coppercapped
Established Member
Nobody - not even Beeching - suggested that the only solution to BR's financial crises was the closure of the unremunerative branch lines, secondary and duplicate routes. These closures were only part of the process of re-mapping the railways to the modern world and to suggest that this was the only solution proposed is very wide of the mark.If more miles of route were closed before 1962, does it not surprise you that those closures made absolutely no difference to the railway being broke ? Do you not think it might have been time to try something different ?
So before you make such superficial comments I would suggest that if you had done a little research you would have found plenty of analyses on the performance of British Railways during these turbulent years - much of it contemporary.
For example a paper in 1970 on ‘The Performance of British Railways 1962 to 1968’ (Cole C.D., Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Vol IV, No. 2, 1970, pp162-170). The time span for the paper was chosen to lie between the 1962 and 1968 Transport Acts as being the time between when the BRB was created to when it was significantly changed, but of course the story went further. Cole's conclusions are interesting:
Some two thirds of working expenses were staff costs so reducing staff numbers had a significant effect on the cost base. At the start of the period staff members were reduced quite quickly but after Beeching left in 1965 these annual reductions tailed off and by 1974 BR staff numbers rose again. The actual reductions were:It has been shown that the performance of British Railways, as reflected in broad statistical trends, improved in most sectors over the period 1963 to 1968. The lack of marked improvement in the overall financial position may be attributed to the following factors:
Finally it must be recognised that statistical observations of this kind made in this paper are of interest only as a broad reflection of the new effect of the many changes that have occurred on the railways in recent years. They do not in themselves explain what has happened or what might have happened under alternative policies.
- Labour earnings increased faster than any measure of labour productivity.
- Railway receipts per passenger/net ton mile increased overall by only 4 per cent while working expenses rose by 2 per cent.
- There was no reduction in track comparable to the reduction in trains run.
- Expensive diesel and electric locomotives were spending less time in traffic in 1968 than they were in 1962, although on a loaded train miles basis their performance had improved.
1962-3 6.49%
1963-4 8.46%
1964-5 8.89%
1965-6 7.85%
1966-7 6.50%
Other things were tried - and as the statistics on the performance of motive power show - BR wasn't very good at it.1963-4 8.46%
1964-5 8.89%
1965-6 7.85%
1966-7 6.50%