaining / operating those lines from 1966 to 2016 - 50 years - would have far outstripped the price involved in decommissioning and recommissioning.  You can't just let a line lie fallow and then bring it back to life cheaply - take a look at Cambridge to St Ives, March to Wisbech, Ebbw Vale, Borders, Wareham to Corfe Castle, Frome to Radstock, Stoke-on-trent to  etc.   Tracks left fallow rot away, even double lines singled have embankments that may erode over the years and engineering works be replaced double by single. Look at the north and south Cotswolds lines, and consider the bridge over the Avon at Staverton on the TransWilts.   On rolling stock, would it really have been in useful condition after 50 years?  Take a trip to Norchard ... so, in summary, you may fume but behind the scenes (IF the railways weren't needed for 50 years) you've probably not lost too much - and who would have gambled on a renaissance anyway?

I appreciate the facts you present grahame.  I just seems to me that Beeching was a bit previous with his line closures.  Were all these branch lines already running at a severe loss?  Or was Beeching just using his 'transport vision of the future' theory to savage the railway system, to reduce government spending?  If my memory serves me rightly, the railway system was nationalised at the time, in the guise of 'British Rail', do correct me if I'm wrong.

[Cynthia]

Oh crumbs, I've done it wrong again, one of these days I'll get the hang of highlighting quotes properly.  I seem to have highlighted my reply as well.   

[grahame]

I appreciate the facts you present grahame.  I just seems to me that Beeching was a bit previous with his line closures.  Were all these branch lines already running at a severe loss?  Or was Beeching just using his 'transport vision of the future' theory to savage the railway system, to reduce government spending?  If my memory serves me rightly, the railway system was nationalised at the time, in the guise of 'British Rail', do correct me if I'm wrong.

"Pendulum Management".   There were a considerable number of lines / services at an infrequent level (sometimes as low as one train per day).  There were duplicated lines.   There were lines where the route hadn't been reviewed since 1923 when lots of independent track owning companies came together which had become illogical but would have worked well with the addition of a curve / a change through to a different service. There were stations where most traffic had been lost to car and bus which went to the village and not to "Beachresort Road" or "Greenfield for Markettown" where occasional trains called. And these needed attention - in my view closure of a significant number of sections was regrettable, but sensible. 

Except  ... the net was drawn far too widely, and in what looks like a dogmatic zeal that reduced without due regard to the future, and indeed reduced based on dubious analysis and with little balanced forethought, and in my view that lead to a significant number of sections being closed which weren't at all sensible decisions.

Treading on very dangerous ground to find an example ... in an area I'm not too familiar with ... Cirencester had a short branch to Kemble, with a reasonable service on it.   And it had the Midland and South West Junction which had come down to a service that was virtually non-existent.  Both went ... but I rather suspect that a review / concentration on ending up with a proper network at the end may have concluded that one should be retained, perhaps in a different and foreword-looking form.

But bear in mind that from around 20 billion passenger journey miles in the early 1960s, we're now up to around (over?) 30 billion passenger journey miles in the 2010x (old graph showing trend on page 5 of http://www.atoc.org/clientfiles/files/publicationsdocuments/npsA67D_tmp.pdf ) so that what is justified today in terms of line / service was a hard call in those days.   The recent dramatic upward curve has caused problems with lack of stock and line capacity and service, as even 10 years ago forecasts were based on tiny growth.  And - hard though it is to justify a dramatic improvement on an existing line - the major stumbling block to a decision rightly updated from 2003/4 when 0.8% not 8.0% annual growth was forecast - is "where does get the train from" and "is there a platform it can use".

There is, though, an ongoing picture and a need to review not just for this year, but for 1, 5, 10 and 20 years hence. Getting public / community involvement is tough.  The young don't have the life experience on which to bas inputs, the middle aged are too busy earning a living to feed families, and the old aren't going to motivate to look at things that they won't live to see.   And very few people have the stamina to jump into a report headed "2026" and see it through all the way from now until 13 years hence.

We have move a l-o-n-g way from bus decline.   Perhaps one of my fellow moderators who's not so involved in the thread would care to split the subject ... subjectively rather than emotionally, which I might do!

Oh crumbs, I've done it wrong again, one of these days I'll get the hang of highlighting quotes properly.  I seem to have highlighted my reply as well.  

I have fixed the original quote.  Do click on the "modify" button to look at what I have done - easier than me explaining in words.

[ellendune]

I think that just about sums it up for me grahame.

[ChrisB]

BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) in total was running at a cost that couldn't be met by the current Government...can't remember exact figures, but it was large (for those days) and the lines closed were severely underused.

[Lee]

So much for my attempt to wrench us back on topic - sod it, I guess we are doing Beeching instead 

[Chris from Nailsea]

No problem, Lee! 

I've simply split off the previous posts into this 'interim new topic', pending a further sort into other existing topics, where they will hopefully be more relevant to any ongoing discussions.

CfN

[Lee]

Cheers Chris 

[Red Squirrel]

I pay attention to such things. I was there ChrisB. You weren't.

Or to put it another way:

[Red Squirrel]

...the lines closed were severely underused.

I realise that you may not appreciate being paraphrased quoted out of context, but I think that misses the point of Beeching's vision. Beeching essentially wanted rail to do what it was best at, and he did not think rail was best at the last few miles of a journey. That meant that even lines that were well-loaded and paid their way were closed, if it was possible to replace them with a bus service.

[Lee]

Chippenham-Calne was a good example of that approach. Excellent passenger figures, even during the flawed survey period, but it was judged that all of that traffic could be replaced by bus.

[4064ReadingAbbey]

I know that discussions about Dr. Beeching tend to generate more heat than light, even 50 years later, but I would like to add a little to the background about the railways' finances at the time, especially for those that were not there!

The basic problem was that the British Transport Commission had no effective management accounts - they knew to a penny how much their locomotives cost per mile in maintenance but they had not a clue about which services and lines were generating the income and how much the routes were costing to operate. How did this state of affairs arise?

Well, it all started a very long time ago^

The Rail and Canal Traffic Act of 1854 (and, no - I wasn't there either!) obliged the railways to carry any and all goods offered to them (with some minor exceptions) at rates which were government regulated. These rates were based on the weight and value of goods carried - rather than the costs of operation, and they made any effective form of management accounting for freight superfluous. Even if the costs and income were accurately known for each station, terminal and train - nothing could be done as the railway /had/ to carry the traffic.

As long as the railways had effectively a monopoly of inland transport the charges could be set so that the railways could make a return - but it was marginal. But as soon as the lorry started taking the remunerative freight traffic the railways started their slide to financial ruin.

Then in 1947 the railways were nationalised and were run by the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission. They were given what must be the wooliest financial objective ever - the BTC was required to break even 'taking one year with another'!

Rather than appoint a businessman to run the railways, in 1948 a career civil servant (Cyril Hurcomb) was given the job of Chairman of the British Transport Commission and in 1953 the Government appointed a retired general (Brian Robertson) as Chairman. He had previously been Deputy Military Governor of Germany after the war and then, from 1947, the Military Governor and British member of the Allied Control Council for Germany.

By definition civil servants can't run businesses and although Robertson had had some experience of industry his background made him, I submit, equally unsuitable for the post.

What was needed was someone with an eye for the future and with the mind of an accountant: civil servants from the Ministry of Shipping and a military man were unlikely to meet the job description. As a result nobody had any more than a vague idea where the money was coming from and where it was being spent until Beeching carried out his traffic surveys. These were subsequently much criticised, but they were the only hard data available at the time.

The railways stopped being profitable in the early 1950s and by the end of 1955 stopped covering their operational costs. By 1960 the annual loss reached ^68 million, ^1,130 million in today's money. In spite of the losses, in 1955 the Government of the day (the Churchill/Eden administration) made available ^1.2 billion - the equivalent to ^25 billion to ^30 billion today - to modernise the railways and restore their financial stability. Most of the money was wasted as can be seen from the steadily increasing losses - in effect the Modernisation Plan made no difference whatsoever to the railways' financial position. This being the case the Beeching approach (or if not him then somebody else with accounting skills and a clear idea of what the railways should be doing) was inevitable.

The 1854 (and later amendments) Common Carrier obligation was finally lifted in 1957, at least 40 years too late.

It's well worth reading the Beeching Report, actually both of them (scanned copies are available on-line, go to http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk and search for 'Beeching Report'), to see how clear sighted he was. As Red Squirrel says, essentially he wanted the railways to do what they were best at doing. His conclusions are still valid.

The only possibly valid criticism of Beeching was that although he took the first steps at identifying where the money went, he did not seem to see any possibilities of reducing the costs of operation of some of the marginal lines. This is another subject, but the forces of inertia were enormous, no significant changes had been made in operations for a century or more, so changes would take time. Getting the finances back on track was a matter of urgency and it was quicker to cut the costs by closing the line than by changing the methods of operation. In any event changes would have needed capital investment and as the Modernisation money had already been blown to no great effect the politicians didn't trust the railwaymen to make the necessary changes. Money for investment became very tight in the subsequent years - but the railways had only themselves to blame.

[Red Squirrel]

Like a lot of people who have studied the Beeching Reports, I am torn - many, many mistakes were made, but you could well argue that Beeching is the springboard of the modern railway's success. My main criticisms are:

• The post-Beeching passenger railway seems to be mostly concerned with getting people into and out of London. To that extent Beeching may have accellerated the process of giving Britain a two-tier economy, with London streaking ahead of the rest of the country;
• Beeching seems not to have recognised the importance of the last few miles - if you have to drive five miles to get to the station, chances are you'll drive right past it and keep going until you reach your destination;
• A rail link is a tangible statement of the economic importance and vibrancy of a community. A bus link, as we still see today, can be here today and gone tomorrow.

But imagine if Beeching had not happened, with his Inter-City trains and route rationalisation; imagine that the railway had bumbled on as it was until 1979, when Mrs Thatcher came to power... would there be anything left now?

[eightf48544]

Thoughts from down under. My major criticism of Beeching was that he looked at the railways as they were in 1960 which was as Graham said basically the same as Grouping in 23. Midland services duplicated GC^» (Great Central Railway - link to heritage line) and GN services (Leen Valley) so each was uneconomic. What he should have looked at was the network and how towns could be linked, maybe by diverting trains off one Co. line onto another for the last leg or perhaps again as Graham said a strategic new connections.

Unfortunately BR^▸ (British Rail(ways))'s attempt at rationalization of Leeds was not well manged and dragged on and probably put management off doing something similar elsewhere. Although now it would be hard to imagine that the local train services would so popular if there were still two stations in Leeds.

The freight side managed it much better with the provision of basically on spur from West to North at Shirebrook from the LDEC to the Midland which  allowed many of the most productive collieries to be single served by Merry go round trains. There were also a couple of spurs built in South Wales that enable lengths of line to be closed but the pits and coke ovens still to be served.

The problem was at that time my friends the bean counters didn't have the tools to cost the utility of the network as a whole. Now we see the advantage of serving the remotest community with high speed Broadband even though technically it doesn't pay it's way overall it adds considerably to the overall utility of the WWW^▸ (World Wide Web) and the local economy. Just as keeping many lines open would have done the same for their communities.   

[Phil]

The problem was at that time my friends the bean counters didn't have the tools to cost the utility of the network as a whole. Now we see the advantage of serving the remotest community with high speed Broadband even though technically it doesn't pay it's way overall it adds considerably to the overall utility of the WWW^▸ (World Wide Web) and the local economy. Just as keeping many lines open would have done the same for their communities.   

A very well-reasoned argument. Such a shame the same principles couldn't be applied to the Post Office network today, since we're in danger of losing that too (if indeed it's not too late already)