Do branch lines contribute much financially to the greater network?

[brad465]

mods note - split from this thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/unsatisfactory-branch-shuttles.226632/

How about every branch line service? By their very nature branch lines are at best secondary routes, so have inferior services that will have any one or combination of the following: slow, poor quality stock and ride experience, vulnerable to engineering work closures, and poor connections with mainline/other services at at least one end and/or somewhere en route (feel free to add others).

 

[william]

How about every branch line service? By their very nature branch lines are at best secondary routes, so have inferior services that will have any one or combination of the following: slow, poor quality stock and ride experience, vulnerable to engineering work closures, and poor connections with mainline/other services at at least one end and/or somewhere en route (feel free to add others).

Not so.

 

[londontransit]

How about every branch line service? By their very nature branch lines are at best secondary routes, so have inferior services that will have any one or combination of the following: slow, poor quality stock and ride experience, vulnerable to engineering work closures, and poor connections with mainline/other services at at least one end and/or somewhere en route (feel free to add others).

This is what could be seen as largely the main premise of Beeching's arguments for the mass railway decimation of the 1960s! (And I must add, a premise that has proved to be largely fallacious in terms of services and income etc. Cutting off these will injure the main railway network.)

 

[XAM2175]

Cutting off these will injure the main railway network.

I was under the impression that this was the largely fallacious premise.

 

[londontransit]

I was under the impression that this was the largely fallacious premise.

I dont understand what you mean. It was proved cutting off unremunerative branch lines injured the main network. Clever ways were employed (including dubious accounting) to show many branch lines didnt contribute and the main rail network was better off without these.

 

[RT4038]

I dont understand what you mean. It was proved cutting off unremunerative branch lines injured the main network. Clever ways were employed (including dubious accounting) to show many branch lines didnt contribute and the main rail network was better off without these.

Not sure that this was proven. More like a railway myth.

 

[londontransit]

Not sure that this was proven. More like a railway myth.

West Norfolk Council claims the King's Lynn-Hunstanton line to be a total loss maker when it was in fact making a profit.

It quotes from an article which clearly implies that British Railways adjusted its accounts to show branch lines as loss-making.

West Norfolk.

(Edited to add the PDF link)

 

[Taunton]

I suppose a further "unsatisfactory" implication of many branch shuttles must be the logistics of providing traincrew reliefs for tea-breaks and shift changes especially if the shuttle route is some considerable distance from the nearest traincrew depot or signing-on point. Do the timetables of any shuttles have strategic gaps in them to enable traincrew breaks without the need for additional staff cover? Not a particularly passenger-friendly practice if it does exist but a tempting one for the operator. I wonder which branch shuttles are contenders for being the most awkward in terms of crew changes?

A quite longstanding one was the Maiden Newton to Bridport line. This was crewed, and indeed operated, from the nearest Western Region depot, at ... Westbury, 45 miles and well over an hour's travel each way away. Crews spent half their shift travelling to and fro on the cushions, plus the single car had to return there for refuelling. It used to be crewed from Weymouth, of course, much nearer, but when the boundary was redrawn between WR and SR in 1960 they no longer did so.

 

[zwk500]

West Norfolk Council claims to have documents that showed the King's Lynn-Hunstanton line to be a total loss maker when it was in fact making a profit. That's just one example.

That's not an unprofitable line then, is it? Although the difficulty anybody would have had accurately allocating costs across different lines in the 1960s makes me believe that for pretty much every line you could show it on either side of the balance book.

I think just about the only thing that's clearly demonstrated about the 'branch line paying for the main line' theory is that there isn't one universal truth to it.

 

[londontransit]

That's not an unprofitable line then, is it? Although the difficulty anybody would have had accurately allocating costs across different lines in the 1960s makes me believe that for pretty much every line you could show it on either side of the balance book.

I think just about the only thing that's clearly demonstrated about the 'branch line paying for the main line' theory is that there isn't one universal truth to it.

You're right. Its inertia like for example in relativity. Everybody sees different 'truths' (eg their clocks showing different times and whether they're actually moving or at rest etc.) If we want to go further, well there's nothing true in human life. We all have constructed names and even money among many other things is a construct, a make-believe. None of us know what the truth is or what reality is even.

 

[RT4038]

West Norfolk Council claims the King's Lynn-Hunstanton line to be a total loss maker when it was in fact making a profit.

It quotes from an article which clearly implies that British Railways adjusted its accounts to show branch lines as loss-making.

West Norfolk.

(Edited to add the PDF link)

The article implies , so it must be the truth then. It is just a one sided diatribe from a particular angle. The line ran to a holiday resort, the popularity of which was rapidly waning at that time. It had a large number of level crossings, which would have cost a fortune to man then, with labour costs rocketing skyward, or required large sums of capital to convert to automatic, which would have to have been diverted from Inter City projects.

That's not an unprofitable line then, is it? Although the difficulty anybody would have had accurately allocating costs across different lines in the 1960s makes me believe that for pretty much every line you could show it on either side of the balance book.

I think just about the only thing that's clearly demonstrated about the 'branch line paying for the main line' theory is that there isn't one universal truth to it.

Quite right, but I think a cursory glance at such a line would show that it was not a money spinner. And railways have not got any cheaper to run!

 

[william]

Or how about

You're right. Its inertia like for example in relativity. Everybody sees different 'truths' (eg their clocks showing different times and whether they're actually moving or at rest etc.) If we want to go further, well there's nothing true in human life. We all have constructed names and even money among many other things is a construct, a make-believe. None of us know what the truth is or what reality is even.

Wow, someone's feeling philosophical. Perhaps the only reality is that what we make ourselves.

I think the idea that branch lines/feeder networks don't contribute to the wider network is a bit of a fallacy. All networks are greater than the sum of their parts, there's no question about that. But of far greater importance than either the actual worth of that component considered in isolation or the worth of that component in the network is the overall aims and functions of the network as a whole. That is what changes over time and that is what the network needs to adapt to...

 

[M&NEJ]

Or how about

Wow, someone's feeling philosophical. Perhaps the only reality is that what we make ourselves.

But wouldn't we all agree that trains exist (and shuttles on branch lines for that matter)?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

But wouldn't we all agree that trains exist (and shuttles on branch lines for that matter)?

If a train is sitting in a depot and there is no-one around, so one can perceive that the train currently exists, does it still exist?

 

[norbitonflyer]

But wouldn't we all agree that trains exist.

I have discovered quite a few trains that exist only in the timetable and not in the metal!

 

[Djgr]

West Norfolk Council claims the King's Lynn-Hunstanton line to be a total loss maker when it was in fact making a profit.

It quotes from an article which clearly implies that British Railways adjusted its accounts to show branch lines as loss-making.

West Norfolk.

(Edited to add the PDF link)

Even more dodgy cost accounting- St Andrews to Leuchars

 

[Falcon1200]

West Norfolk Council claims the King's Lynn-Hunstanton line to be a total loss maker when it was in fact making a profit.

It quotes from an article which clearly implies that British Railways adjusted its accounts to show branch lines as loss-making.

That's an interesting article, thanks for the link, and it does seem to me that if the line to Hunstanton, like those to Swanage, Keswick and Caernarvon, had survived a little longer we might still have them today. But making a profit ? I cannot see any way that fare income from such a route could have covered all its costs; Track maintenance and renewal, signalling ditto, structures ditto, train and traincrew costs, etc, without subsidy; And if it was truly making a profit, why on earth was BR so determined to close it ?

 

[londontransit]

The article implies , so it must be the truth then. It is just a one sided diatribe from a particular angle. The line ran to a holiday resort, the popularity of which was rapidly waning at that time. It had a large number of level crossings, which would have cost a fortune to man then, with labour costs rocketing skyward, or required large sums of capital to convert to automatic, which would have to have been diverted from Inter City projects.


Quite right, but I think a cursory glance at such a line would show that it was not a money spinner. And railways have not got any cheaper to run!

The Hunstanton branch in fact got automatic road crossing barriers at a cost of £25,000 and this just two years before it closed.

 

[RT4038]

That's an interesting article, thanks for the link, and it does seem to me that if the line to Hunstanton, like those to Swanage, Keswick and Caernarvon, had survived a little longer we might still have them today.

I think this is a bit of a myth. If all these lines had been retained the weight of the subsidy would have been that much heavier, and the capital to improve the Inter City routes that much less (so their competitiveness and profitability that much lower) would have resulted in a more severe closure programme in the Thatcher period.

The Hunstanton branch in fact got automatic road crossing barriers at a cost of £25,000 and this just two years before it closed.

But these could be removed and used to replace manual gates somewhere else, saving money there. Passenger traffic was still plummeting on rural rail lines at the time the Hunstanton branch shut. The losses would have just got worse and worse.

 

[londontransit]

That's an interesting article, thanks for the link, and it does seem to me that if the line to Hunstanton, like those to Swanage, Keswick and Caernarvon, had survived a little longer we might still have them today. But making a profit ? I cannot see any way that fare income from such a route could have covered all its costs; Track maintenance and renewal, signalling ditto, structures ditto, train and traincrew costs, etc, without subsidy; And if it was truly making a profit, why on earth was BR so determined to close it ?

I think it was a mentality TBH. Just like trams, trolleybuses etc, trains were seen as the product of a backward age. Cars, the moon, Apollo, Doctor Who, the future this was all the rage. Trains weren't. Thus BR had this mentality (prob instilled for all I know from Marples and his cronies) and it became a self-fulfilling one when BR began to look at its lines and see nothing but deadwood everywhere. I do remember railways in the early sixties did get oodles of investment, but as I personally experienced from my own use of railways - following this apparent good fortune many lines were massively rationalised to the barebones and most closed in the short space of a few years.

Edited to add: I do remember Caernarvon station (dont get at me for using the wrong spelling this is the 1960s when it was spelt that after all) and of course the branch to Llanberis and Afon Wen. I remember the station being very well used and very complete right up to 1967, shortly before a special occasion, so it surprised me that so soon after that occasion (if I remember right) the line was totally rationalised and then closed.

Of course the route of the line through what is now Caernarfon is a roadway these days, excepting the section out of the southern end of the town now being part of the WHR.

 

[Ken H]

That's not an unprofitable line then, is it? Although the difficulty anybody would have had accurately allocating costs across different lines in the 1960s makes me believe that for pretty much every line you could show it on either side of the balance book.

I think just about the only thing that's clearly demonstrated about the 'branch line paying for the main line' theory is that there isn't one universal truth to it.

didnt BR use 'originating revenue' to decide a lines income? dodgy accounting cos holiday areas would have little originating revenue but many passengers would go there with return tickets.

 

[dk1]

didnt BR use 'originating revenue' to decide a lines income? dodgy accounting cos holiday areas would have little originating revenue but many passengers would go there with return tickets.

I recall Keswick being a prime example of the behaviour. Only reporting revenue that was taken on the branch itself.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I recall Keswick being a prime example of the behaviour. Only reporting revenue that was taken on the branch itself.

Which as a long distance traffic sink will have been tiny compared to the return journeys originating in Manchester etc. Who now drive instead. The bus service is good, but buses have too much of an unknown factor for most.

 

[dk1]

Which as a long distance traffic sink will have been tiny compared to the return journeys originating in Manchester etc. Who now drive instead. The bus service is good, but buses have too much of an unknown factor for most.

Couldn’t agree more.

 

[brad465]

Wasn't expecting my initial opinion on branch line services overall to lead to a completely new discussion.

 

[AngusH]

The real difficulty was actually doing the analysis to the level
needed to perfectly understand what was happening.

It was extremely difficult to do large scale financial breakdowns of the type required
unless you had one of the early computers or possibly a large punch card tabulation system
and a lot of very skilled staff.

No spreadsheets, no general databases after all.

I wonder what might have happened if British Railways had bought a Lyons computer in the early 1950s and then implemented
a much earlier equivalent to TOPS and/or the current ticketing system.

Or perhaps the outcome might have been the same anyway

 

[ScottGallagher]

Beeching was interviewed many years later and said he didn't have any regrets , even going as far as questioning the need to have the line from.Newcastle to Edinburgh kept as it only benefits the residents of Berwick on Tweed!

 

[AndrewE]

Management accounting is at the root of this problem. Invented to help companies maximise their "bottom line" and - by turning everything into an apparent financial outcome - allowed, justified or encouraged lots of businesses to walk away from their social obligations, or dump small parts of their operations. Also completely ignored the reliability value of managing your own supply chain.

It completely ignores the bigger picture, and in the public policy world (e.g. assessing constituent parts of the railway network) it has proved to be a catastrophe.

Why have we in the UK got fewer hospital beds per head than anywhere else in Europe, or less intensive care provision relative to the number hospital beds? (That was a good idea wasn't it?) Ask the accountants! They truly know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Good job the railways were still publicly accountable when Beeching did his work, or else we would be far worse off now. (Just my opinion!)

 

[Bald Rick]

Back to the question- it of course depends what you mean by “branch line”.

The Alton branch contributes quite a lot, as does the Southend Victoria branch. And many others.

However there’s many that don’t. There’s more than a few branches out there where the avoidable TOC operating cost (crew, fuel, variable track access, mileage on the unit) is more than 10 x revenue. For the avoidance of doubt that includes all revenue for tickets sold to and from the branch, and not just that on the branch.

 

[6Gman]

Back to the question- it of course depends what you mean by “branch line”.

The Alton branch contributes quite a lot, as does the Southend Victoria branch. And many others.

However there’s many that don’t. There’s more than a few branches out there where the avoidable TOC operating cost (crew, fuel, variable track access, mileage on the unit) is more than 10 x revenue. For the avoidance of doubt that includes all revenue for tickets sold to and from the branch, and not just that on the branch.

I had some interesting figures on the usage/ income/ expenditure of various routes in the 1990s (sadly lost during an office reorganisation). I can assure you that quite a few surviving branches (never mind those closed a quarter century earlier) were heavy, heavy lossmakers. And others made a worthwhile positive contribution.