Beeching discussion

[whole diary]

[Electric train]

It is easy 50 years on to criticises Beeching, it was quite simple at the time the British public had found an new modern way to travel .......... the car and the open motorway.  The bad person in this of course was Ernest Marples the Transport Minister and the fact his wife "owned"  Marples - Ridgeway the builds or the M1 had no effect on the task he set Beeching.

The Nationalised Railways had been closing branch lines down way before the Beeching report, many of the lines that were singled were done by BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) in the 70's and 80's to save money, basically a worn out asset did not need to be replaced, there was less track and signalling to maintain the maintenance in the 70's and 80's was very labour intensive.

We can of course look back now as question the wisdom of closing the lines and even reopen lines closed society has changed roads are congested the cost of motoring is getting more expensive.

I can never understand the preoccupation with reopening lines when it might be better to build a new route

[ellendune]

I can never understand the preoccupation with reopening lines when it might be better to build a new route

In that case I would agree, where the old route has not been built over, it is the best route available.

[Cynthia]

4064 etc; It seems to me that the railways suffered in much the same way as do many other departments which have non-specialists heading them, which is why the country is always in such a sodding mess; the ministers haven't any professional experience in the field in which they have been appointed.  This is why Thatch apparently loved "Yes Minister" so much, because it was more true to life than Joe Public would ever know!

There's a part of me that thinks I ought to read the Beeching Report in full so that I can make any further comments from a more informed platform.  However, having apparently stirred up something of a hornets' nest I'm now wondering whether any of it is relevant to what is happening to the railways in the 21st century.  Though I suppose history does have the benefit of preventing the repeat of previous mistakes.......she said, hopefully.

Thank you all for your interesting and thought-provoking comments.

[Red Squirrel]

There's a part of me that thinks I ought to read the Beeching Report in full so that I can make any further comments from a more informed platform.  However, having apparently stirred up something of a hornets' nest I'm now wondering whether any of it is relevant to what is happening to the railways in the 21st century.  Though I suppose history does have the benefit of preventing the repeat of previous mistakes.......she said, hopefully.

The Beeching era marked the biggest convulsion in the history of Britain's railways, and his reforms touched every aspect of the modern system. So anyone with an interest in railways and rail development should read his reports. A lot of the criticism of Beeching is ill-informed; by reading the reports (and watching some of the good stuff on YouTube like this) you can at least come to an informed position, if not a conclusion.

Did he cut too deeply? Did he cut some routes that should have stayed open? Well as I've said before on this forum, Beeching didn't close any routes at all; that was down to Transport Ministers, making it a political process and thereby ensuring that the outcomes were not as logical as Beeching's recommendations.

Should some routes be reopened? Absolutely. The more, the merrier. Railways have an ability to tie the country together like no other form of transport can; they brought huge economic benefits in the past and can do so again. Railways can get people out of their cars like no other form of transport can. That's why I generally support any scheme that widens the network; get stations nearer to where people live and more people will use trains.

[4064ReadingAbbey]

It is easy 50 years on to criticises Beeching, it was quite simple at the time the British public had found an new modern way to travel .......... the car and the open motorway.  The bad person in this of course was Ernest Marples the Transport Minister and the fact his wife "owned"  Marples - Ridgeway the builds or the M1 had no effect on the task he set Beeching.

Just to flesh out Electric train's remark about the British public having found a new way to travel. At the end of 1950 there were 1,979,000 million cars on the road. By 1955 this had risen to 3,109,000, in 1960 to 4,900,000. By 2005 the number exceeded 26,000,000.

In the ten years to the Beeching report the number of cars on the road had much more than doubled. It was not surprising that local passenger traffic vanished; only the lack of motorways stopped this happening on the inter-city routes as well.

The Minister of Transport could have been called Joe Bloggs rather than Ernest Marples - the growth in the number of cars shows why the motorways would still have been built.

Most of the Modernisation Plan money was ill-spent - the one outstanding success was the purchase of the English Electric 'Deltics' for the East Coast main line which from 1962 showed there was a market for high speed, long distance traffic. This was the psychological turning point for the passenger business - underlined four years later by the Euston-Manchester and Liverpool electric service.

Oops! There weren't that many cars on the road^!

[eightf48544]

There's a part of me that thinks I ought to read the Beeching Report in full so that I can make any further comments from a more informed platform.  However, having apparently stirred up something of a hornets' nest I'm now wondering whether any of it is relevant to what is happening to the railways in the 21st century.  Though I suppose history does have the benefit of preventing the repeat of previous mistakes.......she said, hopefully.

I would recommend reading it as there are some very startling statistics particularly about the utilization of rolling stock both passenger and freight. Some coaches didn't move more than half a dozen times a year! Many other not much more frequently.That's why there was always spare stack available to strengthen trains or run specials.

Now we've gone the other way and expect stock to run 24/7.

One of my colleagues on the railways took part in the surveys and spent some interesting time routing out hundreds wagons from the back of steel works, who were always claiming a shortage of wagons particularly  bogie bolsters. Thus Merry go round coal was one of Beeching's great achievements where the train doesn't stop either loading or unloading. Although it took a while for the NCB to install the loading bunkers.

Then there were the hundreds of crossing keepers now replaced by AHB's etc.

It's a far different railway today, faster more efficient with much higher productivity from the staff. In some respect it's too efficient and lacks resilience in the event of failure, particularly of rolling stock.

[Electric train]

Beeching also lead a number of innovations Intercity was one that changed the face of British Rail, he started the move to heavy haul freight and the like of freightliner.

I agree with 4064ReadingAbbey quite a lot of the "Modernisation Plan" money was wasted most of the small class diesel locos were just not up to much the large freight marshalling yards were just short sighted.   One legacy was the Kent Coast electrification which some of the substation equipment is only just being replaced and some of it will still be in service in 10 years time.

[Umberleigh]

Some very interesting points made.

We should also remember that many branch line stations were located some distance from their communities and usually with a steep hill involved (Torrington springs to mind).

Who can blame the British public for taking the bus from their village square or driving from their front drive. There would soon be a generation for whom taking the train would be an anachronism. Only when the roads became congested would train travel feature in their lives once more.

[Rhydgaled]

I can never understand the preoccupation with reopening lines when it might be better to build a new route

In that case I would agree, where the old route has not been built over, it is the best route available.

I disagree that the old route (if not built over) is always the best available. Carmarthen - Aberystwyth for instance I believe needs a new (straighter) route in parts because the former line was too slow to be competitive in the modern era.