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

coppercapped · 18 Oct 2018

yorksrob said:
If more miles of route were closed before 1962, does it not surprise you that those closures made absolutely no difference to the railway being broke ? Do you not think it might have been time to try something different ?

Nobody - not even Beeching - suggested that the only solution to BR's financial crises was the closure of the unremunerative branch lines, secondary and duplicate routes. These closures were only part of the process of re-mapping the railways to the modern world and to suggest that this was the only solution proposed is very wide of the mark.

So before you make such superficial comments I would suggest that if you had done a little research you would have found plenty of analyses on the performance of British Railways during these turbulent years - much of it contemporary.

For example a paper in 1970 on ‘The Performance of British Railways 1962 to 1968’ (Cole C.D., Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Vol IV, No. 2, 1970, pp162-170). The time span for the paper was chosen to lie between the 1962 and 1968 Transport Acts as being the time between when the BRB was created to when it was significantly changed, but of course the story went further. Cole's conclusions are interesting:

It has been shown that the performance of British Railways, as reflected in broad statistical trends, improved in most sectors over the period 1963 to 1968. The lack of marked improvement in the overall financial position may be attributed to the following factors:

Labour earnings increased faster than any measure of labour productivity.

Railway receipts per passenger/net ton mile increased overall by only 4 per cent while working expenses rose by 2 per cent.

There was no reduction in track comparable to the reduction in trains run.

Expensive diesel and electric locomotives were spending less time in traffic in 1968 than they were in 1962, although on a loaded train miles basis their performance had improved.

Finally it must be recognised that statistical observations of this kind made in this paper are of interest only as a broad reflection of the new effect of the many changes that have occurred on the railways in recent years. They do not in themselves explain what has happened or what might have happened under alternative policies.

Some two thirds of working expenses were staff costs so reducing staff numbers had a significant effect on the cost base. At the start of the period staff members were reduced quite quickly but after Beeching left in 1965 these annual reductions tailed off and by 1974 BR staff numbers rose again. The actual reductions were:

1962-3 6.49%
1963-4 8.46%
1964-5 8.89%
1965-6 7.85%
1966-7 6.50%

Other things were tried - and as the statistics on the performance of motive power show - BR wasn't very good at it.

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Dr Hoo · 18 Oct 2018

LOL The Irony said:
I have to disagree. With hindsight, closing Woodhead was rather silly and has screwed things up for Transpennine services.

Presuming that you do actually mean ‘full’ Transpennine services, i.e. Cleethorpes-Manchester Airport as distinct from Sheffield-Manchester in isolation, could you flesh this out, please? The Woodhead route was never particularly well configured for longer distance connections.

Journeyman · 18 Oct 2018

Dr Hoo said:
Presuming that you do actually mean ‘full’ Transpennine services, i.e. Cleethorpes-Manchester Airport as distinct from Sheffield-Manchester in isolation, could you flesh this out, please? The Woodhead route was never particularly well configured for longer distance connections.

The only line Woodhead effectively interfaced onto was the Great Central to London, which was...err...a great success...

keith1879 · 18 Oct 2018

LOL The Irony said:
I have to disagree. With hindsight, closing Woodhead was rather silly and has screwed things up for Transpennine services.

I think that you would need to justify this claim with or without hindsight. Not saying I disagree ....but on the face of it Woodhead doesn't look like a solution to any problem that we currently have as far as I can see.

Journeyman · 18 Oct 2018

keith1879 said:
I think that you would need to justify this claim with or without hindsight. Not saying I disagree ....but on the face of it Woodhead doesn't look like a solution to any problem that we currently have as far as I can see.

Yup - reopening Woodhead is the classic solution looking for a problem. I suspect we'll keep managing just fine without it.

keith1879 · 18 Oct 2018

tbtc said:
BR would have let lots of stations and some routes wither away if it were allowed to continue. But privatisation means we have benchmark service levels, committed to for years at a time and then nobody dares reduce them at subsequent franchise - bar a couple of stations on the WCML around Stoke/Stafford there's been very few stations threatened with closure or downgraded to parliamentary status. If BR were still around (and free to tinker with fares/ service levels without the same accountability/ scrutiny) then they'd have wielded the knife much more ruthlessly (if the S&C was on their radar in the 1980s then I doubt some branches would still be operated by a nationalised operator in 2018!

Privatisation means it's a lot harder to reshape the network because the option of sneakily downgrading services/stations is no longer an option - maybe ironically it's saved the kind of poorly used stations/lines that it's biggest critics most admire.

I'm not entirely happy with the first paragraph here - it follows the view that BR oversaw an endless decline ...but in the 1970s and 1980s there were many station reopenings and some line reopenings as a result of various partnerships (Reopening of the line through Birmingham Snow Hill, establishment of Thameslink, planning of the Robin Hood Line, regular service through Burnley Manchester Road, Coventry - Nuneaton as a few off the top of my head).

yorksrob · 18 Oct 2018

Journeyman said:
...because too few people used the trains to make them viable.

...and haven't succeeded because it's still not viable.

There might be a justification for a more weatherproof inland route, given how much traffic the coastal route now carries, but for much of the last fifty years, that justification hasn't been there.

Viable to whom ? I think that one can safely assume that more passengers would use Tavistock North than Gunnislake, and that's viable enough to be in service.

The only reason the route isn't apparently "viable" is that it would have to be built again. Had it not been ripped up during the disastrous closure programme, there would have been no question of its operational viability.

Journeyman said:
...that no-one used.

Again, this is simply not the case. According to the Wealden line campaign, at the time of the closure of Uckfield - Lewes, more passengers regularly travelled South from Uckfield than North.

If you seriously think that it was a good idea to have one single direct route between London and the whole of the South coast between Worthing and Bexhill, there's not really a lot more to be said on it.

ChiefPlanner · 18 Oct 2018

keith1879 said:
I think that you would need to justify this claim with or without hindsight. Not saying I disagree ....but on the face of it Woodhead doesn't look like a solution to any problem that we currently have as far as I can see.

Unless there is a major policy change to re-open the Yorkshire coalfield and to rebuild the once large numbers of coal burning power stations in Lancashire. I said before , the route was doomed once coal stopped -and the operating awkwardness - let alone the costs were against it then - and even more so now. I do ,of course , stand to be corrected.

yorksrob · 18 Oct 2018

coppercapped said:
Nobody - not even Beeching - suggested that the only solution to BR's financial crises was the closure of the unremunerative branch lines, secondary and duplicate routes. These closures were only part of the process of re-mapping the railways to the modern world and to suggest that this was the only solution proposed is very wide of the mark.

So before you make such superficial comments I would suggest that if you had done a little research you would have found plenty of analyses on the performance of British Railways during these turbulent years - much of it contemporary.

For example a paper in 1970 on ‘The Performance of British Railways 1962 to 1968’ (Cole C.D., Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Vol IV, No. 2, 1970, pp162-170). The time span for the paper was chosen to lie between the 1962 and 1968 Transport Acts as being the time between when the BRB was created to when it was significantly changed, but of course the story went further. Cole's conclusions are interesting:

Some two thirds of working expenses were staff costs so reducing staff numbers had a significant effect on the cost base. At the start of the period staff members were reduced quite quickly but after Beeching left in 1965 these annual reductions tailed off and by 1974 BR staff numbers rose again. The actual reductions were:

1962-3 6.49%
1963-4 8.46%
1964-5 8.89%
1965-6 7.85%
1966-7 6.50%
Other things were tried - and as the statistics on the performance of motive power show - BR wasn't very good at it.

Were these reductions made on, and assigned to the routes in question I wonder, or were secondary routes blamed for a lack of progress on other parts of the railway. You say that BR wasn't very good at trying things, yet I suspect that significant savings were made on the East Suffolk line and could have been made elsewhere.

If Beeching was as much of a visionary as people make out, he would have proposed something along the lines of the basic railway earlier on, and not left it to G Fiennes to develop.

ChiefPlanner · 18 Oct 2018

yorksrob said:
Were these reductions made on, and assigned to the routes in question I wonder, or were secondary routes blamed for a lack of progress on other parts of the railway. You say that BR wasn't very good at trying things, yet I suspect that significant savings were made on the East Suffolk line and could have been made elsewhere.

If Beeching was as much of a visionary as people make out, he would have proposed something along the lines of the basic railway earlier on, and not left it to G Fiennes to develop.

To be fair - the Central Wales line (having survived 2 closure attempts) was downgraded to a "light railway" in 1972 and run incredibly leanly . the Cambrian and North of Inverness lines were safeguarded in a similar manner by early RETB , I strongly suspect more could have done by pressure from the BRB.

The latter though , was engaged in hand to hand contact at a macro level with the "rail closure" fixated DfT , see the excellent books by Chris Austin and Lord Faulkener.

(I feel like an university tutor quoting "more reading on the subject please"

yorksrob · 18 Oct 2018

ChiefPlanner said:
To be fair - the Central Wales line (having survived 2 closure attempts) was downgraded to a "light railway" in 1972 and run incredibly leanly . the Cambrian and North of Inverness lines were safeguarded in a similar manner by early RETB , I strongly suspect more could have done by pressure from the BRB.

The latter though , was engaged in hand to hand contact at a macro level with the "rail closure" fixated DfT , see the excellent books by Chris Austin and Lord Faulkener.

(I feel like an university tutor quoting "more reading on the subject please"

Indeed, I recall reading somewhere Richard Marsh saying how during his tenure as Chairman, he'd tried to get the DfT to take responsibility for its closure policy, rather than BR always having to take the flak.

"Holding the Line" is an excellent book that every railway enthusiast should read.

Dr Hoo · 18 Oct 2018

yorksrob said:
Were these reductions made on, and assigned to the routes in question I wonder, or were secondary routes blamed for a lack of progress on other parts of the railway. You say that BR wasn't very good at trying things, yet I suspect that significant savings were made on the East Suffolk line and could have been made elsewhere.

If Beeching was as much of a visionary as people make out, he would have proposed something along the lines of the basic railway earlier on, and not left it to G Fiennes to develop.

I think that many of the available operating economies at the time were being made. Many, such as automating level crossings, required significant (unavailable) capital and design resource that could not easily be redeployed if a route remained unviable.
Diesel multiple units were obviously used widely, immediately reducing crewing and fuel costs compared to steam. These could at least be moved on if a line was subsequently closed.
A glance at the North Eastern Region timetable for Summer 1963 shows a growing number of rural stations already with "no staff in attendance" for example.
We also need to remember that even things such as automatic timers for electric lights couldn't be used at the many station that still had gas or even oil lighting back then. It really was a different world.
Service rationalisations were also undertaken in many cases. A typical branch line service in those days often involved three trains in circuit at 'peak' times. These were commonly a 'workmen's train', arriving at the main town around 0800 and a second, 'gentlemen's train' arriving at 0900. Meanwhile a 'contra-flow' train ran to the branch town for around 0900. These arrangements obviously required early morning ECS, intermediate passing loops and so forth. A similar pattern would apply in reverse in the evening.
Depending on trip time a 'basic railway' with only one train in circuit and no signalling might only allow a two-hourly frequency (or an irregular pattern) which was not commercially attractive or competitive with buses or car ownership. Where introduced, along with un-staffed stations, this type of service was often greeted with howls of protest about "deliberately running down the service so that they can close it".
The line closest to my house when I was a kid was one of those from which passenger services were withdrawn under the Re-shaping Plan. (It survived for freight.) I don't have to guess what was going on back then. It happened under my nose! And I remember how empty some of those trains were.
Tavistock to Plymouth took around 40 minutes for a local train and exhibited many of these features. When tied in with retention of a Gunnislake-Bere Alston shuttle an hourly service would require three sets of resources, along with signalling, even now.

Journeyman · 19 Oct 2018

ChiefPlanner said:
Unless there is a major policy change to re-open the Yorkshire coalfield and to rebuild the once large numbers of coal burning power stations in Lancashire. I said before , the route was doomed once coal stopped -and the operating awkwardness - let alone the costs were against it then - and even more so now. I do ,of course , stand to be corrected.

Even if Woodhead had limped on for a few more years, I suspect the miners' strike would have seen it off. The elephant in the room was the 1500v electrification equipment. Converting to 25kV would have cost too much, and diesel operation would have been a major challenge.

yorksrob · 19 Oct 2018

Dr Hoo said:
I think that many of the available operating economies at the time were being made. Many, such as automating level crossings, required significant (unavailable) capital and design resource that could not easily be redeployed if a route remained unviable.
Diesel multiple units were obviously used widely, immediately reducing crewing and fuel costs compared to steam. These could at least be moved on if a line was subsequently closed.
A glance at the North Eastern Region timetable for Summer 1963 shows a growing number of rural stations already with "no staff in attendance" for example.
We also need to remember that even things such as automatic timers for electric lights couldn't be used at the many station that still had gas or even oil lighting back then. It really was a different world.
Service rationalisations were also undertaken in many cases. A typical branch line service in those days often involved three trains in circuit at 'peak' times. These were commonly a 'workmen's train', arriving at the main town around 0800 and a second, 'gentlemen's train' arriving at 0900. Meanwhile a 'contra-flow' train ran to the branch town for around 0900. These arrangements obviously required early morning ECS, intermediate passing loops and so forth. A similar pattern would apply in reverse in the evening.
Depending on trip time a 'basic railway' with only one train in circuit and no signalling might only allow a two-hourly frequency (or an irregular pattern) which was not commercially attractive or competitive with buses or car ownership. Where introduced, along with un-staffed stations, this type of service was often greeted with howls of protest about "deliberately running down the service so that they can close it".
The line closest to my house when I was a kid was one of those from which passenger services were withdrawn under the Re-shaping Plan. (It survived for freight.) I don't have to guess what was going on back then. It happened under my nose! And I remember how empty some of those trains were.
Tavistock to Plymouth took around 40 minutes for a local train and exhibited many of these features. When tied in with retention of a Gunnislake-Bere Alston shuttle an hourly service would require three sets of resources, along with signalling, even now.

Nevertheless, I reiterate that on lines such as the East Suffolk route, and various longer distance routes in Scotland and Wales, great savings were achieved and marginal services secured, in spite of a challenging environment. Why was this only done as a result of political expediency, rather than by selecting marginal routes and transforming them.

Beeching's question "what does the railway do best" gets you so far because it effectively writes off the regional railway.

The question should have been "what does the country need from the railway, and what options can we offer to provide that affordably".

ChiefPlanner · 19 Oct 2018

Journeyman said:
Even if Woodhead had limped on for a few more years, I suspect the miners' strike would have seen it off. The elephant in the room was the 1500v electrification equipment. Converting to 25kV would have cost too much, and diesel operation would have been a major challenge.

Indeed , plus the track was not , by some accounts in the best of condition - there were at least 2 fairly major freight derailments towards the end , and no doubt maintenance may have been reduced when passenger services came off.

Journeyman · 19 Oct 2018

ChiefPlanner said:
Indeed , plus the track was not , by some accounts in the best of condition - there were at least 2 fairly major freight derailments towards the end , and no doubt maintenance may have been reduced when passenger services came off.

True. Maximum speeds on the route were never high anyway, I think passenger trains were limited to 65mph, even though the EM2 locos were capable of much higher speeds. The route had vicious gradients on it and was a nightmare to operate, especially in bad weather (of which there seemed to be a lot on the more exposed bits).

Journeyman · 19 Oct 2018

yorksrob said:
Beeching's question "what does the railway do best" gets you so far because it effectively writes off the regional railway.

The question should have been "what does the country need from the railway, and what options can we offer to provide that affordably".

The second question could only have been answered given the luxury of more time and money, which the railway just didn't have at the time. I think it was looked at as closures slowed down and subsidies were introduced, and then a lot of lines were successfully saved in the seventies and eighties as much more efficient operating methods were introduced. Without that, I think closures would have carried on and the network would be somewhat smaller.

Certainly the way the Beeching-era closures were carried out was a little haphazard, and it's luck of the draw as to whether your line was scheduled for closure at the beginning or the end of the period. Lines considered at the beginning were almost always closed, but the ones towards the end stood a better chance of surviving.

At the end of the day, a lot of this is hypothetical anyway - we are where we are, and we have to make the best of the resources we have. That's always been an issue, anyway - there's always conflicting demands on public money, and tough decisions have to be made on where to spend it. It seems to me that the railway has been remarkably immune from post-2008 austerity.

Dr Hoo · 19 Oct 2018

yorksrob said:
Beeching's question "what does the railway do best" gets you so far because it effectively writes off the regional railway.

The question should have been "what does the country need from the railway, and what options can we offer to provide that affordably".

But the “question” was never in doubt.
The opening paragraph of the Reshaping Report clearly quotes the Prime Minister’s statement of 10 March 1960. (Harold Macmillan was a former railway company director and lived near Horstead Keynes, where the Bluebell Line had already been through a closure wrangle, so was hardly unaware of the issues.)
“Firstly the industry must be of a size and pattern suited to modern conditions and prospects. In particular the industry must be remodelled to meet current needs, and the modernisation plan must be adapted to this new shape.”
It took the best part of three years work by Marples and Beeching (once he had been recruited) to come up with the answer. In particular the “prospects” of many lines and activities were dire.

yorksrob · 19 Oct 2018

Dr Hoo said:
But the “question” was never in doubt.
The opening paragraph of the Reshaping Report clearly quotes the Prime Minister’s statement of 10 March 1960. (Harold Macmillan was a former railway company director and lived near Horstead Keynes, where the Bluebell Line had already been through a closure wrangle, so was hardly unaware of the issues.)
“Firstly the industry must be of a size and pattern suited to modern conditions and prospects. In particular the industry must be remodelled to meet current needs, and the modernisation plan must be adapted to this new shape.”
It took the best part of three years work by Marples and Beeching (once he had been recruited) to come up with the answer. In particular the “prospects” of many lines and activities were dire.

That question might have been quoted in the opening paragraph, but I would argue that both of the reports fixated on what the railways were percieved to do best in an idealised world, but not on finding ways to do the trickier things, i.e. running marginal passenger routes more economically.

yorksrob · 19 Oct 2018

Journeyman said:
The second question could only have been answered given the luxury of more time and money, which the railway just didn't have at the time. I think it was looked at as closures slowed down and subsidies were introduced, and then a lot of lines were successfully saved in the seventies and eighties as much more efficient operating methods were introduced. Without that, I think closures would have carried on and the network would be somewhat smaller.

Certainly the way the Beeching-era closures were carried out was a little haphazard, and it's luck of the draw as to whether your line was scheduled for closure at the beginning or the end of the period. Lines considered at the beginning were almost always closed, but the ones towards the end stood a better chance of surviving.

At the end of the day, a lot of this is hypothetical anyway - we are where we are, and we have to make the best of the resources we have. That's always been an issue, anyway - there's always conflicting demands on public money, and tough decisions have to be made on where to spend it. It seems to me that the railway has been remarkably immune from post-2008 austerity.

My view is that if something like the East Suffolk line scheme had been tried from the start, the results would have been available for other routes earlier. Unfortunately the vision wasn't there at the time.

It is hypothetical, however it is always useful to consider past decisions and mistakes in the context of the modern railway.

Journeyman · 19 Oct 2018

yorksrob said:
My view is that if something like the East Suffolk line scheme had been tried from the start, the results would have been available for other routes earlier. Unfortunately the vision wasn't there at the time.

I think you're failing to understand just what a mess things were in the early 60s - BR did not have the resources to think about things like vision - it was losing money hand over fist and racking up astronomical debts, while trying to deal with enormous changes, unreliable equipment, replacing steam and constant political interference. It simply couldn't attempt to plan long-term at all - keeping the system running on a daily basis without going bust was a big enough challenge.

yorksrob · 19 Oct 2018

Journeyman said:
I think you're failing to understand just what a mess things were in the early 60s - BR did not have the resources to think about things like vision - it was losing money hand over fist and racking up astronomical debts, while trying to deal with enormous changes, unreliable equipment, replacing steam and constant political interference. It simply couldn't attempt to plan long-term at all - keeping the system running on a daily basis without going bust was a big enough challenge.

I think that to an extent, it was a politically generated mess. The Government of the day, having signed off the previous investment programme without deciding what sort of a railway it wanted (i.e. was common carrier a good idea), was caught on the hop and ended up running around like a headless chicken demanding closures at all costs.

Contrast that with the Castle regime which did carry out closures (some equally misguided), but introduced a mechanism for subsidising socially necessary routes whilst writing off some of the crippling debt, which had hung like a millstone around the railways neck. That at least was a more holistic vision, albeit an imperfect one.

Even though things were bad, there are still probably things that could have been done differently.

341o2 · 19 Oct 2018

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

The continental model was discussed at the time, modelled on lines like the Reseau Breton or Vivarais, where at slack times a railcar with maybe a wagon or two attatched, crewed by a driver and conductor could operate the service, with a couple of locomotives and rakes of wagons/coaches for when things got busy.

yorksrob · 20 Oct 2018

As a footnote to our conversations regarding closures in Sussex, I've just read (Railway Magazine, July 1985) that the TUCC ruled against the closure of the Tunbridge Wells to Eridge line, and that this was overruled by Nicholas Ridley.

I count that as a Government conspiracy.

Dr Hoo · 20 Oct 2018

yorksrob said:
As a footnote to our conversations regarding closures in Sussex, I've just read (Railway Magazine, July 1985) that the TUCC ruled against the closure of the Tunbridge Wells to Eridge line, and that this was overruled by Nicholas Ridley.

I count that as a Government conspiracy.

A 'conspiracy' with whom, may I ask? And for what reason?

I thought that the TUCCs' remit was to report on hardship. This is likely to be present to at least some degree in any closure. It was then up to the minister to decide if it justified refusal of consent or specific conditions. Obviously there had been a history of ministers from both Labour and Conservative governments approving thousands of miles of closures. Why was this one any different.

As a sideline this was another demonstration of the problem that at some point any line has to face the need for significant re-investment, quite apart from ongoing operational deficits. In the case of Tunbridge Wells-Eridge I thought that this was the need to withdraw DEMUs with asbestos insulation by 1987. It is interesting to note that the East Grinstead electrification was approved at the same time, on the same basis.

yorksrob · 20 Oct 2018

Dr Hoo said:
A 'conspiracy' with whom, may I ask? And for what reason?

I thought that the TUCCs' remit was to report on hardship. This is likely to be present to at least some degree in any closure. It was then up to the minister to decide if it justified refusal of consent or specific conditions. Obviously there had been a history of ministers from both Labour and Conservative governments approving thousands of miles of closures. Why was this one any different.

As a sideline this was another demonstration of the problem that at some point any line has to face the need for significant re-investment, quite apart from ongoing operational deficits. In the case of Tunbridge Wells-Eridge I thought that this was the need to withdraw DEMUs with asbestos insulation by 1987. It is interesting to note that the East Grinstead electrification was approved at the same time, on the same basis.

A conspiracy with the BR management.

The TUCC's were statutory bodies whose purpose in law was to defend the rights of passengers.

And don't forget, we all know about the artistic license BR used to magic up renewal costs when it wanted to close a line (Ribblehead Viaduct).

Ridley should have shut up and did as was told.

Dr Hoo · 20 Oct 2018

yorksrob said:
A conspiracy with the BR management.

The TUCC's were statutory bodies whose purpose in law was to defend the rights of passengers.

And don't forget, we all know about the artistic license BR used to magic up renewal costs when it wanted to close a line (Ribblehead Viaduct).

Ridley should have shut up and did as was told.

I am struggling to understand why the Tunbridge Wells-Eridge line was any different to the hundreds of other closures.
As I see it the nationalised industry model is that the government establishes an organisation to manage and deliver a specified range of activities, e.g. railways.
Obviously there will be various statutory and financial controls, reporting requirements, safety obligations and so forth.
As part of good governance there will be ‘checks and balances’ in the shape of things like Select Committees, National Audit Office, Public Accounts Committee and consumer bodies. These have changed over the years but the basic aim remains.
As part of delivering services to the nation in an efficient and affordable manner the nationalised industry may come up with proposals to government to adjust its outputs in the case of rising costs, falling demand and other changes in circumstances.
The relevant minister will take into account proposals from his/her industry (which have presumably been developed by managers closest to and best informed about the relevant industry) as well as a report from the relevant statutory consumer body and make a decision, which may go either way, as demonstrated in the Settle & Carlisle case.
I presume that you similarly regard Fraser and Castle as co-conspirators with the Good Doctor?

yorksrob · 20 Oct 2018

Dr Hoo said:
I am struggling to understand why the Tunbridge Wells-Eridge line was any different to the hundreds of other closures.
As I see it the nationalised industry model is that the government establishes an organisation to manage and deliver a specified range of activities, e.g. railways.
Obviously there will be various statutory and financial controls, reporting requirements, safety obligations and so forth.
As part of good governance there will be ‘checks and balances’ in the shape of things like Select Committees, National Audit Office, Public Accounts Committee and consumer bodies. These have changed over the years but the basic aim remains.
As part of delivering services to the nation in an efficient and affordable manner the nationalised industry may come up with proposals to government to adjust its outputs in the case of rising costs, falling demand and other changes in circumstances.
The relevant minister will take into account proposals from his/her industry (which have presumably been developed by managers closest to and best informed about the relevant industry) as well as a report from the relevant statutory consumer body and make a decision, which may go either way, as demonstrated in the Settle & Carlisle case.
I presume that you similarly regard Fraser and Castle as co-conspirators with the Good Doctor?

Because there was a clear decision by a body, with a statutory obligation to evaluate the needs of passengers, which was ignored. It goes to show that safeguards for passengers under the disastrous closure programme were wafer thin, even with the preposterously limited grounds for objecting to closure (not that you seem to believe in safeguards for passengers).

What exactly do you think is the point of a statutory body, set up to adjudicate whether closures should go ahead, if they can be overruled at the drop of a hat ?

I've explained my thoughts on Castle in an above post, and Fraser was a carbon copy of Marples, but without the colourful private life.

Dr Hoo · 20 Oct 2018

yorksrob said:
Because there was a clear decision by a body, with a statutory obligation to evaluate the needs of passengers, which was ignored. It goes to show that safeguards for passengers under the disastrous closure programme were wafer thin, even with the preposterously limited grounds for objecting to closure (not that you seem to believe in safeguards for passengers).

What exactly do you think is the point of a statutory body, set up to adjudicate whether closures should go ahead, if they can be overruled at the drop of a hat ?

I've explained my thoughts on Castle in an above post, and Fraser was a carbon copy of Marples, but without the colourful private life.

It may be worth checking up on the actual (statutory) role of the Transport Users’ Consultative Committees. So far as I am aware their role was to be, err, consulted and then offer a response. They had some specific duties, e.g. to produce annual reports.
The committees never ‘adjudicated’ on closures. That role was reserved to the Minister.
(It isn’t especially relevant to the case in point but I had heard that up until the (Marples) 1962 Act there wasn’t even an absolute obligation on British Railways to involve the committees but I may be wrong.)
Incidentally, in my long career I had very extensive involvement with the user representative bodies in various ways, including closure cases. I have no issue with ‘passenger safeguards’ but neither do I have a problem with the rail industry having scope to manage nor politically accountable minister’s being able to make decisions on matters of public policy and finance.

yorksrob · 20 Oct 2018

Dr Hoo said:
It may be worth checking up on the actual (statutory) role of the Transport Users’ Consultative Committees. So far as I am aware their role was to be, err, consulted and then offer a response. They had some specific duties, e.g. to produce annual reports.
The committees never ‘adjudicated’ on closures. That role was reserved to the Minister.
(It isn’t especially relevant to the case in point but I had heard that up until the (Marples) 1962 Act there wasn’t even an absolute obligation on British Railways to involve the committees but I may be wrong.)
Incidentally, in my long career I had very extensive involvement with the user representative bodies in various ways, including closure cases. I have no issue with ‘passenger safeguards’ but neither do I have a problem with the rail industry having scope to manage nor politically accountable minister’s being able to make decisions on matters of public policy and finance.

The protection of "hardship", which was the TUCC's only grounds for opposing closure, was the most meagre, flimsy layer of protection for passengers imaginable, so when one recommends against closure, I find it shocking that the Government could ignore it at will. It shows utmost contempt for passengers that they can't even abide by their own procedures.

I find it even more shocking that servants of the railway should support such a wanton disregard for passengers needs. That railway authorities and ministers behind closed doors should take it upon themselves to ignore the TUCC's decision is collusion of the lowest type.

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

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