Alternatives to the Beeching cuts

[infobleep]

You have to wonder about the validity of Beeching's cost calculations, when he came up with harebrained proposals like closing the Liverpool to Southport line. It's a very busy line nowadays and I'm pretty sure that it must have been similarly well used in the 1960s. I'd like to see the figures that Beeching used to justify the closure proposal. Maybe he was just part of the mindset that Liverpool Exchange needed to be got rid of and the land sold off? A lucky escape.

If the Liverpool to Southport line had closed, would there be a bussiness case for it to reopen today or would it not score high enough to justify the costs?

 

[Taunton]

If the Liverpool to Southport line had closed, would there be a bussiness case for it to reopen today or would it not score high enough to justify the costs?

I think I am correct that no lines with a mainstream commuter flow were actually closed. Liverpool to Southport had 5-car trains, fairly full, every few minutes in the 1960s, in fact a much better service than today (Liverpool commuting fell off a cliff-edge in the 1960s-70s, and only ever partially recovered).

We moved from Somerset to Merseyside in the mid-1960s, and one thing that struck, compared to the electric lines around London that had been our only previous experience of major commuter flows, was how cheap the fares were compared to say the Southern in London. Just about all the daily trips were on Cheap Day Returns. The Southport line had considerable bus competition from an extensive network of double-deck Ribble buses, whose fares were even cheaper, bus stops far more widespread near houses, and which did not suffer from London-style peak period congestion.

Beeching is regularly misrepresented. What he identified, quite accurately, was lines such as this were unable to generate fares to cover their costs. His chief economist, Stewart Joy, calculated the elasticity of demand (as of course the Liverpool Division commercial staff had done previously), and determined that if they raised the fares they would lose even more passengers, and never come close to breaking even. So such lines needed to turn to some element of public financial support, openly accounted for, to continue to provide the service. This of course is precisely what the 1968 Transport Act did. The no-hopers (eg S&D, most notably the Highbridge branch, rumoured to have staffed stations with passenger numbers in single figures per week) went, the more worthwhile ones were supported.

 

[IanXC]

Wasn't it Ian Hislop on his programme about the cuts a couple of years back ?

Yes that sounds familiar.

 

[Lankyline]

The Southport line had considerable bus competition from an extensive network of double-deck Ribble buses, whose fares were even cheaper, bus stops far more widespread near houses, and which did not suffer from London-style peak period congestion.

Am I right in thinking that you are still referring to the Ribble service to Liverpool and not the one from Preston to Southport ?

Beeching is regularly misrepresented. What he identified, quite accurately, was lines such as this were unable to generate fares to cover their costs. .

Yes his identification of "loss" making lines was based on flawed methodology, there were rightly lines that could never make a profit, but he missed the point that lines, for example, that served seaside locations, were never allocated a percentage of the holiday traffic revenues, these were allocated to the "home" station, eg Leeds to Blackpool holiday special revenue would be allocated to Leeds and not distributed along the route.

Because his census methodology was also flawed, the figures were at best, a snapshot of the lines traffic and passenger numbers, effectively condemning lines that may have stood a fighting chance if the "real" picture had been shown

 

[JohnR]

He also dismissed sumarraily the possibility of reducing costs. As I pointed out earlier, many lines were closed with the full panoply of staff (Station Master, Booking Office Clerks, Porters, two shifts of signalmen) and a steam hauled service, when they could have been run much more efficiently for a lot less.

Even those lines which were modernised often had trains running to steam schedules and for traffic patterns which were decades old. A change to timetables to match the modern requirements would have led to an increase in patronage.

 

[DarloRich]

He also dismissed sumarraily the possibility of reducing costs. As I pointed out earlier, many lines were closed with the full panoply of staff (Station Master, Booking Office Clerks, Porters, two shifts of signalmen) and a steam hauled service, when they could have been run much more efficiently for a lot less.

Even those lines which were modernised often had trains running to steam schedules and for traffic patterns which were decades old. A change to timetables to match the modern requirements would have led to an increase in patronage.

MAY have led to not WOULD have led to. I do agree that proper cost cutting was not really tried in many cases.

However it is worth noting that in recent memory of Beeching there had been a disastrous and long running national rail strike - did the BR board have the desire to take on the unions again in relation to wide ranging cuts and changes to terms and conditions, working practices, working times etc etc?

Did they not do a deal whereby these cuts were "passed" by the unions in exchange for protections for those who remained and a desire to reassign staff rather than make them redundant?

What happened to all the staff at these closed stations - were they reassigned? How many people lost their jobs?

 

[Andy873]

I read it was around 67,000 jobs were lost according to estimates.

I think that with so many lines closing so quickly, only a few would have been reassigned.

 

[tbtc]

Yes his identification of "loss" making lines was based on flawed methodology, there were rightly lines that could never make a profit, but he missed the point that lines, for example, that served seaside locations, were never allocated a percentage of the holiday traffic revenues, these were allocated to the "home" station, eg Leeds to Blackpool holiday special revenue would be allocated to Leeds and not distributed along the route.

That's not a terrible allocation to make though.

If you close a seaside branch (e.g. Blackpool) then the Leeds tourists could head to Bridlington/ Morecambe etc instead - they could still spend that money to head to a different stretch of seaside.

Whereas, if you closed the lines to Leeds then those passengers wouldn't have any rail option (so wouldn't be buying any tickets).

That said, I think that the holidaymaker argument gets over-egged in such arguments - if a line was quiet for 90% of the year then a handful of "seaside specials" in the school holidays may not be sufficient to make it worthwhile.

Because his census methodology was also flawed, the figures were at best, a snapshot of the lines traffic and passenger numbers, effectively condemning lines that may have stood a fighting chance if the "real" picture had been shown

We've got much better technology nowadays to analyse ticket flows/ passenger behaviour/ numbers.

Advanced fares allow TOCs to analyse fare elasticity. Ticket barriers and CCTV mean that you can predict passenger numbers much better than ever. A 2017 version of Beeching would be a lot more precise, rather than the "blunt" approach that he took.

Beeching was working in the 1960s with the technology of that time. It's easy for us to dismiss the methodology in hindsight, but it's not like he had the ORCATS technology that we have nowadays.

Obviously that encourages people to trot out theories about how he only visited lines on a wet Wednesday in February (unless Market Day in the town was on a Wednesday, then he'd visit on a Tuesday to ensure lower numbers to count)...

MAY have led to not WOULD have led to. I do agree that proper cost cutting was not really tried in many cases.

The problem I have with the people saying that “1960s BR should have just rationalised things, made some light pruning, simplified things” is that they tend to be the same ones complaining about how “short sighted” 1980s BR was for singling some branch lines/ simplifying junctions/ removing unused platforms/ selling off spare land.

It’s not easy to buy the argument from such folk, when they moan about equivalent behaviour twenty years later always being a “false economy”.

I’d wager that, had Beeching tried to mothball lots of lines (instead of completely closing), the same people would complain that this was false economy too (since you are lumbered with the maintenance/ infrastructure costs without any actual income and with none of the unquantifiable “social benefits” that tend to get trotted out in such threads).

So the "cost cutting" argument sounds good in hindsight, but I'm not so sure that a lot of the people using it as an excuse actually believe it - it's just a stick to beat the Doctor with.

it is worth noting that in recent memory of Beeching there had been a disastrous and long running national rail strike - did the BR board have the desire to take on the unions again in relation to wide ranging cuts and changes to terms and conditions, working practices, working times etc etc?

Good points.

Rightly or wrongly, it's always been a lot easier to close something down entirely than try to partially close it down - the Unions wouldn't have accepted poorer terms/ conditions/ wages - but there's not a lot they can do if you plan to close the whole thing.

Beeching's report was a product of the time - context is very important.

 

[DarloRich]

The problem I have with the people saying that “1960s BR should have just rationalised things, made some light pruning, simplified things” is that they tend to be the same ones complaining about how “short sighted” 1980s BR was for singling some branch lines/ simplifying junctions/ removing unused platforms/ selling off spare land.

It’s not easy to buy the argument from such folk, when they moan about equivalent behaviour twenty years later always being a “false economy”.

I’d wager that, had Beeching tried to mothball lots of lines (instead of completely closing), the same people would complain that this was false economy too (since you are lumbered with the maintenance/ infrastructure costs without any actual income and with none of the unquantifiable “social benefits” that tend to get trotted out in such threads).

So the "cost cutting" argument sounds good in hindsight, but I'm not so sure that a lot of the people using it as an excuse actually believe it - it's just a stick to beat the Doctor with.

I don't advocate wholesale mothballing. That is almost pointless after a couple of months. I advocate trying to save marginal lines with harsh cost cutting & revenue maximisation

Beeching's report was a product of the time - context is very important.

Agreed - it is too easy to project what we know now backwards. What they knew then is what matters.

 

[yorksrob]

That's not a terrible allocation to make though.

If you close a seaside branch (e.g. Blackpool) then the Leeds tourists could head to Bridlington/ Morecambe etc instead - they could still spend that money to head to a different stretch of seaside.

Whereas, if you closed the lines to Leeds then those passengers wouldn't have any rail option (so wouldn't be buying any tickets).

That said, I think that the holidaymaker argument gets over-egged in such arguments - if a line was quiet for 90% of the year then a handful of "seaside specials" in the school holidays may not be sufficient to make it worthwhile.

I think it is quite bad though. If you take together a passenger survey on a quiet day of the year and combine it with ignoring receipts from incoming traffic, it seems to be a recipe for major miscalculation.

The problem I have with the people saying that “1960s BR should have just rationalised things, made some light pruning, simplified things” is that they tend to be the same ones complaining about how “short sighted” 1980s BR was for singling some branch lines/ simplifying junctions/ removing unused platforms/ selling off spare land.

It’s not easy to buy the argument from such folk, when they moan about equivalent behaviour twenty years later always being a “false economy”.

I’d wager that, had Beeching tried to mothball lots of lines (instead of completely closing), the same people would complain that this was false economy too (since you are lumbered with the maintenance/ infrastructure costs without any actual income and with none of the unquantifiable “social benefits” that tend to get trotted out in such threads).

I don't think that anyone on this forum would argue that closing the West of England line west of Salisbury, for example, would have been preferable to the singling. Obviously people will bemoan the current day problems thrown up by long single track sections, but I think everyone understands that this was vastly preferable to the ultimate, irreversible calamity of closure. Its noteable how much the wider public, recognise the damage done to the fabric of the Country by the route closures in that almost everyone has heard of Dr Beeching. I'll suggest that rather fewer people have heard of Sir Bob Reid I, let alone vilify him for his programme of track rationalisation, for the very good reason that (with a couple of unfortunate exceptions) he kept the service running.

Rightly or wrongly, it's always been a lot easier to close something down entirely than try to partially close it down - the Unions wouldn't have accepted poorer terms/ conditions/ wages - but there's not a lot they can do if you plan to close the whole thing.

Beeching's report was a product of the time - context is very important.

I'm not sure that I agree with this point.

If you rationalised a line to a basic railway, you would be left with a driver and a guard, who would still be on the same grade. You would have fewer signalmen, so the ones remaining would either more likely be retained on the same grade or promoted. Stations could be made unstaffed without anyone being bumped down. It's hard to see how a rationalisation programme would end up with remaining staff having worse conditions.

 

[Andy873]

Sir Bob Reid promoted "The age of the train" adverts, remember them?

He helped to revive BR in the publics image.

As I have said before, not keeping the track bed was the worst, at least making a line single would keep it open, and should the traffic deem it, it could at some point be doubled again.

 

[edwin_m]

If you rationalised a line to a basic railway, you would be left with a driver and a guard, who would still be on the same grade. You would have fewer signalmen, so the ones remaining would either more likely be retained on the same grade or promoted. Stations could be made unstaffed without anyone being bumped down. It's hard to see how a rationalisation programme would end up with remaining staff having worse conditions.

Rail rationalisation would leave some of the staff on the route facing redeployment or redundancy. But closure would (and presumably did) leave all of them in that situation. The 60s were also a time of labour shortage - difficulty of getting enough staff when better jobs were available was one reason cited to get rid of steam. So if the unions opposed rationalisation I'm not sure why.

 

[Dr Hoo]

For ease of reference it may be worth noting that the detailed traffic surveys (for both passengers and freight) were undertaken in the week ending 23 April 1961. Easter that year was at the very end of March. So it was a reasonably representative week (not just a wet Tuesday in February or during holidays when commuters might be off, etc.).

Analysis of the data was then undertaken for over a year. Perhaps not quite the glib, 'back of an envelope' stuff that some people accuse Beeching of.

 

[coppercapped]

I think I am correct that no lines with a mainstream commuter flow were actually closed. Liverpool to Southport had 5-car trains, fairly full, every few minutes in the 1960s, in fact a much better service than today (Liverpool commuting fell off a cliff-edge in the 1960s-70s, and only ever partially recovered).

We moved from Somerset to Merseyside in the mid-1960s, and one thing that struck, compared to the electric lines around London that had been our only previous experience of major commuter flows, was how cheap the fares were compared to say the Southern in London. Just about all the daily trips were on Cheap Day Returns. The Southport line had considerable bus competition from an extensive network of double-deck Ribble buses, whose fares were even cheaper, bus stops far more widespread near houses, and which did not suffer from London-style peak period congestion.

Beeching is regularly misrepresented. What he identified, quite accurately, was lines such as this were unable to generate fares to cover their costs. His chief economist, Stewart Joy, calculated the elasticity of demand (as of course the Liverpool Division commercial staff had done previously), and determined that if they raised the fares they would lose even more passengers, and never come close to breaking even. So such lines needed to turn to some element of public financial support, openly accounted for, to continue to provide the service. This of course is precisely what the 1968 Transport Act did. The no-hopers (eg S&D, most notably the Highbridge branch, rumoured to have staffed stations with passenger numbers in single figures per week) went, the more worthwhile ones were supported.

Taking up your point about the Southport line flows and Beeching being misrepresented, the Beeching report discussed suburban services on page 20 and clearly stated that the pattern of life in the larger cities (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and Cardiff - with London being treated as a special case) would be unthinkable without railways but that is no reason why the services should be supplied below cost. In 1961 the suburban services as a whole earned £39.8 million of which London alone made up £33 million. London services nearly covered their costs, the implication being that the other services lost some £25 million - on an income of £6.8 million!

On page 22 the Report states:

No city other than London is nearly so predominantly dependent upon suburban train services. All of them are served by public road transport which carries a high proportion of the total daily flow, and the movement and parking of private transport is still sufficiently free to make it a possible alternative to rail. Also none of these services is loaded as heavily as many London services.

As in the case of London, fares on these services feeding other cities are low, sometimes very low, and none of them pays its way. There is no possibility of a solution being found, however, merely by increasing or reducing fares. Increases in fares on rail services alone would drive traffic to available alternative modes of travel and yield little increase in revenue, if any.

The Report goes on to say: "The right solution is most likely to be found by 'Total Social Benefit Studies' of the kind now being explored by the Ministry of Transport and British Railways jointly. In cases of the type under consideration it may be cheaper to subsidise the railways than to bear the other cost burdens which will arise if they are closed."

So, rather than being condemned as a butcher, he should be praised as the man who paved the way for the introduction of the social railway.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

So, rather than being condemned as a butcher, he should be praised as the man who paved the way for the introduction of the social railway.

Oh dear, I fear you may have just upset the whole Nostalgista Wing of the forum!

 

[yorksrob]

This may not surprise posters, however I don't really buy into this narrative of Beeching being the creator of the social railway.

He may have thrown in as an aside that a small number of suburban routes might need supporting, but there was clearly no meaningful consideration of the role of the wider regional network.

Let's not forget, that as both as chairman of the board and as a formulator of policy, Beeching had ample opportunity to promote a conversation amongst the wider public about public support for routes, rationalisation etc. The report could have said that so many routes weren't paying their way and 'would either require support or would need to close', however this just wasn't presented to the public.

My feeling is that the Doctor just didn't see such routes as part of his shiny, efficient new BR.

If you doubt my point of view, just read the report and consider the worked example of York - Beverley. This was clearly a route crying out for rationalisation and the books even had to be cooked to make up the case for closure. This closure wasn't the result of some over-zealous rogue manager who went too far. It was held up in the report itself as an example of how closures would be justified.

 

[coppercapped]

This may not surprise posters, however I don't really buy into this narrative of Beeching being the creator of the social railway.

He may have thrown in as an aside that a small number of suburban routes might need supporting, but there was clearly no meaningful consideration of the role of the wider regional network.

Let's not forget, that as both as chairman of the board and as a formulator of policy, Beeching had ample opportunity to promote a conversation amongst the wider public about public support for routes, rationalisation etc. The report could have said that so many routes weren't paying their way and 'would either require support or would need to close', however this just wasn't presented to the public.

My feeling is that the Doctor just didn't see such routes as part of his shiny, efficient new BR.

If you doubt my point of view, just read the report and consider the worked example of York - Beverley. This was clearly a route crying out for rationalisation and the books even had to be cooked to make up the case for closure. This closure wasn't the result of some over-zealous rogue manager who went too far. It was held up in the report itself as an example of how closures would be justified.

Screech!! The sound of goalposts being moved!

Where did I write that Beeching was the creator of the social railway? Try reading what is written rather than what you thought was written.

 

[coppercapped]

Oh dear, I fear you may have just upset the whole Nostalgista Wing of the forum!

I know!

But at some point reality has to intrude.

 

[yorksrob]

Taking up your point about the Southport line flows and Beeching being misrepresented, the Beeching report discussed suburban services on page 20 and clearly stated that the pattern of life in the larger cities (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and Cardiff - with London being treated as a special case) would be unthinkable without railways but that is no reason why the services should be supplied below cost. In 1961 the suburban services as a whole earned £39.8 million of which London alone made up £33 million. London services nearly covered their costs, the implication being that the other services lost some £25 million - on an income of £6.8 million!

On page 22 the Report states:

The Report goes on to say: "The right solution is most likely to be found by 'Total Social Benefit Studies' of the kind now being explored by the Ministry of Transport and British Railways jointly. In cases of the type under consideration it may be cheaper to subsidise the railways than to bear the other cost burdens which will arise if they are closed."

So, rather than being condemned as a butcher, he should be praised as the man who paved the way for the introduction of the social railway.

Screech!! The sound of goalposts being moved!

Where did I write that Beeching was the creator of the social railway? Try reading what is written rather than what you thought was written.

Way paver, creator, say what you like, our railway network with it's extensive regional railway was not part of Beechings view of what the modern railway should be. To say that the reports were some sort of clever master plan to bring about an extensive social railway is pure hokum.

I know that for some one here, historical revisionism is a matter of principle, however the fact remains that if Beeching had had his way, we wouldn't have the network we have today and the country would have been even more irrevocably damaged because of it.

 

[coppercapped]

Way paver, creator, say what you like, our railway network with it's extensive regional railway was not part of Beechings view of what the modern railway should be. To say that the reports were some sort of clever master plan to bring about an extensive social railway is pure hokum.

I know that for some one here, historical revisionism is a matter of principle, however the fact remains that if Beeching had had his way, we wouldn't have the network we have today and the country would have been even more irrevocably damaged because of it.

Where did I write that the report was some sort of master plan for the social railway?

The point you are ignoring is that, by 1963, the Ministry of Transport - together with BR - was undertaking Total Social Benefit Studies on some parts of the railway system. The report makes clear that initially these were concerned with 'commuter' railways around the the great conurbations. Only five years later - a blink of an eye in government planning timings - the 1968 Transport Act created Passenger Transport Authorities and Executives to manage public transport in large conurbations. This Act also saw the introduction of funding for unprofitable routes on a line-by-line basis.

Do you honestly think that the initiatives of the Transport Act were not influenced by the work done a couple of years before the Bill was drafted?

 

[yorksrob]

Where did I write that the report was some sort of master plan for the social railway?

The point you are ignoring is that, by 1963, the Ministry of Transport - together with BR - was undertaking Total Social Benefit Studies on some parts of the railway system. The report makes clear that initially these were concerned with 'commuter' railways around the the great conurbations. Only five years later - a blink of an eye in government planning timings - the 1968 Transport Act created Passenger Transport Authorities and Executives to manage public transport in large conurbations. This Act also saw the introduction of funding for unprofitable routes on a line-by-line basis.

Do you honestly think that the initiatives of the Transport Act were not influenced by the work done a couple of years before the Bill was drafted?

Statistics by themselves are neutral and can be used to support more or less any policy. The point is that Beeching saw no future in the majority of the regional railway and it took people with the right vision to use those statistics in support of good policy.

 

[Gareth Marston]

Where did I write that the report was some sort of master plan for the social railway?

The point you are ignoring is that, by 1963, the Ministry of Transport - together with BR - was undertaking Total Social Benefit Studies on some parts of the railway system. The report makes clear that initially these were concerned with 'commuter' railways around the the great conurbations. Only five years later - a blink of an eye in government planning timings - the 1968 Transport Act created Passenger Transport Authorities and Executives to manage public transport in large conurbations. This Act also saw the introduction of funding for unprofitable routes on a line-by-line basis.

Do you honestly think that the initiatives of the Transport Act were not influenced by the work done a couple of years before the Bill was drafted?

There are a number of inconsistencies in the 63 report and contradictions with itself. It's hardly suprsing that it said one thing in one place and then did another in practice (combined with the later Trunk Route report). How do you square the attempt to totally destroy the ex GWR suburban lines in the West Midlands which were frequent and well used with Totalsocial benefit study?

 

[Gareth Marston]

I think I am correct that no lines with a mainstream commuter flow were actually closed..

Wolverhampton Low Level/Dudley to Birmingham Snow Hill.

 

[30907]

Wolverhampton Low Level/Dudley to Birmingham Snow Hill.

I only knew the route in its last days, so can't speak from experience.

I think you would have to define mainstream. A glance at the 1949 timetable online http://timetableworld.com/book_viewer.php?id=5&section_id=-1
gives 2 stoppers in the peak hour from Wolverhampton into Snow Hill compared with 7 in from Solihull.

In relative terms, if not absolute, that explains what happened. With hindsight of course....

(BTW the UK is not the only country to have seen major growth in commuting leading to expansion of regional services INCLUDING reopenings: much of Germany is going down the same road, though from rather less ruthless beginnings.)

 

[Gareth Marston]

We've got much better technology nowadays to analyse ticket flows/ passenger behaviour/ numbers.

Advanced fares allow TOCs to analyse fare elasticity. Ticket barriers and CCTV mean that you can predict passenger numbers much better than ever. A 2017 version of Beeching would be a lot more precise, rather than the "blunt" approach that he took.

Beeching was working in the 1960s with the technology of that time. It's easy for us to dismiss the methodology in hindsight, but it's not like he had the ORCATS technology that we have nowadays.

Obviously that encourages people to trot out theories about how he only visited lines on a wet Wednesday in February (unless Market Day in the town was on a Wednesday, then he'd visit on a Tuesday to ensure lower numbers to count)...

The sales figures here at Newtown are vastly different taking the same week from year to year. The same was true back then and there was disquiet on that very point. The use of the 1962 snapshot census is nothing to do with technology of the time just poor/incompetent use of statistics. Whilst I agree today would be very different you could still get someone using flawed methodology's to come to conclusions.

Beeching tried to head off criticism of the traffic census by dismissing calls to do more of them as impractical yet the railway at the time was awash with staff to do it who according to legend were spending more time gardening than dealing with traffic in many places. Whilst the initial survey probably confirmed where was busy a lot more work to get an accurate picture was needed elsewhere. It wasn't the rigorous statistical analysis that Beeching pretended it was.

Nor was his his bottom line how much traffic was needed to make a line break even figure (17000 passenger a week or 10000 i sharing line with freight). As mentioned elsewhere the assumption that a branch or secondary line had an hourly service in 1961 was way off the mark most had 8 or so trains a day and thus half the movement costs assumed. People (at the time like the forerunners of RDS) used the report to come to a different conclusion that c8000 passenger per week on average was a more realistic break even figure.

A proper survey(s) and more realistic use of actual costs/rationalization could have seen most off the middle category lines (5K to 10K passenger per week) on the infamous maps saved.

 

[Taunton]

Beeching was the Chairman of the railway. He was responsible for the upwards relationship with the government, and set the overall style. All the management, including assembling the Report, was done by existing managerial staff reporting to him (apart from a couple he brought with him, such as his Chief Economist, Stewart Joy).

Notably one of the highest-regarded managers of this era, Gerry Fiennes, always states that Beeching was the "Great and Good Doctor", and Fiennes wrote he had the highest regard for what he was doing.

Beeching set the pattern for Inter-City, Freightliners, Merry-go-Round coal trains, Mk 2 passenger stock, and other major developments. Oh, and for the socially necessary railway. He lined up the substantial government funds for all this. It was the railway needed for the future. not serving Little Snoring Halt four times a day, staffed with maybe more staff than the daily passenger total, almost all of whom had deserted trains for the regular interval bus that had been stopping right through the village ever since it began in the 1930s.

 

[yorksrob]

Beeching was the Chairman of the railway. He was responsible for the upwards relationship with the government, and set the overall style. All the management, including assembling the Report, was done by existing managerial staff reporting to him (apart from a couple he brought with him, such as his Chief Economist, Stewart Joy).

Notably one of the highest-regarded managers of this era, Gerry Fiennes, always states that Beeching was the "Great and Good Doctor", and Fiennes wrote he had the highest regard for what he was doing.

Beeching set the pattern for Inter-City, Freightliners, Merry-go-Round coal trains, Mk 2 passenger stock, and other major developments. Oh, and for the socially necessary railway. He lined up the substantial government funds for all this. It was the railway needed for the future. not serving Little Snoring Halt four times a day, staffed with maybe more staff than the daily passenger total, almost all of whom had deserted trains for the regular interval bus that had been stopping right through the village ever since it began in the 1930s.

I'm sure Dr Beeching had enough knowhow had enough technical expertise to critically assess the statistics placed in front of him. At any rate, as Chairman, he was ultimately responsible for the competence of his subordinates. In the worked example of York to Beverley he arguably had all the statistics he could possibly need to come up with the right decision. That he didn't was down to ideology.

I don't really think that it brings much to the discussion to characterise localities such as Hailsham, Tiverton, Tavistock and Ripon as "Little Snoring". And whilst Fiennes was an excelled manager generally, he wasn't immune to some opinions which turned out to be unjustified, such as those he expressed on the Salisbury/Exeter mainline in his memoir.

 

[DerekC]

The problem with Beeching wasn't about Little Snoring. Much as I regret the passing of rural branch lines from a nostalgic perspective most of them were going to be closed in the 1960s - 1970s, Beeching or not. The real problem was that (as I am sure has been said in this thread before) railways were considered to be on a downward path, with no thought that some of the routes closed might be of future value if there was an upturn in need. So, unlike in France, there was no protection by Government of the strategic routes closed (Great Central, Leeds Northern, Exeter - Plymouth via Okehampton, Bedford to Cambridge ......). Now we are paying the price for that lack of vision.

 

[Gareth Marston]

Beeching was the Chairman of the railway. He was responsible for the upwards relationship with the government, and set the overall style. All the management, including assembling the Report, was done by existing managerial staff reporting to him (apart from a couple he brought with him, such as his Chief Economist, Stewart Joy).

Notably one of the highest-regarded managers of this era, Gerry Fiennes, always states that Beeching was the "Great and Good Doctor", and Fiennes wrote he had the highest regard for what he was doing.

Beeching set the pattern for Inter-City, Freightliners, Merry-go-Round coal trains, Mk 2 passenger stock, and other major developments. Oh, and for the socially necessary railway. He lined up the substantial government funds for all this. It was the railway needed for the future. not serving Little Snoring Halt four times a day, staffed with maybe more staff than the daily passenger total, almost all of whom had deserted trains for the regular interval bus that had been stopping right through the village ever since it began in the 1930s.

Trotting out the whitewash version of what happened with some embellishment about Fiennes?

The fact remains the closures failed to achieve their stated objectives and saved little money overall. This combined with the flaws/inconsistency's/half truths/misdirection in the report and the primary funding source of the party in Government at the time will always leave a huge question mark on the process.

The best description of what is popularly known as "Beeching" is that the closure programme was akin to a company whose late shift was always not achieving its production quota and working late thereby claiming overtime and increasing costs. The Management decides to deal with it by cutting the canteen staff jobs.

 

[Andy873]

I am very glad I started this thread.

It makes for very interesting reading, as far as I have read and seen the cuts saved very little money, which begs the question where was the money being lost?

You would have thought that several things could have been tried first, for instance actually asking the public why they were not using services.

How about asking people are the train times good for them, asking for ideas.

From my experience in business, you might be suprised what good ideas people have.

If you owned a business that made several things, but the "widget" department was losing money, you would not knock down that building and sell the expensive machinery that makes the "widget" straight away. You would redeploy staff where possible and mothball the machines at least for a year or two.

You could then decide how much you were saving, and hope that there would be an upturn in the demand for "widgets".

I think with the cuts, it comes down to fashion, motorways were seen as the future, and railways losing money and seen as old fashioned.

Many things could have been tried, but the political will to try alternatives simply was not there.