Yes his identification of "loss" making lines was based on flawed methodology, there were rightly lines that could never make a profit, but he missed the point that lines, for example, that served seaside locations, were never allocated a percentage of the holiday traffic revenues, these were allocated to the "home" station, eg Leeds to Blackpool holiday special revenue would be allocated to Leeds and not distributed along the route.
That's not a
terrible allocation to make though.
If you close a seaside branch (e.g. Blackpool) then the Leeds tourists could head to Bridlington/ Morecambe etc instead - they could still spend that money to head to a different stretch of seaside.
Whereas, if you closed the lines to Leeds then those passengers wouldn't have any rail option (so wouldn't be buying any tickets).
That said, I think that the holidaymaker argument gets over-egged in such arguments - if a line was quiet for 90% of the year then a handful of "seaside specials" in the school holidays may not be sufficient to make it worthwhile.
Because his census methodology was also flawed, the figures were at best, a snapshot of the lines traffic and passenger numbers, effectively condemning lines that may have stood a fighting chance if the "real" picture had been shown
We've got much better technology nowadays to analyse ticket flows/ passenger behaviour/ numbers.
Advanced fares allow TOCs to analyse fare elasticity. Ticket barriers and CCTV mean that you can predict passenger numbers much better than ever. A 2017 version of Beeching would be a lot more precise, rather than the "blunt" approach that he took.
Beeching was working in the 1960s with the technology of that time. It's easy for us to dismiss the methodology in hindsight, but it's not like he had the ORCATS technology that we have nowadays.
Obviously that encourages people to trot out theories about how he only visited lines on a wet Wednesday in February (unless Market Day in the town was on a Wednesday, then he'd visit on a Tuesday to ensure lower numbers to count)...
MAY have led to not WOULD have led to. I do agree that proper cost cutting was not really tried in many cases.
The problem I have with the people saying that 1960s BR should have just rationalised things, made some light pruning, simplified things is that they tend to be the same ones complaining about how short sighted 1980s BR was for singling some branch lines/ simplifying junctions/ removing unused platforms/ selling off spare land.
Its not easy to buy the argument from such folk, when they moan about equivalent behaviour twenty years later always being a false economy.
Id wager that, had Beeching tried to mothball lots of lines (instead of completely closing), the same people would complain that this was false economy too (since you are lumbered with the maintenance/ infrastructure costs without any actual income and with none of the unquantifiable social benefits that tend to get trotted out in such threads).
So the "cost cutting" argument sounds good in hindsight, but I'm not so sure that a lot of the people using it as an excuse actually believe it - it's just a stick to beat the Doctor with.
it is worth noting that in recent memory of Beeching there had been a disastrous and long running national rail strike - did the BR board have the desire to take on the unions again in relation to wide ranging cuts and changes to terms and conditions, working practices, working times etc etc?
Good points.
Rightly or wrongly, it's always been a lot easier to close something down entirely than try to partially close it down - the Unions wouldn't have accepted poorer terms/ conditions/ wages - but there's not a lot they can do if you plan to close the whole thing.
Beeching's report was a product of the time - context is very important.