Shapps to reverse Beeching cuts

[WatcherZero]

Do you have a link for that change?

If that's true, then I'd have thought that an obvious course of action is for anyone living in a constituency where a sensible possible re-opening might exist to write to their MP and local councillors about it. Sadly (or perhaps, happily), I live in a constituency and borough where, to the best of my knowledge, no Beeching cuts took place, so there's probably not a lot I can do in that regard.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/re-opening-beeching-era-lines-and-stations

 

[yorksrob]

It might help some to understand the situation back in 1963 when Beeching produced his report (it makes interesting reading), and subsequently as passenger numbers continued to spiral downwards until the Serpell Report of 1982.

This was a period of almost freefall, at a time when passenger railways in the USA all but died. The car was king and we all had to have one. Rows of terraced houses near stations and bus routes were left behind as many aspired to new houses built in the leafy outskirts with gardens, away from stations and frequent buses. Factories were being built on new sites unconnected to rail for passengers or freight. There was a lot more to it than motorways.

Abandoned railway trackbeds, station yards and strategic bridges were lost to local and regional road schemes and all sorts of retail and housing developments.

We now know that when Serpell wrote his 1982 report the downward plunge had about stopped. He wasn't to know that then. See the figures and you may understand the panic in government. The birth of the Pacer generations of units. (My local interest is the singling in 1985 of the tracks through Dore & Totley, justifiable when the total of passenger services across that section had been reduced to 3 tph.)

We are in a different age and can't put the clock back. Reopening facilities closed 60 years ago can only work in a few places where subsequent development has changed the original rationale for closure AND there is clear space to build new facilities and tracks at justifiable cost.

The following figures are extracted from ORR Passenger Rail Usage showing relatively stable passenger numbers into the 1960s when things went rapidly downhill,

"Passenger journeys by year - Table 12.5
Number of franchised passenger journeys made (millions)
Great Britain
Annual data (calendar year): 1950 to 1984
Annual data (financial year): 1985-86 to 2018-19

Financial year Total passenger journeys

1950 1,010.0
1951 1,030.0
1952 1,017.0
1953 1,015.0
1954 1,020.0
1955 994.0
1956 1,029.0
1957 1,101.0
1958 1,090.0
1959 1,069.0
1960 1,037.0
1961 1,025.0
1962 965.0
1963 938.0
1964 928.0
1965 865.0
1966 835.0
1967 837.0
1968 831.0
1969 806.0
1970 824.0
1971 816.0
1972 754.0
1973 728.0
1974 733.0
1975 730.0
1976 702.0
1977 702.0
1978 724.0
1979 748.0
1980 760.0
1981 719.0
1982 630.0
1983 694.0
1984 702.0
1985-86 686.0
1986-87 738.0
1987-88 798.0
1988-89 822.0
1989-90 812.0
1990-91 810.0
1991-92 792.0
1992-93 770.0
1993-94 740.0
1994-95 735.1
1995-96 761.2
1996-97 800.2
1997-98 845.7
1998-99 891.9
1999-00 931.0
2000-01 956.6
2001-02 959.6
2002-03 975.5
2003-04 1,011.7
2004-05 1,039.5
2005-06 1,076.5
2006-07 1,145.0
2007-08 1,218.1
2008-09 1,266.5
2009-10 1,257.9
2010-11 1,353.8
2011-12 1,460.0
2012-13 1,500.9
2013-14 1,586.5
2014-15 1,653.7
2015-16 1,715.9
2016-17 1,729.1
2017-18 1,705.5
2018-19 1,756.3

Source(s): LENNON ticketing and revenue database, Train Operating Companies (TOCs), Office of Rail and Road (ORR) and Department for Transport (DfT)"

It's interesting that the passenger numbers were stable right up until 1961/62 when Marples and Beeching were formulating the closure policy. It suggests that the policy wasn't a result of falling passenger numbers, but rather precipitated the decline.

 

[Edders23]

the rise post 1982 is largely down to the government policy of engineered house price rises to go with the move to a service/sales economy meaning people started to move further from their place of work resulting in a need for more traffic

an interesting comparison would be with road journeys which I would expect to show an even higher rise over the same period

 

[underbank]

Seems to me a slightly dubious school of thought given that the Greyhound Bridge route suffers from the very obvious disadvantage of having no access to Lancaster station, other than by an awkward reversal at Green Ayre. Would BR/Beeching really have opted to preserve such an awkward route?

Also, although that line now passes well used industrial and retail developments, I'm guessing that back in the 60s most of that land would have been green fields - in contrast to the Bare Lane line, which serves a well-populated centre at Bare Lane. That would seem to imply strong reasons for keeping the Bare Lane route in preference to the Green Ayre route.

Whilst what you say is sound, the old line went through far more densely populated areas than Bare Lane, such as Scale Hall (where there was a station), Torrisholme, Westgate and Lancaster Road (would have been easy enough to build a new station close to Torrisholme as land was available back then), not to mention the old triangle which directly led to West End and Heysham. At the Lancaster end, Green Ayre station is more convenient for the North of the city, the bus station, etc., Locally, many people bemoan the lack of the line which would be ideal today as it covers a far broader area than Bare Lane. Plenty of people don't use the current line because Lancaster station is quite a a way from the town centre.

 

[Fleetwood Boy]

Am I the only one who thinks that illustrating this announcement with a line that wasn't closed by Beeching (wasn't even proposed by the Good Doctor) shows how much of a populist soundbite this is?

I'm all for sensible re-opening schemes, but providing Titfield Thunderbolts all over the country really is just squandering scarce resources. Railways need to do what they do best - which is carry dense passenger loads very efficiently. This largely means any re-openings should be close to major urban centres (to provide alternatives top the car for commuting), alongside HS2 to relieve capacity constraints on the existing network. Lower density flows, I'm afraid, are best served by buses - still no announcement about enhanced government funding for that, £500m would get you a lot of new bus services and probably therefore greater benefit for public transport users than a few reopened Thunderbolts.

 

[Killingworth]

the rise post 1982 is largely down to the government policy of engineered house price rises to go with the move to a service/sales economy meaning people started to move further from their place of work resulting in a need for more traffic

an interesting comparison would be with road journeys which I would expect to show an even higher rise over the same period

Many factors. It would be interesting to overlay the growth in university education with the growth in passenger numbers and car ownership. In 1960 most had left school at 15 or 16 and worked close to where they grew up. By 2000 it was very different with students at universities long distances from home and then jobs in other locations, making friends to visit from around the globe.

The Student Railcard was a brilliant marketing initiative! Following on from Thomas the Tank Engine, of course

 

[yorksrob]

Am I the only one who thinks that illustrating this announcement with a line that wasn't closed by Beeching (wasn't even proposed by the Good Doctor) shows how much of a populist soundbite this is?

I'm all for sensible re-opening schemes, but providing Titfield Thunderbolts all over the country really is just squandering scarce resources. Railways need to do what they do best - which is carry dense passenger loads very efficiently. This largely means any re-openings should be close to major urban centres (to provide alternatives top the car for commuting), alongside HS2 to relieve capacity constraints on the existing network. Lower density flows, I'm afraid, are best served by buses - still no announcement about enhanced government funding for that, £500m would get you a lot of new bus services and probably therefore greater benefit for public transport users than a few reopened Thunderbolts.

Are you suggesting the Blyth and Tyne is a Titfield Thunderbolt not serving urban commuter areas ?

 

[Fleetwood Boy]

Are you suggesting the Blyth and Tyne is a Titfield Thunderbolt not serving urban commuter areas ?

No, I'm not ....

 

[yorksrob]

No, I'm not ....

The Fylde coast isn't particularly bucolic either.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Are you suggesting the Blyth and Tyne is a Titfield Thunderbolt not serving urban commuter areas ?

It ought to be as succesfull as the Ebbw Vale line re-opening was in stimulating rail traffic (and the local area)

 

[yorksrob]

It ought to be as succesfull as the Ebbw Vale line re-opening was in stimulating rail traffic (and the local area)

Indeed. We'll wonder how we ever managed without it !

 

[3141]

Unlike most posters here I was around long before Beeching. There had also been railway closures long before Beeching. Many lines were losing money as was BR overall. The myth that Marples wanted closures so that he and his friends could benefit by building roads has already been dismissed in this thread, but some people love to believe it. Most lines that were losing money had little traffic (relatively or absolutely), so why would a replacement road be built on the same route? Apart from short sections to provide a by-pass or improve an existing road. People wanted cars. From the late fifties onwards new cars became more readily available, more people bought one either new or secondhand. and as car ownership increased rail usage declined. Car owners wanted better roads. The post-war peak in UK coal production was in 1952. That meant another big use of rail was in decline.

Whist BR undoubtedly massaged the figures to justify some closures, the overall policy made a great deal of sense at the time, and it wasn't just a matter of a handful of villains and stooges.

 

[Killingworth]

To illustrate how closures had been going on well before Beeching. Most of the mileage carried few trains and very few passengers so the biggest falls in total national passenger numbers weren't from these lines. A steam engine with 2 or 3 carriages and a handful of passengers travelling at inconvenient times of the day was quite normal, as I recall from a 1957 journey from Penrith to Darlington.

From Wikipaedia

. The list below shows 7000 miles of closures:[citation needed]

Year Total length closed
1950 150 miles (240 km)
1951 275 miles (443 km)
1952 300 miles (480 km)
1953 275 miles (443 km)
1954 to 1957 500 miles (800 km)
1958 150 miles (240 km)
1959 350 miles (560 km)
1960 175 miles (282 km)
1961 150 miles (240 km)
1962 780 miles (1,260 km)
Beeching report published
1963 324 miles (521 km)
1964 1,058 miles (1,703 km)
1965 600 miles (970 km)
1966 750 miles (1,210 km)
1967 300 miles (480 km)
1968 400 miles (640 km)
1969 250 miles (400 km)
1970 275 miles (443 km)
1971 23 miles (37 km)
1972 50 miles (80 km)
1973 35 miles (56 km) ]

 

[Roose]

So this proposal is about one existing line being put back into passenger service and the only closed line in England not to have been built on or converted into a bypass UNTRUE because it did actually carry freight up to a few years ago

The whole point of the "Beeching cuts" was to release railway lines for conversion into roads UNTRUE thus enabling Ernest Marples business interests to prosper. In reality it was councils and other interests who saw an opportunity to grab prime development land except in Scotland

Just about every line closed was destroyed with indecent haste so you simply cannot reverse the closures and I believe one of the preferred options for the Fleetwood line is to add it to the existing tram network UNTRUE

Hyperbole does not make a convincing argument.

 

[yorksrob]

Unlike most posters here I was around long before Beeching. There had also been railway closures long before Beeching. Many lines were losing money as was BR overall. The myth that Marples wanted closures so that he and his friends could benefit by building roads has already been dismissed in this thread, but some people love to believe it. Most lines that were losing money had little traffic (relatively or absolutely), so why would a replacement road be built on the same route? Apart from short sections to provide a by-pass or improve an existing road. People wanted cars. From the late fifties onwards new cars became more readily available, more people bought one either new or secondhand. and as car ownership increased rail usage declined. Car owners wanted better roads. The post-war peak in UK coal production was in 1952. That meant another big use of rail was in decline.

Whist BR undoubtedly massaged the figures to justify some closures, the overall policy made a great deal of sense at the time, and it wasn't just a matter of a handful of villains and stooges.

To illustrate how closures had been going on well before Beeching. Most of the mileage carried few trains and very few passengers so the biggest falls in total national passenger numbers weren't from these lines. A steam engine with 2 or 3 carriages and a handful of passengers travelling at inconvenient times of the day was quite normal, as I recall from a 1957 journey from Penrith to Darlington.

From Wikipaedia

Although if the regions were already closing unnecessary routes, it begs the question as to why a national policy to massage figures and push through closures was necessary.

The route closure programme strikes me as one of those policies which may have had some merit in the correct circumstances, but was allowed to go on and on in the face of all evidence, way beyond any justifiable extent.

 

[RLBH]

It's interesting that the passenger numbers were stable right up until 1961/62 when Marples and Beeching were formulating the closure policy. It suggests that the policy wasn't a result of falling passenger numbers, but rather precipitated the decline.

Or maybe increasing car ownership and car use destroyed the economics of what were already quiet rural lines very early on, prompting their closure. The continuing rise of car ownership led to reducing rail use in more urban areas in parallel with, but not directly linked to, the closure of rail lines. That increase in car use then allowed people to move to areas that had previously been served by rail.

Either scenario is just conjecture, of course. Though it's telling that Beeching's report goes into far more detail on freight than into passenger services. He was tasked with making Britsh Rail profitable, and freight is where the money used to be.

Beeching was also very critical of the effect that cars had in urban areas, and of the fact that Royal Mail and British Rail were competing for the same parcels business. As Chairman of British Rail he had no ability to influence these areas, and was expected to do what was best for the railways in the circumstances of the time.

 

[yorksrob]

Or maybe increasing car ownership and car use destroyed the economics of what were already quiet rural lines very early on, prompting their closure. The continuing rise of car ownership led to reducing rail use in more urban areas in parallel with, but not directly linked to, the closure of rail lines. That increase in car use then allowed people to move to areas that had previously been served by rail.

Either scenario is just conjecture, of course. Though it's telling that Beeching's report goes into far more detail on freight than into passenger services. He was tasked with making Britsh Rail profitable, and freight is where the money used to be.

Beeching was also very critical of the effect that cars had in urban areas, and of the fact that Royal Mail and British Rail were competing for the same parcels business. As Chairman of British Rail he had no ability to influence these areas, and was expected to do what was best for the railways in the circumstances of the time.

Yes, there is indeed a freight bias. Of course, the whole policy of expecting the railway to be profitable was wrong - but it took time to change that.

Unfortunately the policy lead to routes with bouyant passenger numbers, such as Christs Hospital to Shoreham, which had increasing passenger numbers right up until the threat of closure blighted it, being run down and closed.

This is why I find the narrative that the trains were all empty, highly disingenuous.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Was not British car ownership an expected part of life at that time, as the British car industry were a major employer and not all their products were made for the export market?

 

[Meerkat]

Yes, there is indeed a freight bias. Of course, the whole policy of expecting the railway to be profitable was wrong - but it took time to change that.

Why? It had been profitable, and there did appear to be a chance of modernising and making it profitable again before the world started changing very fast.

 

[yorksrob]

Why? It had been profitable, and there did appear to be a chance of modernising and making it profitable again before the world started changing very fast.

Because the passenger service was/is a public service that people relied on. That should have been factored into policy from the start.

 

[RLBH]

Because the passenger service was/is a public service that people relied on. That should have been factored into policy from the start.

But it wasn't. If a British Rail chairman at that time had advocated any policy which involved asking for an ongoing subsidy to provide a public service, he'd have been asked to tender his resignation. The railway was expected to be profitable. It had been profitable until relatively recently. Abandoning that would have been a major change in attitude, which didn't happen until after (and perhaps because of) the closures.

It would be fascinating to get hold of the working documents for The Reshaping of British Railways. Appendix 2 of the report shows the logic used to decide which lines should have passenger service withdrawn, but illustrates it with handful of lines. Reassessing the data today might paint a different picture, or it might confirm Beeching's assessment. It would be interesting to know which!

 

[bastien]

It's interesting that the passenger numbers were stable right up until 1961/62 when Marples and Beeching were formulating the closure policy. It suggests that the policy wasn't a result of falling passenger numbers, but rather precipitated the decline.

Exactly - if you hear your branch line may be closing soon, you're not going to wait until after that's happened to buy a car (or move away), are you?

It's like the exact reverse of the Crossrail-induced property boom.

 

[yorksrob]

But it wasn't. If a British Rail chairman at that time had advocated any policy which involved asking for an ongoing subsidy to provide a public service, he'd have been asked to tender his resignation. The railway was expected to be profitable. It had been profitable until relatively recently. Abandoning that would have been a major change in attitude, which didn't happen until after (and perhaps because of) the closures.

It would be fascinating to get hold of the working documents for The Reshaping of British Railways. Appendix 2 of the report shows the logic used to decide which lines should have passenger service withdrawn, but illustrates it with handful of lines. Reassessing the data today might paint a different picture, or it might confirm Beeching's assessment. It would be interesting to know which!

Sounds like a good university research project for someone. I wonder if the files are still held !

 

[yorksrob]

Exactly - if you hear your branch line may be closing soon, you're not going to wait until after that's happened to buy a car (or move away), are you?

It's like the exact reverse of the Crossrail-induced property boom.

I read that this is exactly what happenned with Christs Hospital - Shoreham for example.

 

[Dr Hoo]

It's interesting that the passenger numbers were stable right up until 1961/62 when Marples and Beeching were formulating the closure policy. It suggests that the policy wasn't a result of falling passenger numbers, but rather precipitated the decline.

The underlying trend in business was quite clear. Ignoring 1955 (ASLEF strike), 1956 and 1957 (Suez crisis affecting motoring through fuel rationing) we can see that in 1958 BR moved 41 billion passenger km. By 1963 (before many closures had taken effect) this had fallen to 36 billion, an almost 9% drop despite services generally being significantly better with new diesels on many lines and electrification around Kent, east of London into Essex and around Glasgow in particular. Not a good sign.
Meanwhile car travel had increased from 117 billion 'passenger' km to 186 billion, a 59% rise. The number of cars registered had increased by 62% in that short period.
In any event, the closure proposals were primarily made against whether a service was losing a lot of money, not whether demand was holding up.
To address the 'Beeching came round on a wet Tuesday in February' myth that frequently crops up in this sort of discussion it is worth re-stating that the traffic surveys behind the Reshaping Report were undertaken in the full w/e 23 April 1961. This was before Dr Beeching even took office (on 1 June). The survey was after Easter (2 April in 1961) and before the summer timetable change in mid-June. It was a typical spring week, while the schools were in, not during the holiday season and with typical April weather. (Mild, with cloud and showers - who would have thought it?)
The Reshaping Report was published on 27 March 1963 after almost two years of analysis.

 

[bastien]

The underlying trend in business was quite clear. Ignoring 1955 (ASLEF strike), 1956 and 1957 (Suez crisis affecting motoring through fuel rationing) we can see that in 1958 BR moved 41 billion passenger km. By 1963 (before many closures had taken effect) this had fallen to 36 billion, an almost 9% drop despite services generally being significantly better with new diesels on many lines and electrification around Kent, east of London into Essex and around Glasgow in particular. Not a good sign.
Meanwhile car travel had increased from 117 billion 'passenger' km to 186 billion, a 59% rise. The number of cars registered had increased by 62% in that short period.
In any event, the closure proposals were primarily made against whether a service was losing a lot of money, not whether demand was holding up.
To address the 'Beeching came round on a wet Tuesday in February' myth that frequently crops up in this sort of discussion it is worth re-stating that the traffic surveys behind the Reshaping Report were undertaken in the full w/e 23 April 1961. This was before Dr Beeching even took office (on 1 June). The survey was after Easter (2 April in 1961) and before the summer timetable change in mid-June. It was a typical spring week, while the schools were in, not during the holiday season and with typical April weather. (Mild, with cloud and showers - who would have thought it?)
The Reshaping Report was published on 27 March 1963 after almost two years of analysis.

I notice you're not referring to the same figures yorksrob was referring to...

 

[Edders23]

Hyperbole does not make a convincing argument.

I live in lincolnshire a lot of closed railway route has been converted to road !!

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

I live in lincolnshire a lot of closed railway route has been converted to road !!

Including Peaks Parkway (once the East Lincolnshire Railway) the railway between Boston and Spalding is also the A16 same number as Peaks Parkway

 

[RLBH]

To address the 'Beeching came round on a wet Tuesday in February' myth that frequently crops up in this sort of discussion it is worth re-stating that the traffic surveys behind the Reshaping Report were undertaken in the full w/e 23 April 1961. This was before Dr Beeching even took office (on 1 June). The survey was after Easter (2 April in 1961) and before the summer timetable change in mid-June. It was a typical spring week, while the schools were in, not during the holiday season and with typical April weather. (Mild, with cloud and showers - who would have thought it?)

A longer period of traffic data might have been desirable to even out any random fluctuations - ideally a year to take full account of seasonal variation. Too much data would have been impossible to handle the data with the technology of the time, though, and the week described would presumably have been fairly representative of the average level of traffic.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I notice you're not referring to the same figures yorksrob was referring to...

Should have made clear that I was quoting from 'Transport Statistics Great Britain 1965-1975' (which includes various historical time series-es). I still don't consider that a 9% drop in rail usage over a period as short as five years when many services had just benefited from their 'best chance' upgrade ever (steam to diesel/electric) can reasonably be described as "stable"