A different route for British Railways?

[muddythefish]

I'm not buying this Marples/Beeching anti-rail conspiracy at all. There's no evidence for it.

Ludicrous post. Marples was a crook who promoted the expansion of the motorway using his own firm, Marples Ridgway (while at the same time hiring a consultant to recommend running down the railways using skewed data), was involved in the Profumo inquiry, evaded taxes and eventually fled abroad in disgrace.

These days he would be behind bars.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

It just feels like a cop out from taking the hard decisions that did need to be taken in the 1960s (in light of the huge rise in car ownership, the changes to freight demand etc) - saying "they should have kept all of the land just in case" is a way of avoiding the fact that many lines deserved closure - it's deferring the decision, a useful way of staying in denial.

Sure, but you're adding a bit of a strawman to the idea there. Railbanking, as practised in the US, is not about "all of the land just in case". That would indeed be ludicrous. Instead, you take an assessment based on future potential for bringing back into use, the value as a trail, the value that would be realised by selling the land, and the cost saving from passing the maintenance burden onto a third party. Fairly standard cost-benefit analysis.

Generally you would expect this to result in a result favouring banking for trackbeds that would otherwise become low-value agricultural land. In cities, the result might go the other way, because land values are higher. Tinsley Yard would very likely still be sold, because the income from a sale is significantly greater than the potential for reopening, and there's little plausible rail-trail use. But Oxford-Witney, for example, might have been retained after its 1970 closure because the land value is low and there's the potential for rail-trail use.

There is a lot online about the US provision (introduced in 1983, as the massive wave of 1980s abandonments was getting underway) and I'd recommend reading up on it. It's also worthwhile considering, over here, the situation with the Millennium canal restorations (Huddersfield Narrow, Rochdale, Forth & Clyde/Union) and how they might have been affected if a Beeching-like policy of selling the entire route had been adopted.

 

[coppercapped]

Ludicrous post. Marples was a crook who promoted the expansion of the motorway using his own firm, Marples Ridgway (while at the same time hiring a consultant to recommend running down the railways using skewed data), was involved in the Profumo inquiry, evaded taxes and eventually fled abroad in disgrace.

These days he would be behind bars.

I suggest that you look through a few earlier posts, such as this one, before posting half-digested stories.

Dr. Beeching was not a consultant, he was seconded from ICI for a period of five years to be the Chairman of the BTC and then of the BRB. No consultancy there at all - it was a full time job.

There was no doubt that Marples was a scoundrel - nobody is disputing that.

But the real question you should be asking yourself is whether if Mr. Squeaky Kleane MP had been Transport Minister instead of Marples, would there have been any significant difference in the outcome?

 

[RLBH]

Had Ghandi or Mother Teresa been Minister of Transport instead of Marples, they'd have had the same civil servants and the same socioeconomic realities. If they hadn't supported road building, they'd have got the sack. If they hadn't tried to get British Railways to break even, they'd have got the sack. Anything else is at best wishful thinking or else just plain delusional.

 

[Bookd]

Marples may have been behind bars then if he had not done a runner beyond the jurisdiction, but that is not my main point.
The problem was with nationalisation - of course I understand the political reasons both then and now but it went overboard too quickly.
In modern times there are problems with huge companies that seem totally out of touch with their many roles.
When the BTC was formed it included British Railways, the Tilling bus group, most large lorry companies, canals, and travel.agents such as Thomas Cook. No one general manager or senior civil servant could have a hope of keeping track of that lot let alone make strategic decisions.

 

[muddythefish]

There was no doubt that Marples was a scoundrel - nobody is disputing that.

But the real question you should be asking yourself is whether if Mr. Squeaky Kleane MP had been Transport Minister instead of Marples, would there have been any significant difference in the outcome?

I suggest you look through the thread yourself - there's at least one numbskull suggesting Marples did nothing wrong.

I would have hoped "Mr Squeaky Kleane" might have the sense not to oversee the destruction of thousands of miles of the rail network which left sizeable towns and communities cut off from rail and swathes of the country without any public transport and totally dependent on the car.

 

[Western Lord]

I suggest you look through the thread yourself - there's at least one numbskull suggesting Marples did nothing wrong.

I would have hoped "Mr Squeaky Kleane" might have the sense not to oversee the destruction of thousands of miles of the rail network which left sizeable towns and communities cut off from rail and swathes of the country without any public transport and totally dependent on the car.

Most of the closures were signed off by Labour's Transport Ministers in spite of their election manifesto promising to stop closures. In any case you've got it the wrong way round, millions of new car owners were very happy to be dependent on their shiny new vehicles, which is why so many rail services became basket cases. Most people were choosing cars over trains, they weren't forced to buy cars when rail services closed, they had already bought them.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I suggest you look through the thread yourself - there's at least one numbskull suggesting Marples did nothing wrong.

I would have hoped "Mr Squeaky Kleane" might have the sense not to oversee the destruction of thousands of miles of the rail network which left sizeable towns and communities cut off from rail and swathes of the country without any public transport and totally dependent on the car.

Reiterating my previous comments about deploring Marples’ tax and business affairs (for the avoidance of any doubt) I would urge you to study Map No. 12 from the Reshaping Report. This shows the sheer extent and density of bus routes at the time. Other than in the most extreme rural areas such as the Highlands of Scotland everywhere had a bus service. Well over 90% of public transport journeys outside London were by bus in the early 1960s.
The fact that much of the bus network also disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s is another result of the number of cars increasing from around 2,000,000 in 1950 to 14,600,000 by 1980.
The Hon. Mr Squeaky Clean MP would also have had to respect a statutory framework that expected the railways to break even and would also have seen cars as ‘the future’ even if he didn’t own shares in a construction company.

 

[Helvellyn]

The main changes when Mark 2s stock was introduced were that compartment stock (in corridor coaches) was abolished for standard class, and there was no need to build Mark 2 non-corridor suburban stock because "suburban" services were now operated by dmus or emus. Surely in some of the Mark 1 stock, the only variety was in the internal layout whilst using a basically similar body shell ??.

The regions were allowed to have quite a sway so there were a lot of sub-types. For example, in compartment the Western and Eastern Regions had six seater compartments in Second Class with folding armrests to nominally allow eight seats if needed. The Southern and Midland just went for eight seater compartments with no armrests.

There were no Mark 2 catering vehicles (excluding the Pullman Kitchen Firsts) built new for BR. There were no Mark 2 Sleeping cars. Of more common types you also never got Mark 2 CKs, SKs, BCKs, BSKs. FOs only came back with the decision to move away from FKs (overlap with 2Cs/2Ds having both) and SOs were only built as Mark 2s.

There was a considerable variety of Mark 1 refreshment vehicles. So many that no more were needed for a long time.

Indeed, including the Midland being allowed to order Restaurant Firsts (3xx) when every other region had Restaurant Buffets (16xx/17xx) or Restaurant Cars (19xx) plus Kitchen Cars (800xx) and Kitchen Buffets (15xx) and the the Miniature Buffets (18xx).

 

[coppercapped]

I suggest you look through the thread yourself - there's at least one numbskull suggesting Marples did nothing wrong.

If you think that then I suggest you take a reading comprehension course before calling someone a numbskull. Nobody has suggested that Marples' tax affairs were anything but reprehensible. His record on transport decisions however is much more nuanced - as has been shown in earlier posts.

Please try to understand that, rather than simply repeating half-understood slogans.

I would have hoped "Mr Squeaky Kleane" might have the sense not to oversee the destruction of thousands of miles of the rail network which left sizeable towns and communities cut off from rail and swathes of the country without any public transport and totally dependent on the car.

People were not forced to buy cars - they did it of their own free will.

Car buying was not a new phenomenon which started in the 1950s, it started at the end of the 19th century.

Once motor vehicles had become more reliable and easier to operate as a result of design, production and materials developments during the First World War car ownership became more widespread. Between 1920 and 1930 car ownership in the UK increased FIVE TIMES. The number of cars registered then doubled each decade (except for the hiatus caused by the Second World War) until 1970.

It might be inconvenient, but being cut off from the rail network was not a new thing - many towns and communities were never connected to it in the first place. People still got around. Closing a station or line did not necessarily remove all public transport from the area - in the 1960s the bus network was much denser. Nevertheless for many of the journeys being made neither the bus nor the train could compete with the convenience of the car and bus services were also affected. It is also worth remembering that a half of all car journeys are between one and five miles in length which is not a journey which would generally have been done by train anyway. A third of car journeys are between five and twenty five miles long for which rail is only suitable if the person's starting point and destination are on a line of route which is not necessarily the case.

Rail is certainly an attractive method of transport - but it is not the only one, so to imply that people were isolated if the local station closed is a politician's argument.

For your information, since the earliest days of the motor car the number of cars per head of population has always been higher in rural areas than in towns and cities. The reason is obvious - in areas of low population density public transport cannot supply a turn-up-and-go service to the destination of one's choice in the same way that a motor car can.
The motor car is now about 130 years old - time, I think, to accept its presence. Since Marples commissioned the Traffic In Towns report road building in urban areas has been quite strictly controlled to protect, with a certain amount of success, the environment and local residents.

Pity about the tax affairs, though.

 

[big all]

ironically beeching lived near east grinstead
the old three bridges to eridge and tunbridge wells line which goes through [over the top high level] at east grinstead that was closed as one off his suggestions and part off the old track bed is a road bypass called beeching way i assume as a relivence to a local person rather than a bit off irony in poor taste

 

[RLBH]

I would have hoped "Mr Squeaky Kleane" might have the sense not to oversee the destruction of thousands of miles of the rail network which left sizeable towns and communities cut off from rail and swathes of the country without any public transport and totally dependent on the car.

Why would he do a stupid thing like that? The railways were nationalised so that the profits from the railway system could be used for the public good. They weren't making a profit, so they needed to be made to do so. The nature of the network meant that making them profitable meant that uneconomic parts had to go.

The idea that railways were there to provide a public service didn't come about until Barbara Castle. Even then it was only because the British Railways Board under Beeching had demonstrated that a satisfactory service couldn't be provided without support.

Reiterating my previous comments about deploring Marples’ tax and business affairs (for the avoidance of any doubt) I would urge you to study Map No. 12 from the Reshaping Report. This shows the sheer extent and density of bus routes at the time. Other than in the most extreme rural areas such as the Highlands of Scotland everywhere had a bus service. Well over 90% of public transport journeys outside London were by bus in the early 1960s.

Reading the whole of both reports is strongly recommended, in fact. They set out the condition of the railways, and what was expected of them in the future, very clearly.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

It is also worth remembering that a half of all car journeys are between one and five miles in length which is not a journey which would generally have been done by train anyway.

Indeed not. It's a journey which in civilised countries would be made by bike. Unfortunately Marples, despite being a touring cyclist himself, commissioned an urban traffic policy (Buchanan's 'Traffic in Towns') which was used as an excuse to design cities around the car.

 

[RLBH]

It's a journey which in civilised countries would be made by bike.

Unless the nature of the journey meant that cycling was impractical. Transporting animals, the immobile, or goods, for instance. Yes, I know about cargo bikes, but I'd like to see you moving flats with one. But in any case not rail traffic.

So much here depends on the political environment, so let's have a look at the Conservative Party's manifesto from the 1959 general election. That's what any Transport Minister would be expected to deliver. The bits relating to transport are below.

1. Technical Advance
Under the railway programme over 3,000 new diesels will be delivered into service by 1965, 8,000 miles of track re-laid, and electric traction increased by 60 per cent.[/B]

All well and good, continuing to drag the railways kicking and screaming into the 1940s.

2. Modern Roads
The rising volume of traffic, a yardstick of rising prosperity, must be matched by an intensive drive to build better and safer roads. Our road programme is already the biggest we have ever had in this country. Over the next five years it will be twice as big as over the last five years.

Our first priority in England and Wales will be to complete the five major schemes and motorways, which with their urban links and through routes will provide the framework of a new road system. In Scotland we mean to complete the Forth Road Bridge, the two Clyde Tunnels and the reconstruction of the Carlisle-Glasgow-Stirling trunk road, and to speed up the programme of Highland road development.

At the same time there will be a country-wide drive to improve the existing road net work and new schemes to relieve congestion in the towns. Severn and Tay Bridges will both be started.

In other words - major investment in roads was going to happen, because that was what the governing party had committed themselves to. For that matter, the Labour party was also proposing a major road-building programme. Building roads was completely and utterly uncontroversial at the time.

4. Nationalised Industries

We are utterly opposed to any extension of nationalisation, by whatever means. We shall do everything possible to ensure improved commercial standards of operation and less centralisation in those industries already nationalised. In addition, we shall review the situation in civil aviation, and set up a new licensing authority to bring a greater measure of freedom to nationally and privately owned airlines.

This is the key point - commercial standards of operation, meaning that the nationalised industries should be run as efficiently as possible in order to generate a profit. Keeping open uneconomic branch lines for reasons of social benefit would have been a major change from this manifesto commitment, and would not have been politically acceptable at this time.

A question for the staunchly anti-closure people: was it acceptable to close (say) Wootton Bassett station? Doing so saved the cost of having a station at that location, and allowed for better service from London to Bristol and South Wales. But it also removed the rail link for a town of 11,000 people, more than were served by quite a few of the minor branches closed.[/B][/quote]

 

[Bevan Price]

Wootton Bassett was a lot smaller when the station closed (population about 4390 in the 1961 census), but the station was probably uneconomic due to poorly planned timetables. If you worked a typical working day (08:30 - 17:00, or 09:00 to 17:30), you could commute to Swindon or Chippenham, but anywhere else would have been difficult, or sometimes impossible. Long distance commuting was less common in the early 1960s than it is now, but it would have been impossible to get to work in either Reading or London, whilst working in Bath or Bristol would have involved either a very early start, or a late return home.

For example, your earliest possible arrivals were 08:57 at Reading & 09:45 at Paddington - with changes at both Swindon & Didcot. And if you missed the return 17:05 from Paddington, you were stuck there until 20:05 (SX, Summer 1960 timetable). But even with that lower population, it might have been possible to keep the station viable if they had bothered to consider how to make the service more attractive and useful.

But, as I have commented elsewhere, they seemed to think that closures were the only possible solution to all the problem areas.

 

[tbtc]

Wootton Bassett was a lot smaller when the station closed (population about 4390 in the 1961 census), but the station was probably uneconomic due to poorly planned timetables. If you worked a typical working day (08:30 - 17:00, or 09:00 to 17:30), you could commute to Swindon or Chippenham, but anywhere else would have been difficult, or sometimes impossible. Long distance commuting was less common in the early 1960s than it is now, but it would have been impossible to get to work in either Reading or London, whilst working in Bath or Bristol would have involved either a very early start, or a late return home.

For example, your earliest possible arrivals were 08:57 at Reading & 09:45 at Paddington - with changes at both Swindon & Didcot. And if you missed the return 17:05 from Paddington, you were stuck there until 20:05 (SX, Summer 1960 timetable). But even with that lower population, it might have been possible to keep the station viable if they had bothered to consider how to make the service more attractive and useful.

But, as I have commented elsewhere, they seemed to think that closures were the only possible solution to all the problem areas.

Wootton Bassett is an interesting case - the normal argument on threads like these is about isolated rural places where the railway was the only link to civilisation (but no way were the people going to use a replacement bus service), so we focus on backwaters.

Closing a station on a retained line is a whole different story though, since you wouldn't need to open dozens of miles of line to serve it - yet Wootton Bassett hasn't been re-opened (it'd have surely been much easier than places that required new lines to be built).

But then I guess the argument about the type of (other) trains on the lines comes into play - it'd be a bit like Diss - somewhere only served by long distance high speed trains - unsuited to making "local" stops.

Plus maybe there's a debate about whether Wootton Bassett would want to become another Didcot, full of housing estates?

 

[Doctor Fegg]

A question for the staunchly anti-closure people: was it acceptable to close (say) Wootton Bassett station? Doing so saved the cost of having a station at that location, and allowed for better service from London to Bristol and South Wales. But it also removed the rail link for a town of 11,000 people, more than were served by quite a few of the minor branches closed.

I'm not staunchly anti-closures per se, but strongly believe that the '60s closures were badly planned and badly executed. So:

No, it wasn't acceptable. Closing Wootton Bassett was straight-up a mistake.

The cost of a station need not be prohibitive. Gerry Fiennes' work in East Anglia showed that you could feasibly convert market town stations to unstaffed halts (Newmarket is the example he cites) and run Paytrains. BRB could have taken those "basic railway" principles and applied them to a lot more lines and stations.

A few short-distance stoppers (say, Trowbridge-Swindon) and very occasional stops in longer-distance expresses, adapted to meet local traffic patterns, would not have significantly affected the service provision for London-Bristol/Cardiff for many years. A basic railway does not require an all-stops service every half hour.

Those are the "why not close"s. But the "why keep open"s are more compelling.

First, there's the parkway potential. Wootton Bassett (closed 1965) is 2.5mi from the M4 (opened from the 1960s, this section 1971). Bristol Parkway opened in 1972. It is not a massive leap to see that there could be something there.

But second, there's a really obvious analogue in GWR country, 40 miles to the north-east, which springs to my mind pretty easily because I live there: Charlbury. At one stage it was proposed for closure, but (together with almost all the other Oxfordshire stations on the Cotswold Line) it was reprieved. For a while it received a fairly minimal service, one which didn't particularly get in the way of the faster trains to Worcester and beyond. And now look at it - 300,000+ passengers a year, hourly-or-better IETs to London, a roaring success all round. That's a town with a population of 3,000 and an affluent hinterland: 11,000 and a similar hinterland would do, I suspect, better still.

Keeping Charlbury open, while closing Wootton Bassett, does not make consistent sense. One of those decisions has to have been wrong. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it was clearly the Wootton Bassett decision.

Could that have been foreseen? Who knows. As I've said, it wasn't many years between WB's closure and the Western Region's first Parkway. But the "basic railway" approach rebalances the equation. You no longer have to justify full staffing and a super-frequent service. You justify two concrete platforms, a peak-hours stopper or two, a shopping service in mid-morning where the stock allows, and occasional express calls where there's slack. Perhaps the biggest failing of the Beeching era is that the basic railway was not tried more widely.

 

[RLBH]

The point I was trying to make with Wootton Bassett was - many minor stations on main lines were closed because they caused problems for through goods and express passenger services. Closing them allowed more, faster trains to be run that couldn't be pathed around all-shacks stoppers. That, in turn, meant that major centres of population saw an improved service. But doing so meant that some places lost service just as definitively as if they'd been on an uneconomic branch. If it's justifiable to close Wootton Bassett because keeping it open is detrimental to the network as a whole, then it's also justifiable to close Witney for the same reason.

Charlbury, meanwhile, is not on a main line, so keeping it open didn't have the same impact on the principal services. Even there, quite a few lines and stations that were kept open over others weren't because of any inherent virtue, just that BR hadn't gotten around to closing them yet by the time that the political mood around rail services shifted.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

I don't think the people of Worcester would agree with you - their constant refrain (occasionally voiced on this forum) is that services should be withdrawn from the smaller Cotswold Line stations in order to achieve a <2hr journey time between Worcester and London! So it's not a binary distinction between "main line" and "branch line" - there is almost always someone who wants to make a case for speeding up services. But let's take a look at the specific circumstances of Wootton Bassett.

In 1961 Wootton Bassett had weekday down calls at 00.49, 06.29, 07.25*, 07.42, 10.05, 11.23, 13.08, 14.08, 16.17, 17.08, 17.41*, 18.01 arr/18.33 dep, 19.25, 21.59.

Let's assume that you're closing Dauntsey (current pop. 581) and Christian Malford (pop. 705) to reduce the impact on express services. Let's also take out the two asterisked stops which were on Badminton/Severn Tunnel services and were timed fairly close to Chippenham services.

You're left with 11 calls between 06.00 and 22.00. That's quite a lot. Charlbury, in the same timetable, had just five.

My suggestion is that keeping it open as a "basic railway" halt - unstaffed, with a level of services closer to Charlbury's - would have served social need, at minimal cost, with very little impact on express services, while sensibly future-proofing it and enabling further service development. I can fully understand closing stations at Dauntsey and Christian Malford: the likelihood of them becoming remunerative was vanishingly small. That's not the case for Wootton Bassett. There was another option, and BRB was negligent not to advance it.

 

[341o2]

Most of the closures were signed off by Labour's Transport Ministers in spite of their election manifesto promising to stop closures. In any case you've got it the wrong way round, millions of new car owners were very happy to be dependent on their shiny new vehicles, which is why so many rail services became basket cases. Most people were choosing cars over trains, they weren't forced to buy cars when rail services closed, they had already bought them.

I was going to post that, by the 1960's railways and public transport were seen as having had their day and the future was that everyone would have a car and enjoy the freedom of the open road. If half the people who suddenly realised that "they" are closing "our" railway turning up in force on the last day of operation had used it, maybe some lines would still be with us today

At this time, tourism was booming in the West Country, but now nearly everyone came by car - remember the infamous Exeter bypass - and the notion that railways were outdated continued through the 80's with Mrs. "I never travel by train" Thatcher

 

[Taunton]

Most of the closures were signed off by Labour's Transport Ministers in spite of their election manifesto promising to stop closures. In any case you've got it the wrong way round, millions of new car owners were very happy to be dependent on their shiny new vehicles, which is why so many rail services became basket cases. Most people were choosing cars over trains, they weren't forced to buy cars when rail services closed, they had already bought them.

It's common to blame the 1960s closures on "cars", but in fact much of what little rural railway patronage there was had been lost from the late 1920s onwards, when buses first became practical. Buses whose flexibility meant they went down the main streets of places they served, rather than an obscurely sited train station. Buses which were every 15 minutes rather than 6 trains a day. Cars then allowed people to go in whatever direction they liked, at whatever time. Sounded good to many.

And even before that, many of the rural lines had not had significant loads since they were built. The constructing company often went bankrupt and was absorbed for little purchase price by the mainstream companies. people in those days didn't travel nearly as much, and there was very little daily commuting outside London and a few other places.

 

[RT4038]

I don't think the people of Worcester would agree with you - their constant refrain (occasionally voiced on this forum) is that services should be withdrawn from the smaller Cotswold Line stations in order to achieve a <2hr journey time between Worcester and London! So it's not a binary distinction between "main line" and "branch line" - there is almost always someone who wants to make a case for speeding up services. But let's take a look at the specific circumstances of Wootton Bassett.

In 1961 Wootton Bassett had weekday down calls at 00.49, 06.29, 07.25*, 07.42, 10.05, 11.23, 13.08, 14.08, 16.17, 17.08, 17.41*, 18.01 arr/18.33 dep, 19.25, 21.59.

Let's assume that you're closing Dauntsey (current pop. 581) and Christian Malford (pop. 705) to reduce the impact on express services. Let's also take out the two asterisked stops which were on Badminton/Severn Tunnel services and were timed fairly close to Chippenham services.

You're left with 11 calls between 06.00 and 22.00. That's quite a lot. Charlbury, in the same timetable, had just five.

My suggestion is that keeping it open as a "basic railway" halt - unstaffed, with a level of services closer to Charlbury's - would have served social need, at minimal cost, with very little impact on express services, while sensibly future-proofing it and enabling further service development. I can fully understand closing stations at Dauntsey and Christian Malford: the likelihood of them becoming remunerative was vanishingly small. That's not the case for Wootton Bassett. There was another option, and BRB was negligent not to advance it.

But you are not comparing apples with apples. Charlbury is located on what was a secondary main line, being downgraded to an regional local service; Wootton Bassett was on a fast main line where speed between the important stations was all important. There were no local trains to stop at Wootton Bassett- it would have required a separate local service which would have been uneconomic. Charlbury had an infrequent local bus service to Oxford; Wootton Bassett had a frequent bus service to Swindon and Chippenham (which most people used instead of the splendid train service *CLUE*). BRB was not negligent. Future proofing did not come into the equation at all, and why would it?

 

[Doctor Fegg]

At a bit of a loss to understand your last point... why wouldn't you think about the future?

 

[RT4038]

At a bit of a loss to understand your last point... why wouldn't you think about the future?

The wisdom at the time was that rail travel ,especially local rail travel, was on a downward trajectory. A future where local rail travel (outside conurbations) actually rose was inconceivable. A bit like the closure and destruction of candle factories in the face of rising electricity use. It is still inconceivable that candle use will rise, hence no mothballing / future proofing of candle factories - no doubt someone in the future will call the former owners negligent in not wasting their money maintaining such uneconomic enterprises future proofing for the time they may make a comeback!

 

[Bevan Price]

At a bit of a loss to understand your last point... why wouldn't you think about the future?

UK politicians, civil service, etc. (+ some company managements) seem incapable of thinking beyond the next election. They only think about short term money, etc., and rarely seem to contemplate the long term consequences of any of their actions....

Just look at UK stop-start electrification policy for one example. In the long term widespread electrification ought to lead to a more efficient, less-polluting railway. But because the initial costs of infrastructure change have been allowed to get too high, the government + DfT have saddled the country with over-complex bi-mode trains that will create more pollution for the next 30+ years, and - in the long term - probably cost a lot more to maintain / operate than simpler electric traction.

 

[RT4038]

UK politicians, civil service, etc. (+ some company managements) seem incapable of thinking beyond the next election. They only think about short term money, etc., and rarely seem to contemplate the long term consequences of any of their actions....

Just look at UK stop-start electrification policy for one example. In the long term widespread electrification ought to lead to a more efficient, less-polluting railway. But because the initial costs of infrastructure change have been allowed to get too high, the government + DfT have saddled the country with over-complex bi-mode trains that will create more pollution for the next 30+ years, and - in the long term - probably cost a lot more to maintain / operate than simpler electric traction.

Why single out UK politicians, civil service, etc (+ some company managements) ? Are ordinary members of the population not afflicted by this kind of decision making in their own domestic lives ? Of course they are. Our Government and management reflect our culture. Look at HS2 and Heathrow expansion, both items of expensive infrastructure change (costs of which have been allowed to get too high) just like widespread electrification. Plenty of dissenting voices that the expenditure is unnecessary, and/or could be spent somewhere else.

 

[Greenback]

A lot of decent points have been made so far, on both sides of the discussion. I agree that Beeching tried to follow a systematic approach to closures, and I agree that many of the closures were necessary. I also think that some were very strange, and I firmly believe that not enough thought was given to reducing costs on some lines instead of shutting them completely.

The main point as I see it is that with a different combination to Marples and Beeching, the cuts would have been done on a different scale. It's possible, though maybe difficult to imagine, that some other Minister and BRB Chair could have implemented even more drastic pruning than we had. Equally, it's perhaps even more likely that other individuals would have cut less mileage.

Stations like Wootton Bassett are an interesting example. At that time, the future of main lines like Bristol to London were seen as fast trains between large centres of population. Local trains between smaller towns along the route were seen as both uneconomic and an obstacle to fast journeys between Bath, Bristol, South Wales and London. No one foresaw the big rise in long distance commuting, and I can't blame them for that. I expect that few ever imagined how much the population would increase over 50 years, nor how much development would impact on what were insignificant country towns with insignificant populations. These thoughts simply didn't enter into the equation.

What happened, happened. While it's always interesting to speculate on what might have been, there's just no way of telling what kind of a network we might have now had things (or individuals) been different. Maybe, near me, we'd have still been able to enjoy Swansea Victoria to Pontardulais and Carmarthen to Aberystwyth. On the other hand, maybe everything west of Carmarthen plus the Heart of Wales would have been ripped up.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

What happened, happened. While it's always interesting to speculate on what might have been, there's just no way of telling what kind of a network we might have now had things (or individuals) been different. Maybe, near me, we'd have still been able to enjoy Swansea Victoria to Pontardulais and Carmarthen to Aberystwyth. On the other hand, maybe everything west of Carmarthen plus the Heart of Wales would have been ripped up.

Judging by the loadings on SV - Pontardulais , and the oft quoted Carmarthen to Aberystwyth line , I very much doubt it they could ever survived. The "Bont" local was often a single carriage train , with census returns (verified by research at the National Archives in Kew) , as less than double figures , hence early cutting back - even in the early 1950' - we all know about the Carmarthen line.

West Wales survived thanks to the good efforts made by Gerry Fiennes as GM Paddington in promoting the links (pre M4) via Fishguard and of course the oil bonanza - and the HoW only really survived by the attention of the late George Thomas and the number of marginal constituencies in went through.

Having said that - the general picture of freight business in South Wales -well into the late 1960's , in terms of heavy industry was excellent. Much effort put into that. The loss of some "marginal" passenger routes such as Swansea - Neath - Treherbet via Cymmer Afan was regrettable from an enthusiast point of view , but even the local staff would say their day was done , as the then local bus services were very good.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

A lot of decent points have been made so far, on both sides of the discussion. I agree that Beeching tried to follow a systematic approach to closures, and I agree that many of the closures were necessary. I also think that some were very strange, and I firmly believe that not enough thought was given to reducing costs on some lines instead of shutting them completely.

Yes, I'd wholeheartedly agree with all of that.

 

[Taunton]

I agree that Beeching tried to follow a systematic approach to closures, and I agree that many of the closures were necessary. I also think that some were very strange, and I firmly believe that not enough thought was given to reducing costs on some lines instead of shutting them completely.

The fact was that reducing costs required capital investment, which really could not be justified. On the Taunton to Barnstaple line, for most of the middle section half a dozen passengers was common in the early 1960s. It had fully depreciated 1920s 43xx steam locos and 1940s Hawksworth coaches. And yes, they did get some investment late in the day (probably in Fiennes' era at Paddington). 2-car dmus arrived. Two thirds of the passing loops and associated signalboxes were ripped out in a substantial operation for the civils. Must have cost a lot to do. At the end, still half a dozen passengers per train. Stupidly, the Class 118 dmus (51302 etc) were built without gangway connections, the centre trailers were parked somewhere but still the guard could not get through to collect fares so the stations all still needed to be staffed. With two power cars, each with two underfloor engines, there must have been some trains which had more diesel engines than passengers. It would actually have been practical to lock all the doors except the one car with the guard's compartment, the passengers would still have fitted and fares then be collected on board. It would even have been cheaper to run the trains for free, the station staff likely alone cost more than the total takings.