"What if" scenario- what does BR without Beeching look like?

[ChiefPlanner]

Could many of the uneconomical branch lines have been converted to tramways with a substantial decrease in operating costs?

The more "visionary" railway managers of the era , stripped out costs and ran the "basic railway" - the fine example of G Fiennes on the East Anglian patch being a fine one - these stripped down lines with Pay Trains and unmanned stations etc generally survived. And still do.

Tramway conversion would have need huge capital conversions , the BTC etc had already lost a huge sum of money from the ill fated Modernisation Plan , so more cash was not in the thinking of the Governments of the time ...(alas)

 

[dcbwhaley]

The more "visionary" railway managers of the era , stripped out costs and ran the "basic railway" - the fine example of G Fiennes on the East Anglian patch being a fine one - these stripped down lines with Pay Trains and unmanned stations etc generally survived. And still do.

Tramway conversion would have need huge capital conversions , the BTC etc had already lost a huge sum of money from the ill fated Modernisation Plan , so more cash was not in the thinking of the Governments of the time ...(alas)

Why would conversion have been so expensive? Trams can run on the same metals as trains but need much less supporting infrastructure in the way of signalling etc

 

[30907]

Why would conversion have been so expensive? Trams can run on the same metals as trains but need much less supporting infrastructure in the way of signalling etc

Bit of an issue about trams and trains sharing tracks, though, which certainly wasn't resolved in Germany till the 90s.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Why would conversion have been so expensive? Trams can run on the same metals as trains but need much less supporting infrastructure in the way of signalling etc

Whilst signalling could (in theory) be simplified , you wold have had to purchase (a) a new fleet (b) a means of power supply and distribution.

In 1960 Britain , there were just a handful of tram systems operating , trams were seen as "outmoded" etc and fit for scrapping. The car was everything , the bus to a lesser extent. By 1970 , only Blackpool was still in business.

Branch lines often also kept a (residual) freight service after the demise of passenger operations , for at least a while , and on some parts of the route(s)

 

[edwin_m]

Strip out all the features from a tramcar that aren't needed if it only runs on a railway (and you don't have money for electrification) and you end up with something very close to the 4-wheel railbuses that were actually tried on a few routes. The basic problem was that if the optimum trainload was small enough to be carried by a railbus the route wouldn't be worth keeping under Beeching's analysis.

Even today when the principle of tram-train operation is just about accepted, the relative cost per seat of a tram and a train and all the extra costs of tram-train conversion mean it's only worth considering if the route has a good reason to go off the railway and there is an existing tramway suitably positioned to allow this.

 

[PeterC]

Whilst signalling could (in theory) be simplified , you wold have had to purchase (a) a new fleet (b) a means of power supply and distribution.

In 1960 Britain , there were just a handful of tram systems operating , trams were seen as "outmoded" etc and fit for scrapping. The car was everything , the bus to a lesser extent. By 1970 , only Blackpool was still in business.

Branch lines often also kept a (residual) freight service after the demise of passenger operations , for at least a while , and on some parts of the route(s)

Remember the derision in the papers about the original DLR proposal which was to use trams with a few hundred yards of on street running to terminate at Bow rather than at Stratford.

 

[yorkie]

There was a thread about this only in July.

https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...at-does-br-without-beeching-look-like.167353/

You might consider using the search feature as IMHO you keep duplicating existing stuff

I have merged the threads. (I'm not sure which section is best, as it arguably could fit in either Specualtive Ideas or History & Nostalgia, but if anyone has any thoughts please feel free to contact us directly)

 

[43096]

Tramway conversion would have need huge capital conversions , the BTC etc had already lost a huge sum of money from the ill fated Modernisation Plan , so more cash was not in the thinking of the Governments of the time ...(alas)

If you were the Treasury and had ploughed a load of money into the railways as investment, only to see it wasted on a load of white elephants like various unreliable diesel types and huge new marshalling yards, then you would be rather reluctant to keep chucking more in. Add in an inability to control project costs, such that East Coast electrification was deferred (for 25 years!) as West Coast was way over budget and it is even easier to see why. There's some history lessons there as well that are still not being heeded: over-expensive electrification and an inability to control costs sounds all too familiar!

 

[yorksrob]

If you were the Treasury and had ploughed a load of money into the railways as investment, only to see it wasted on a load of white elephants like various unreliable diesel types and huge new marshalling yards, then you would be rather reluctant to keep chucking more in. Add in an inability to control project costs, such that East Coast electrification was deferred (for 25 years!) as West Coast was way over budget and it is even easier to see why. There's some history lessons there as well that are still not being heeded: over-expensive electrification and an inability to control costs sounds all too familiar!

Perhaps the idiot Government should have reformed the common carrier obligation earlier in that case then.

 

[43096]

Perhaps the idiot Government should have reformed the common carrier obligation earlier in that case then.

That would certainly have helped.

 

[RLBH]

Perhaps the idiot Government should have reformed the common carrier obligation earlier in that case then.

I really can't figure out what they were thinking with the 1953 Transport Act, which opened back up road haulage for the private sector (with a healthy dose of deregulation) whilst keeping the railways as a common carrier with regulated freight rates. That one decision (or lack thereof) was probably more damaging to the future of the railways than anything that they did to themselves.

 

[edwin_m]

I really can't figure out what they were thinking with the 1953 Transport Act, which opened back up road haulage for the private sector (with a healthy dose of deregulation) whilst keeping the railways as a common carrier with regulated freight rates. That one decision (or lack thereof) was probably more damaging to the future of the railways than anything that they did to themselves.

If common carrier status had gone earlier then would it just have make the decline in freight sooner and steeper, or would it have given the railway an incentive to concentrate on the profitable traffic? I don't think lack of money was an issue, as there was plenty of investment in freight in the Modernisation Plan, but most of it went into the wrong things like marshalling yards and low-speed unbraked wagons. Would some of it really have been spent on useful things like Freightliner, MGR and long wheelbase wagons 10 years earlier than it was? One of those items, the long wheelbase 75mph wagon, didn't really exist until after research had led to an understanding of vehicle dynamics in the 1960s.

 

[yorksrob]

I really can't figure out what they were thinking with the 1953 Transport Act, which opened back up road haulage for the private sector (with a healthy dose of deregulation) whilst keeping the railways as a common carrier with regulated freight rates. That one decision (or lack thereof) was probably more damaging to the future of the railways than anything that they did to themselves.

Indeed. It seems idealogically skewed, particularly as during this period, the Government weren't particularly anti-rail.

 

[yorksrob]

If common carrier status had gone earlier then would it just have make the decline in freight sooner and steeper, or would it have given the railway an incentive to concentrate on the profitable traffic? I don't think lack of money was an issue, as there was plenty of investment in freight in the Modernisation Plan, but most of it went into the wrong things like marshalling yards and low-speed unbraked wagons. Would some of it really have been spent on useful things like Freightliner, MGR and long wheelbase wagons 10 years earlier than it was? One of those items, the long wheelbase 75mph wagon, didn't really exist until after research had led to an understanding of vehicle dynamics in the 1960s.

If the obligation had gone, the unprofitable freight traffic would have gone, and we could have seen the investment spent on more useful things, such as electrification (note the successful Kent electrification scheme).

One would have hoped ultimately for a more considered approach, looking at the value of routes to communities and for the resilience of the network as a whole, rather than the "slash everything we can get away with" approach which held sway between 1962 and 1976.

 

[RLBH]

If the obligation had gone, the unprofitable freight traffic would have gone, and we could have seen the investment spent on more useful things, such as electrification (note the successful Kent electrification scheme).

One of the caveats about spending the investment on useful things, is knowing what the useful things are.

Before Beeching, British Railways didn't really 'do' management accounting, so there was no understanding of how much it cost to provide a service. Presumably that was partly a cultural thing, and partly because thanks to the common carrier obligation there wasn't the option to increase freight rates or discontinue unprofitable traffic. The only options were to discontinue service altogether, or continue operating as though lorries didn't exist.

Probably the best thing that the BTC could have done would have been to find a 'Doctor Beeching' to become Chairman of the Railways Executive in 1948, to bring in modern industrial management practices and figure out how the railways ought to be run. That would have been the time for it too - wartime Operations Research (a British specialty) laid a lot of groundwork for industrial management, but was largely ignored by British industry.

 

[frodshamfella]

Just one company looking after rail needs in our small island ....how much easier would that be

 

[ChiefPlanner]

If the obligation had gone, the unprofitable freight traffic would have gone, and we could have seen the investment spent on more useful things, such as electrification (note the successful Kent electrification scheme).

One would have hoped ultimately for a more considered approach, looking at the value of routes to communities and for the resilience of the network as a whole, rather than the "slash everything we can get away with" approach which held sway between 1962 and 1976.

The problem in the very early 1950's was that a lot of the UK heavy industry was in a very poor way - take the coal industry - the critical needs of 1939-1945 meant there was no way that any rationalisation or modernisation was possible (ergo - small pick and shovel mines in my part of South Wales were kept and worked flat out) - come the Atlee era , they were still needed (partly for exports to ruined Europe) - the railways therefore had to carry out shunting and movement for places that produced maybe 10 16t wagons of coal a day - sometimes only going very short distances. Steel production was not to get big new integrated plants for about 10 years , ditto power stations. Britain NEEDED the railways , they needed investment - but first the steel shortages etc had to be overcome and things like deferred track relaying had to be done - by the time much of the arrears and general sorting out had been done - the great motor was in full ascendancy and we know the rest. This could have been a much longer post but I am cooking dinner for 5 ! ...

 

[yorksrob]

One of the caveats about spending the investment on useful things, is knowing what the useful things are.

Before Beeching, British Railways didn't really 'do' management accounting, so there was no understanding of how much it cost to provide a service. Presumably that was partly a cultural thing, and partly because thanks to the common carrier obligation there wasn't the option to increase freight rates or discontinue unprofitable traffic. The only options were to discontinue service altogether, or continue operating as though lorries didn't exist.

Probably the best thing that the BTC could have done would have been to find a 'Doctor Beeching' to become Chairman of the Railways Executive in 1948, to bring in modern industrial management practices and figure out how the railways ought to be run. That would have been the time for it too - wartime Operations Research (a British specialty) laid a lot of groundwork for industrial management, but was largely ignored by British industry.

Accounting is fairly key. I've read that there was a switch in accounting during the 1960's in which only receipts from stations on the line were counted towards the profit of that line. This fatally undermined the case for several railways (the line to Hunstanton and Shoreham to Horsham via Steyning are a couple of examples where I've seen this mentioned).

Imagine if we still had a parallel route from London to Brighton via Dorking and Steyning, double track, probably electrified today !

 

[yorksrob]

The problem in the very early 1950's was that a lot of the UK heavy industry was in a very poor way - take the coal industry - the critical needs of 1939-1945 meant there was no way that any rationalisation or modernisation was possible (ergo - small pick and shovel mines in my part of South Wales were kept and worked flat out) - come the Atlee era , they were still needed (partly for exports to ruined Europe) - the railways therefore had to carry out shunting and movement for places that produced maybe 10 16t wagons of coal a day - sometimes only going very short distances. Steel production was not to get big new integrated plants for about 10 years , ditto power stations. Britain NEEDED the railways , they needed investment - but first the steel shortages etc had to be overcome and things like deferred track relaying had to be done - by the time much of the arrears and general sorting out had been done - the great motor was in full ascendancy and we know the rest. This could have been a much longer post but I am cooking dinner for 5 ! ...

I suppose it eould have been better if the coal board had been responsible for those movements - they could have invested in the yards and stock where necessary and taken the risk for their decisions.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I suppose it eould have been better if the coal board had been responsible for those movements - they could have invested in the yards and stock where necessary and taken the risk for their decisions.

The state of the privatised pre-war colliery companies was pretty poor (1926 was all about poor economics of coal production versus falling markets = desire to cut coal miners wages) . then you had the 1930's slump - the heroic efforts of WW2 with a diminished workforce doing often 6 days a week and a push for 7 day working in 1945 - slogan "Coal Sunday" - which was one too much) , - if anything the new NCB was in a worse state than the Big 4 and (frankly) had no interest in the railway and rail operations than in getting enough empty wagons and loaded ones cleared. Later on - they had no intention of paying for MGR wagons etc ....

Just goes to show that the railways were not in a functional bubble , and judgement on why they failed to do something in the early 1950's , is simplistic in the extreme.

 

[Journeyman]

Accounting is fairly key. I've read that there was a switch in accounting during the 1960's in which only receipts from stations on the line were counted towards the profit of that line. This fatally undermined the case for several railways (the line to Hunstanton and Shoreham to Horsham via Steyning are a couple of examples where I've seen this mentioned).

Imagine if we still had a parallel route from London to Brighton via Dorking and Steyning, double track, probably electrified today !

I think a lot of people are unduly harsh on the measuring systems used in the Beeching era, though. It's always been true that some parts of the railway were massively profitable, and others lost absolutely horrific amounts of money, but until the 1950s, no-one knew which bits were which, and didn't need to because the railway made a profit overall. It's only when the network began to make a loss, which progressively grew bigger and bigger, that someone needed to work out where the money was going.

Beeching was regularly criticised for the crudity of his approach (infrequent surveys, over-simplistic accounting methods etc) but I think he did the best he could, given the options available, and genuinely attempted to work out what lines were potentially profitable and which ones were hopeless basket cases. He wasn't part of an anti-rail conspiracy, he was just limited by the terms of his brief, and the resources and techniques available.

Today, you can instantly pull out loads of statistics on revenue and profits from the data stored on every single transaction on the railway, but back then you couldn't do that at all, and you had to try and measure things as best you could.

 

[tbtc]

Just goes to show that the railways were not in a functional bubble , and judgement on why they failed to do something in the early 1950's , is simplistic in the extreme.

True!

I think a lot of people are unduly harsh on the measuring systems used in the Beeching era, though. It's always been true that some parts of the railway were massively profitable, and others lost absolutely horrific amounts of money, but until the 1950s, no-one knew which bits were which, and didn't need to because the railway made a profit overall. It's only when the network began to make a loss, which progressively grew bigger and bigger, that someone needed to work out where the money was going.

Beeching was regularly criticised for the crudity of his approach (infrequent surveys, over-simplistic accounting methods etc) but I think he did the best he could, given the options available, and genuinely attempted to work out what lines were potentially profitable and which ones were hopeless basket cases. He wasn't part of an anti-rail conspiracy, he was just limited by the terms of his brief, and the resources and techniques available.

Today, you can instantly pull out loads of statistics on revenue and profits from the data stored on every single transaction on the railway, but back then you couldn't do that at all, and you had to try and measure things as best you could.

Well argued points - there's a lot that could have been better in hindsight but given the knowledge/ tools available at the time I think Beeching did the best that could have been done.

We still have some basket case railways nowadays (where it'd be cheaper to put everyone in taxis), so it's not as if he removed all unprofitable lines - but as the first country with railways (who allowed private companies to build railways in fairly haphazard fashion, generally based upon Victorian freight needs) there was always going to be a reckoning once someone started looking at the "books".

Problem is, a lot of the anti-Beeching stuff gets muddled in with conspiracy theories ("he only visited our line on a wet Tuesday in February") and he gets the blame for things that happened much later (e.g. Woodhead - I'm sure if the S&C had closed in the '80s he'd have been blamed for that too!).

One indication of the decent job that he did is that there's not a lot of compelling cases for lines that shouldn't have closed - certainly some marginal decisions (as would be expected) but most of the regrets are along the lines of "this would be a useful diversionary route for a couple of weekends a year, if still open today" rather than any huge losses. One of the most referenced lines that could have stayed open was Hull - Beverley - York, but since the Hull - Selby - York line has only recently been upgraded to an hourly service, it's not as if spreading that demand between two routes would have meant both would be busy. If that's the level of "grey area" that we are quibbling over then I think he did a pretty good job.

Nowadays, when I've got a phone in my pocket more powerful than the technology that landed rockets on the moon, it'd be a whole different situation - LENNON etc make things much easier to calculate - but given the tools available over fifty years ago (and the fact that nobody had done something like this previously, meaning no template and precious little record keeping), I don't think we can criticise the guy.

 

[yorksrob]

I think a lot of people are unduly harsh on the measuring systems used in the Beeching era, though. It's always been true that some parts of the railway were massively profitable, and others lost absolutely horrific amounts of money, but until the 1950s, no-one knew which bits were which, and didn't need to because the railway made a profit overall. It's only when the network began to make a loss, which progressively grew bigger and bigger, that someone needed to work out where the money was going.

Beeching was regularly criticised for the crudity of his approach (infrequent surveys, over-simplistic accounting methods etc) but I think he did the best he could, given the options available, and genuinely attempted to work out what lines were potentially profitable and which ones were hopeless basket cases. He wasn't part of an anti-rail conspiracy, he was just limited by the terms of his brief, and the resources and techniques available.

Today, you can instantly pull out loads of statistics on revenue and profits from the data stored on every single transaction on the railway, but back then you couldn't do that at all, and you had to try and measure things as best you could.

Well, I think it's fair to say that Beeching had a reasonable stab at interpreting passenger numbers - to his eternal credit, he was open about the methodology so that we can try to understand what he was trying to do.

However, it's not good enough to just come up with statistics, one has to interpret them properly and know their limitations. The change in accounting for passenger numbers at individual stations is a case in point. I'd be interested in knowing what the motivation for this change was, and how it was expected to improve the understanding of what was going on on the network. Nevertheless, any sort of passenger accounting which doesn't take account of incoming traffic, must surely set alarm bells ringing for anyone who wishes to use statistics to understand the what is going on.

Then there are those untried assumptions - people would railhead to a nearer station, people will go another route, people will catch a bus instead. With a whole network to play with, there really was no excuse for someone not to look more deeply into these questions between the publication of the report and the early 70's when closures wound down. On another thread, you criticised the Southern Region for using technology and design which was tried and tested and succeeded in moving passengers from A to B for decades. I simply don't see how you can argue that it was acceptable to deprive whole communities of a railway link on the basis of untested assumptions which remained untested until reality proved them to be untrue.

Getting back to my example of the line from Horsham to Steyning, the available statistics showed that its passenger usage had grown substantially between the inter-war years and the late 1950's, albeit dropping back a little by the early 1960's when closure was first mooted. Available statistics showed that its operating deficit (this was also disputed as it was thought that maintenance costs were overstated) had been slashed from over £140k to around £48k just through dieselisation. The case rumbled on through the 60's, yet without any consideration to any further rationalisation, such as unstaffing stations, single tracking etc, the line was closed with many managers in the area expressing misgivings. The chaos we have every time the mainline to Brighton is blocked is just one of the negative consequences of that failure.

 

[Journeyman]

given the knowledge/ tools available at the time I think Beeching did the best that could have been done.

We still have some basket case railways nowadays (where it'd be cheaper to put everyone in taxis), so it's not as if he removed all unprofitable lines - but as the first country with railways (who allowed private companies to build railways in fairly haphazard fashion, generally based upon Victorian freight needs) there was always going to be a reckoning once someone started looking at the "books".

Ironically, one of the worst legacies of Beeching is that people are now far too scared to close basket-case railways and stations. I'd say there's a fair bit we should probably be looking at - the decision to throw two million quid at rebuilding Breich, when closing it was the obvious things to do, is one of the most egregious wastes of taxpayers' money I've ever seen.

Problem is, a lot of the anti-Beeching stuff gets muddled in with conspiracy theories ("he only visited our line on a wet Tuesday in February") and he gets the blame for things that happened much later (e.g. Woodhead - I'm sure if the S&C had closed in the '80s he'd have been blamed for that too!).

Beeching is a convenient bogeyman for people to get angry with, because he's so closely associated with closures. Never mind that all he actually did was get a bit more methodical about things that had been going on haphazardly for years. He probably saved a few lines in the process.

One indication of the decent job that he did is that there's not a lot of compelling cases for lines that shouldn't have closed - certainly some marginal decisions (as would be expected) but most of the regrets are along the lines of "this would be a useful diversionary route for a couple of weekends a year, if still open today" rather than any huge losses. One of the most referenced lines that could have stayed open was Hull - Beverley - York, but since the Hull - Selby - York line has only recently been upgraded to an hourly service, it's not as if spreading that demand between two routes would have meant both would be busy. If that's the level of "grey area" that we are quibbling over then I think he did a pretty good job.

I think you're right - it's all well and good levelling criticism at him for lines that became useful later as a result of changed travel habits or population growth, but the guy didn't have a crystal ball, and he had to take into account the way things were going at the time - a huge growth in private car ownership, more foreign holidays cutting down on the amount of seasonal travel to seaside resorts, and changing leisure habits, among other things. Demand for train travel was dropping and that trend didn't seem to be ending anytime soon. Also, most people in the sixties lived fairly close to where they worked, and long-distance commuting was much less common than it is now. That's why I can forgive him for closures like the Waverley Route. The Borders Railway has been very successful since it reopened, but only because the economy of the area it serves has transformed completely over the last fifty years. In 1968, you could probably count the number of daily commuters from Galashiels to Edinburgh on the fingers of one hand.

 

[Journeyman]

Well, I think it's fair to say that Beeching had a reasonable stab at interpreting passenger numbers - to his eternal credit, he was open about the methodology so that we can try to understand what he was trying to do.

However, it's not good enough to just come up with statistics, one has to interpret them properly and know their limitations. The change in accounting for passenger numbers at individual stations is a case in point. I'd be interested in knowing what the motivation for this change was, and how it was expected to improve the understanding of what was going on on the network. Nevertheless, any sort of passenger accounting which doesn't take account of incoming traffic, must surely set alarm bells ringing for anyone who wishes to use statistics to understand the what is going on.

I think it's more cock-up than conspiracy, and I suspect it's probably just that it was the easiest way to measure things. Remember that a whole heap of analytical tools available to us now just weren't there - the resources Beeching had to work with were tiny, and he acknowledges that lack of time and staff in his report. He did the best he could at the time.

Then there are those untried assumptions - people would railhead to a nearer station, people will go another route, people will catch a bus instead. With a whole network to play with, there really was no excuse for someone not to look more deeply into these questions between the publication of the report and the early 70's when closures wound down.

All things considered, I think they were reasonable assumptions. Personally, I've moved from a town that has a station to one five miles away that doesn't, and although I have access to a car, I still use the bus to get to the station for onward travel by train on a regular basis, and a lot of other people do too. Human beings are complicated things, and I'd say, once again, this is an area where our understanding has greatly increased in recent years. At the end of the day, he was there to try and stem the absolutely massive losses BR was making, and it needed to be done quickly. If it hadn't been, the situation would have got worse, and we'd have seen something like Serpell's more drastic options adopted instead.

On another thread, you criticised the Southern Region for using technology and design which was tried and tested and succeeded in moving passengers from A to B for decades. I simply don't see how you can argue that it was acceptable to deprive whole communities of a railway link on the basis of untested assumptions which remained untested until reality proved them to be untrue.

Quite what your fixation with slam-door stock has to do with this, I've no idea. Many of the communities deprived of rail services were full of people who never used the trains, and in those circumstances, if the line is losing money hand over fist, what other decision can reasonably be made? I think the Basic Railway concept was a good one and it saved a few marginal routes. It could possibly have saved more if it had come earlier, but many of those would have been stays of execution at best. Many, many of the lines closed during the Beeching era had never even repaid the costs of their construction.

The chaos we have every time the mainline to Brighton is blocked is just one of the negative consequences of that failure.

Retaining expensive infrastructure for the few occasions when that happens is just not a viable option. The railway is not a theme-park for enthusiasts. I know profit isn't everything, but the subsidy for the network is already bigger than a lot of people can stomach, and having back-up routes for everything that under normal circumstances would just cart fresh air about is a luxury we can't afford.

 

[Calthrop]

Problem is, a lot of the anti-Beeching stuff gets muddled in with conspiracy theories ("he only visited our line on a wet Tuesday in February") and he gets the blame for things that happened much later (e.g. Woodhead - I'm sure if the S&C had closed in the '80s he'd have been blamed for that too!).

Beeching is a convenient bogeyman for people to get angry with, because he's so closely associated with closures. Never mind that all he actually did was get a bit more methodical about things that had been going on haphazardly for years. He probably saved a few lines in the process.

(My bolding above) -- and earlier, too: I've heard someone attribute to Beeching, the 1929 passenger closure of a particular line.

I figure -- not altogether facetiously -- that Beeching has become a byword and part of the popular vocabulary, essentially as a villainous destroyer of rail-wise lovable things, because his name sounds altogether right for that role. The humorous magazine Punch -- a venerable, and gentler, Private Eye -- commented at the time of the Report (whose recommendations it essentially supported) on the imaginability of a verb "to beech" -- to remove dead wood -- hence Beeching: they opined, "it all works out with the appropriateness of a charm".

 

[Journeyman]

(My bolding above) -- and earlier, too: I've heard someone attribute to Beeching, the 1929 passenger closure of a particular line.

I figure -- not altogether facetiously -- that Beeching has become a byword and part of the popular vocabulary, essentially as a villainous destroyer of rail-wise lovable things, because his name sounds altogether right for that role. The humorous magazine Punch -- a venerable, and gentler, Private Eye -- commented at the time of the Report (whose recommendations it essentially supported) on the imaginability of a verb "to beech" -- to remove dead wood -- hence Beeching: they opined, "it all works out with the appropriateness of a charm".

I think he's seen as this evil, uncaring, profit-obsessed bureaucrat with an agenda to destroy everything, but all the evidence suggests the complete opposite - he was called in to do the job because he was a successful and knowledgeable businessman who had previously dealt with major challenges, and had the expertise that the railway needed. Reading the report in full - which I know very few people have done - it's abundantly clear that he was unsentimental and took a realistic view, but also wanted the railway to be a success, and he was horrified by the mess that he unearthed. It's often forgotten that there was a second part to his plan that targeted investment in areas where growth could be achieved, but it wasn't properly carried out.

Certainly, I think he was just a normal person doing a job, and he sought to do it as best he could. Ultimately it was down to the government to decided what they did with what he presented to them.

Interestingly enough, I've met one of his descendents, Vicky Beeching, who is a speaker and writer on faith, theology and human rights - she's very nice, and has made the odd gag about her somewhat controversial ancestor! I think he was a great uncle or something...

 

[RLBH]

It's often forgotten that there was a second part to his plan that targeted investment in areas where growth could be achieved, but it wasn't properly carried out.

The odd thing is, I've known about the second part of Beeching's report since I was about eight. I had a very odd upbringing, it would seem.

Ironically, when someone does admit to having heard of the 1965 report, they generally only speak of the map of 'routes selected for development', and claim that everything else was to be closed. The report says nothing of the sort! Ironically, even some of the routes that Beeching recommended for development (Woodhead and Glenfarg to name two) have since been closed.

 

[Journeyman]

The odd thing is, I've known about the second part of Beeching's report since I was about eight. I had a very odd upbringing, it would seem.

Ironically, when someone does admit to having heard of the 1965 report, they generally only speak of the map of 'routes selected for development', and claim that everything else was to be closed. The report says nothing of the sort! Ironically, even some of the routes that Beeching recommended for development (Woodhead and Glenfarg to name two) have since been closed.

Haha! I only had a vague idea of what was in it until I came across an original, rather battered, copy in my university library about twenty years ago. I studied it in some depth as part of my Transport Planning degree, and I now own a facsimile copy. Every bit of research I've done has led me to conclude that:

• there was no Beeching/Marples anti-rail conspiracy;
• there were serious limitations in the data available, which Beeching recognised and attempted to make allowances for;
• he was serious about his brief to make the railways a "going concern" and understood the implications of what he was doing; and
• given the circumstances, and the tools and resources available at the time, his conclusions were sound and the report can be robustly defended.

There's very, very few Beeching-era closures that I think were serious errors of judgement. Of the two you mention that weren't on his hit list, I think Woodhead was sensible, and Glenfarg rather foolish, as it's lumbered Scotland with much longer and slower journeys north of Edinburgh ever since.

 

[coppercapped]

Hallelujah! Thank you Journeyman, tbtc, Chief Planner and others for your posts.

I entirely agree.

But unfortunately logic and cold hard data won't deter the romantic idealists and the conspiracy theorists from continuing to peddle their nonsense.