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

[L+Y]

Much as it says on the tin- let's say Wilson's Government sticks to plans to scrap Dr B's report in 1964. How does BR develop over the following decades? What do, for example, the GCR and S&D (insert line of choice!) look like by 1980, 1990, 2000?

This is somewhat inspired by all the reopening threads, and the (IMO sensible) comments about routes that perhaps should never have closed at the time, but would nonetheless be foolish to attempt to reopen today.

 

[InterCity:125]

Trains to illfracombe!

 

[gsnedders]

Bankrupt.

 

[tbtc]

1. How would a BR (that ran significantly more diesel trains, since the lines Beeching closed weren't wired) have coped with the OPEC rises in the 1970s? Beeching made recommendations based on the economic case of "quieter" lines when diesel was still relatively cheap - when the price of a barrel of oil more than doubled, the case for keeping some lines open would have been a lot harder to justify.

2. How would a flabby unfocussed BR have coped with Thatcher's attack on unnecessary bits of the public sector? e.g. if the forty five minute frequency from London to Leicester (under BR) was spread over both the MML and GCR, you'd have two double tracked main lines with maybe only a train every ninety minutes on each of them? At least the railway that she inherited was relatively lean, so it was hard to make much of a case for closing a significant number of route miles (the Settle & Carlisle, Woodhead aside). If we hadn't had the surgery applied by the Good Doctor on the 1960s, we may have seen significantly bigger cuts in the 1980s, leaving us with even less of a network by 1990 than we did end up with.

3. The significant changes in heavy industry that meant bulk flows of things like coal changed would presumably have been the same? Take the heavy freight away from lines like Woodhead and what are you left with? Same with the boom in foreign holidays (that affected demand to "traditional" British seaside towns)? And the growth of motorways?

(I'm not trying to argue too much with the OP's interesting idea - there's no harm in speculating about how some lines would have fared, but my fear is that failure to "rationalise" in the 1960s would have stored up bigger problems for future decades that a harsher "surgeon" would have cut harder later)

 

[Warwick]

B.R. simply wouldn't have survived. By the early 1960s rail traffic was falling like a falling thing. B.R. had been propped up and had it's debt written off in 1955 and then proceeded to run up millions more debt by pursuing dead-end policies. Investing in new build steam locomotives, being forced to buy useless diesel locomotives by manufacturers with no experience of building them just to keep them in business. B.R. in it's form simply couldn't have carried on.

 

[yorksrob]

it does depend on what was there instead of Beeching. A railway carrying on just the same as before would have ended up being cut anyway, particularly given the outlook of various politicians and civil servants.

If, on the other hand, you had had someone charged with "making the railways operate on a commercial basis" but who wasn't ideologically inclined towards route closures, and looked in a methodical way at how much secondary routes cost to run, how much traffic they contributed to the rest of the network, and crucially how much it actually saved to close a line, and if they gave their local and regional managers more of a free hand to drive down costs on marginal routes, you might have had the basis for a functioning wider passenger network.

Of course, many of the railways' enemies were in Government and the civil service, so it would depend on how easily these could be sidelined.

The best time to ditch the Beeching plan would have been with the change of Government in 1964 (thus harnessing and building on the political opprobrium generated by the plan), but Fraser was a lousy transport minister.

 

[InterCity:125]

Most lines branch Lines beeching closed were Unnecessary because they had two lines meaning their profit was Much lower per mile than a single track line as they were using twice as much track as they needed. What beeching should have done is cut one line out, instead of closing the whole railway.

 

[daikilo]

I think you put your finger on the answer by being inspired by reopenings. Is it fair to assume that if somethings hasn't even been looked at for reopening then it would be unsustainable? And even those that are reopened spent decades as wasteland.

If we assume that any non-closed line would have attracted some traffic, what actually happened to that traffic when the line was closed and did it fundamentally change the way the journeys and freight movements changed when the lines were closed.

It is notable that almost nothing got closed in the 1990s privatisation process!

 

[yorksrob]

I think you put your finger on the answer by being inspired by reopenings. Is it fair to assume that if somethings hasn't even been looked at for reopening then it would be unsustainable? And even those that are reopened spent decades as wasteland.

If we assume that any non-closed line would have attracted some traffic, what actually happened to that traffic when the line was closed and did it fundamentally change the way the journeys and freight movements changed when the lines were closed.

It is notable that almost nothing got closed in the 1990s privatisation process!

Not necessarily. I'm sure that some routes haven't been looked at for reopening because it wouldn't be practical. That's different from saying that they wouldn't be "sustainable" were they still operating.

 

[InterCity:125]

Some routes have been built over and the like.

 

[plarailfan]

If the use of cars and HGV / LGV / articulated lorries had been restricted in some way, much of the rail network would still be worthwhile today.
Motorways would not have been built to the extent that they are today. No doubt these measures would have gone down like a lead balloon if anyone had suggested them back in the 1960's. Can you imagine the consternation among voters when the election campaign came around !
Finally some rail freight routes and lines would fall into disuse anyway, as coal mining and steel works declined, along with a lot of manufacturing (I lived near the David Brown tractor factory at Meltham, near Huddersfield and in its heyday, no-one could ever have imagined that would close down)

 

[341o2]

Bankrupt.

Indeed, the background was that the railways were in a sorry state after the war, and when they went to the Treasury in 1955 with the modernisation plan, were told that the country couldn't afford it. Hence Beeching and closure of lines deemed unprofitable to modernise.

As for the S&D, the writing was already on the wall in that the Pines express was to be dieselised, but the infrastrucutre of the S&D needed upgrading, but this was deemed uneconomical, so the train was diverted.

 

[edwin_m]

We need to think a bit wider than just "without Beeching". We probably have to include "without Marples" and assume that the government did not have a policy of getting the railways to be financially self-sustaining within a short period. Otherwise they would have just got someone else to do a a similar job. We must probably also assume that the positive things Beeching did, which did a lot to safeguard the remaining network, were still done.

The "rationalisation" of surviving routes was only starting to happen in the Beeching era, pushed by Gerry Fiennes and others as a means of getting cost down without a full closure. But the urgency attached to the Beeching closures means that by the time a rationalisation policy proved itself many of the routes that could have been saved had gone - often with fully staffed stations and unnecessary signalboxes and other facilities right up to the last day. Without this urgency there might also have been more time for local interests to apply political pressure, and there might have been more lines to save when the railway started to be seen as a social service rather than a failing commercial enterprise.

So for one or other of these reasons I think some of the more debatable closures would not have gone ahead. But a large number of the Beeching closures were genuine no-hopers and none of the above factors could have made enough of a difference, so they would have closed over a longer period, as happened in some Continental countries that didn't have that sort of mass clearout in the 60s.

Another consequence was that BR would most likely have had to keep some steam traction in service for longer. The demise of steam was hastened when many of the routes for which diesels were ordered (mostly DMUs) closed a few years later with the surplus units mostly re-deployed to displace steam. DMUs can be used far more intensively and require fewer staff than steam, so were an essential element of rationalisation, but with none available steam would have had to go on for a few more years while further batches were funded and built in the late 1960s. Increased political opposition and interest in the social railway might also have led to more routes being under threat of closure but awaiting decision, and BR might have decided to retain steam on these routes rather than spend money on more DMUs that might have become redundant quite quickly.

 

[RT4038]

We need to think a bit wider than just "without Beeching". We probably have to include "without Marples" and assume that the government did not have a policy of getting the railways to be financially self-sustaining within a short period. Otherwise they would have just got someone else to do a a similar job. We must probably also assume that the positive things Beeching did, which did a lot to safeguard the remaining network, were still done.

The "rationalisation" of surviving routes was only starting to happen in the Beeching era, pushed by Gerry Fiennes and others as a means of getting cost down without a full closure. But the urgency attached to the Beeching closures means that by the time a rationalisation policy proved itself many of the routes that could have been saved had gone - often with fully staffed stations and unnecessary signalboxes and other facilities right up to the last day. Without this urgency there might also have been more time for local interests to apply political pressure, and there might have been more lines to save when the railway started to be seen as a social service rather than a failing commercial enterprise.

So for one or other of these reasons I think some of the more debatable closures would not have gone ahead. But a large number of the Beeching closures were genuine no-hopers and none of the above factors could have made enough of a difference, so they would have closed over a longer period, as happened in some Continental countries that didn't have that sort of mass clearout in the 60s.

Another consequence was that BR would most likely have had to keep some steam traction in service for longer. The demise of steam was hastened when many of the routes for which diesels were ordered (mostly DMUs) closed a few years later with the surplus units mostly re-deployed to displace steam. DMUs can be used far more intensively and require fewer staff than steam, so were an essential element of rationalisation, but with none available steam would have had to go on for a few more years while further batches were funded and built in the late 1960s. Increased political opposition and interest in the social railway might also have led to more routes being under threat of closure but awaiting decision, and BR might have decided to retain steam on these routes rather than spend money on more DMUs that might have become redundant quite quickly.

As you say, if it wasn't Beeching it would have been someone else. The railways had already been closing some fairly substantial trackage already (thnk M&GN, MSWJ etc) - Beeching merely accelerated the process. I suspect that if the accelerated process had not been permitted, BR would have rationalised facilities, withdrawn staff and severely reduced services (peak hours only or 'parliamentary') and eventually bustituted them as the infrastructure collapsed. Rural lines would have had a very slow 'parliamentary' train once per week with the train crew operating the level crossings. It would not have taken long for the futility of such services to be noticed and agreement forthcoming for the lines to close.
The downside of this would be that funds and manpower would have been used to deal with this process rather than upgrading the main lines, which would be slower, more expensive and generally less competitive than today. Own goal really.

 

[RLBH]

You can't look at Beeching outside the context. And the context is given by the December 1960 White Paper "Reorganisation of the Nationalised Transport Undertakings". At that time, the operating loss of British Railways was some £60 million per year, with a further £75 million per year of interest charges making the total losses of British Railways some £135 million. And this at a time when a million pounds was real money - as a percentage of GDP, it's equivalent to £10.4 billion today.

To deal with this situation, the White Paper replaced the amorphous British Transport Commission, in which there was no real accountability against individual transport sectors, with the British Railways Board. This Board took on the assets of the railways and was solely responsible for the capital debts of the railways. It was this Board to which Richard Beeching was appointed in March 1961. One can see the 1960 White Paper as a prototype for Sectorisation 25 years later, in a way.

What's crucial is that the White Paper specified that "The practical test for the railways, as for other transport, is how far the users are prepared to pay economic prices for the services provided. Broadly, this will in the end settle the size and pattern of the railway system. It is already clear that the system must be made more compact. There must also be modernisation, not only of lay-out , equipment and operating methods, but of organisation and management structure."

In other words, the decision to cut the railway network was made four months before Beeching. The policy had substantial government support, and came from the viewpoint that the railway network could and should be made to pay by getting rid of the parts of the system that lost it money. After all, the nationalised transport industries were seen as profit-making industries first and foremost - nationalisation wasn't seen as a route to subsidies, but as a way of fairly distributing profits.

No contemporary government would have backed anything significantly different from the Beeching cuts; had Beeching, or someone else in his position, proposed a solution that didn't involve appreciable cuts (or one that required subsidy) then he would have been replaced. A more traditional railwayman might - and I stress might - even have been a poorer choice for the job, by attempting to cling to outmoded methods of operation (like pick-up goods trains) for too long.

 

[yorksrob]

You can't look at Beeching outside the context. And the context is given by the December 1960 White Paper "Reorganisation of the Nationalised Transport Undertakings". At that time, the operating loss of British Railways was some £60 million per year, with a further £75 million per year of interest charges making the total losses of British Railways some £135 million. And this at a time when a million pounds was real money - as a percentage of GDP, it's equivalent to £10.4 billion today.

To deal with this situation, the White Paper replaced the amorphous British Transport Commission, in which there was no real accountability against individual transport sectors, with the British Railways Board. This Board took on the assets of the railways and was solely responsible for the capital debts of the railways. It was this Board to which Richard Beeching was appointed in March 1961. One can see the 1960 White Paper as a prototype for Sectorisation 25 years later, in a way.

What's crucial is that the White Paper specified that "The practical test for the railways, as for other transport, is how far the users are prepared to pay economic prices for the services provided. Broadly, this will in the end settle the size and pattern of the railway system. It is already clear that the system must be made more compact. There must also be modernisation, not only of lay-out , equipment and operating methods, but of organisation and management structure."

In other words, the decision to cut the railway network was made four months before Beeching. The policy had substantial government support, and came from the viewpoint that the railway network could and should be made to pay by getting rid of the parts of the system that lost it money. After all, the nationalised transport industries were seen as profit-making industries first and foremost - nationalisation wasn't seen as a route to subsidies, but as a way of fairly distributing profits.

No contemporary government would have backed anything significantly different from the Beeching cuts; had Beeching, or someone else in his position, proposed a solution that didn't involve appreciable cuts (or one that required subsidy) then he would have been replaced. A more traditional railwayman might - and I stress might - even have been a poorer choice for the job, by attempting to cling to outmoded methods of operation (like pick-up goods trains) for too long.

What do you mean by "before Beeching" given that he was instrumental in formulating Govenment policy towards the railways before being appointed as chairman.

The gist is that any Government would have sought to control costs. The villain here is the belief that there was some sort of profitable core of the railway which could be reached if only you could chop away enough deadwood. This viewpoint has been comprehensively discredited by history. However, given that dieselisation had reduced operating costs and increased patronage on several routes, its not difficult to summise that someone with a less ideological belief in route closures might have taken a more constructive approach to marginal lines.

 

[RLBH]

This viewpoint has been comprehensively discredited by history.

It wasn't discredited at the time, and the idea of closing economic routes to improve the viability of the network had been about for decades. BR had been doing it since its' formation, the Big Four were doing it before that, and the pre-grouping companies did it too (or just disappeared, taking entire lines with them). Removing unprofitable elements to preserve the profitable core is what railways did, and what any profit-seeking enterprise does.

What changed from the mid-late 1960s onwards wasn't so much a realisation that the network was interdependent, as a recognition that profitability wasn't the only metric of whether a line was worth having. If the view had been taken that the network didn't have a 'profitable core', then closing the whole lot and letting the Railway Conversion League have their way would be a distinct possibility.

 

[yorksrob]

It wasn't discredited at the time, and the idea of closing economic routes to improve the viability of the network had been about for decades. BR had been doing it since its' formation, the Big Four were doing it before that, and the pre-grouping companies did it too (or just disappeared, taking entire lines with them). Removing unprofitable elements to preserve the profitable core is what railways did, and what any profit-seeking enterprise does.

What changed from the mid-late 1960s onwards wasn't so much a realisation that the network was interdependent, as a recognition that profitability wasn't the only metric of whether a line was worth having. If the view had been taken that the network didn't have a 'profitable core', then closing the whole lot and letting the Railway Conversion League have their way would be a distinct possibility.

There was always a risk that someone with power would promote the railway conversion league and its ideas. However, to propose closing the whole lot would have still been a 'brave' decision politically.

It is true to say that thinning out unprofitable routes was something that happenned going back to pre-grouping times, however companies before Beeching were generally a lot more cautious about which services they cut, as they seemed to have more of a grasp on the limitations of their understanding of how local routes fed into the rest of the network, than the Beeching report, which assumed that people would railhead at their nearest remaining station for example, or would transfer to a bus connection, without testing those assumptions.

 

[edwin_m]

There was always a risk that someone with power would promote the railway conversion league and its ideas. However, to propose closing the whole lot would have still been a 'brave' decision politically.

It is true to say that thinning out unprofitable routes was something that happenned going back to pre-grouping times, however companies before Beeching were generally a lot more cautious about which services they cut, as they seemed to have more of a grasp on the limitations of their understanding of how local routes fed into the rest of the network, than the Beeching report, which assumed that people would railhead at their nearest remaining station for example, or would transfer to a bus connection, without testing those assumptions.

Perhaps without a big overall loss hanging over them the pre-1948 companies were more able to cross-subsidise some routes that made a loss (or were suspected to be loss-making, given the lack of systematic means of allocating costs and income by routes).

 

[Journeyman]

Perhaps without a big overall loss hanging over them the pre-1948 companies were more able to cross-subsidise some routes that made a loss (or were suspected to be loss-making, given the lack of systematic means of allocating costs and income by routes).

Ultimately the loss-making routes could be afforded as long as the system overall broke even. By the early fifties this had stopped happening, and ten years later the losses were completely unsustainable. Before Beeching, no-one even knew which parts of the railway were profitable or not, and the key thing he did was identify what a modern railway should be for, and which types of traffic were most likely to be sustainable in the long term.

 

[deltic]

If Beeching hadnt happened and initial concerns about the possible impact of motor vehicles on town and cities was taken on board (the famous Traffic in Towns report came out in 1963) then the country could have looked very different. Rural closures would have continued to happen - there are still too many stations in the middle of nowhere serving no-one - but most of the urban network outside London could have been converted into Metrolink - Tyne&Wear metro type services. UK cities would have looked far more like continental cities especially if the tram networks hadnt been ripped up at the same time. BR would have mainly turned into an inter-city type network and block freight train operation

We would ironically have a far smaller national rail network but every city would have a comprehensive rapid transit network which with tram train technology would have penetrated into hearts of towns and cities as well as their suburbs

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

What if the cuts by British Rail or the Beeching Axe had not happened and had stayed open? Would we even have a network? Would we have needed HS2/HS1 or NPR? Could it have been modernised in stages in stead?

Alternatively, Should they have been mothballed instead of closed, so they could reopen at a later date if the demand was there?

 

[Aictos]

There are various lines that were closed for good reasons and yet there are various lines that should never have been closed.

As to modernising in stages, as I understand it from reading the book about Intercity (There are 3 books, each concentrating on a different sector from InterCity, Regional Railways, Network SouthEast) the plan by BR was to modernise the mainlines in turn so more or less you would modernise the West Coast Mainline then the Great Western Mainline then the East Coast Mainline etc... until you came full circle to the West Coast Mainline however due to the botched privatisation of BR this never happened.

As to mothballing, take lines such as Kings Lynn to Hunstanton now in the summer with all the summer traffic probably very well used but outside the summer season would it have been economical to simply mothball it for half the year? Probably not which is why with the Queen's permission it was closed and Kings Lynn then became the railhead for her Norfolk home.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

There are various lines that were closed for good reasons and yet there are various lines that should never have been closed.

As to modernising in stages, as I understand it from reading the book about Intercity (There are 3 books, each concentrating on a different sector from InterCity, Regional Railways, Network SouthEast) the plan by BR was to modernise the mainlines in turn so more or less you would modernise the West Coast Mainline then the Great Western Mainline then the East Coast Mainline etc... until you came full circle to the West Coast Mainline however due to the botched privatisation of BR this never happened.

As to mothballing, take lines such as Kings Lynn to Hunstanton now in the summer with all the summer traffic probably very well used but outside the summer season would it have been economical to simply mothball it for half the year? Probably not which is why with the Queen's permission it was closed and Kings Lynn then became the railhead for her Norfolk home.

Some lines would have been very useful today if they had remained open or had been mothballed. Like Bedford-Cambridge if that had remained open or at least been mothballed it would have been so much easier to reopen now. The big question is would we need HS2? If lines some lines had remained open or reopened?

 

[swt_passenger]

There was a thread about this only in July.

https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...at-does-br-without-beeching-look-like.167353/

You might consider using the search feature as IMHO you keep duplicating existing stuff

 

[edwin_m]

Other countries in Europe didn't have the same mass closure of minor lines in the 1960s. But many of these had fewer railways to start with (due to central planning of the network rather than construction by competing companies). Some also had more closures in later decades, for example many rural lines in France were replaced by bus services and rail in Eastern Europe has shrunk dramatically since the fall of communism. So I think many of the Beeching closures would have happened more gradually without Beeching himself, or more accurately without the political attitude that led to Beeching's appointment and remit.

However the 1960s was a time when many people felt that railways were irrelevant for most purposes. This started to change in the 1970s prompted by the oil crisis and a growing realisation that cars were not the answer to every transport needed. Hardly any passenger lines were closed in Britain after 1974, and it's reasonable to assume that if more lines had survived that long then many (but not all) of them would still be operating.

 

[swt_passenger]

Closures started well before Beeching, basically as soon as motor vehicles became available. Especially in areas where the early bus services actually went into the small towns and villages that the railways missed by miles...

 

[mrcheek]

If Beeching hadnt happened, then the rail network would essentially have become bankrupt.

So Serpell would have happened instead

 

[dcbwhaley]

If Beeching hadnt happened, then the rail network would essentially have become bankrupt.

So Serpell would have happened instead

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

 

[Busaholic]

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

Tramcars were no longer being built in this country, and the traditional urban double-decker which formed the vast majority of previous fleets hardly fitted the bill! Only Blackpool still operated trams by the mid 1960s, and that was hardly a thriving organisation.