Dr Beeching

R

rjhowie

Active member
This is a name that conjures up much feeling amongst dedicated rail fans. He was of course reviewing the rail system as the country was at the time and equally he would not know that populations would move and increase in previous un-economic places. Sadly some lines were so woefully supported that closure was inevitable but there would be other lines that perhaps should have been retained.

The only permanent publically owned railway has kept a mothballed line in the hope of a future re-use in different climes so what is your attitude to Beeching as things are now. Nearly 10,000 miles were lost so it is a hot potato in a sense!
 
Even after Beeching rationalization/singling of lines continued. And now it's costing millions to put them back, millions more than it would have cost to mothball them.
 
Later in life ... Dr Beeching, Anne Moahning, Jon Pen Upendowne, Anne Swaren, and his Cousin-Lyke A Saylor, all became partners as a successful RR law firm.

Beeching-Anne Moahning-Jon Pen Upendowne-Anne Swaren-Cousin Lyke A Saylor-Attorneys At Law
 
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I think that the lines that needed to be abandoned needed to be, but some should have just been simply mothballed, because some that were pulled up are in places where they are now needed, so I think that they could have thought it through a little better before they went nuts and cut lines like a mad man.
 
Not to worry I am already rebuilding the pre Beeching network for part of Yorkshire, it is going to take a long time to finish but I have some consists running already.
what I am begining to realise though is that there will need to be a very extensive goods movement system.
Need to concentrate on one thing at a time though.
 
He did what he was appointed to do - and universally pilloried for it afterwards.

The government had already decided what it wanted to do, the Stedford Comittee, with Dr Beeching of ICI as a member, was set up to investigate "how the Government's intentions for the railway could be put into effect". When they realised what that would mean, half the members refused to support the commitee's recommendations, and its report was never published. Mrs Thatcher even denied the existence of the commitee! Dr Beeching was then appointed by the government to the BRB to produce his infamous report, the govt knowing full well which side of the Stedford Committee he was on!

The implementation of the Reshaping report was then moved down the management structure and left to senior regional managers, who were (in the 1960s) former middle managers of the pre-nationalisation companies. They then gleefully set about doing what they'd failed to do before the war, and that was eliminate the competition. Thus the former Great Central route from Sheffield to London, formerly the LNER, was swiftly run down and closed by the London Midland Region, and in the West Country the Western Region rapidly removed most of the former Southern Railway in its territory.

The proceedure for deciding which lines to close was based on receipts at stations, measured over one week in November. Whilst not the quietest, it was no where near the busiest either, and produced a lower figure than could have been expected over a whole year. The real fault with this was that it totally ignored traffic generated elsewhere. Many heavily used lines to busy holiday resorts, where most traffic originated in the major cities, showed a fairly low usage on this sort of measurement, and led to many seaside branches, such as Mablethorpe, Skegness, Hunstanton and similar places, as well as the West Contry, being PFC'd - Skegness was only reprieved after a vigourous local campaign.

Receipts at stations also meant that multiple routes were closed. For example between Nottingham and Mansfield there were 3 routes, formerly the Midland, Great Central and Great Northern Rlys. In BR days, it seems obvious that only one route was needed. But because the receipts were split between them, all 3 were closed, leaving Mansfield with the dubious distinction of being the largest town in England without a railway station. This situation was so plainly wrong that BR started the Robin Hood Line (Central Trains - the privatised company in the area took the credit for finishing the project).

British Railways was loosing a lot of money. This was inevitable, given the financial basis which the nationalised railway was set up with. Beeching's plans were to have changed this, but as a lot of the routes remained for freight traffic (until that sooner or later withered away under a subsidised road transport industry - but thats another story!) and the union's support for the plan was bought by the very minimum staff losses, the savings were never realised.

Beeching is universally pilloried now, but he did what he was appointed to do. He could not have forseen the huge growth in demand for transport that has happened since the 1960s, and he did actually have some good ideas. The creation of Inter-City as a brand was his idea, also the concept of high-efficiency, non-stop coal traffic between colliery and power station - the MGR train - was another. Where would international trade be today without the container? Beeching's idea for replacing the pick-up goods trains has grown into the ISO shipping container.

If you can find a copy of a book, "The Great Railway Conspiracy" by David Henshaw, (pub. Leading Edge, ISBN 0-948135-28-X(HB); 0-948135-30-1(PB)) this tells the story of how the government of the day (in my mind the real villains) stitched up the railway. It makes for interesting reading, and alternated beween making me angry that they'd done what they did, and sad that so much that was a way of life for so many, as well as a means of getting around, was simply abandoned for short-term political gain.

Perhaps the real surprise is that after 1) Nationalisation, 2) Beeching's Re-shaping 3) Thatcher/Major/MacGregor's privatisation we still have a vibrant, healthy and growing rail industry in Britain.

(Just my opinion :))
 
RRSignal said:
Sounds exactly like Conrail here in the U.S.
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I agree. The PennCentral started this by conveniantly letting the Poukipsee bridge burn. A suspicious fire happened one night and it cost too much to repair this important rail link across the Hudson River. Instead the connecting roads such as the Erie Lackawanna and Lehigh and Hudson River were forced to use the longer and more expensive New York Selkirk connection to get to the eastern markets. This put them at a disadvantage due to cost and route miles. When PC was reorganized, it became Conrail. The PC used this as a way to do away with their competition in their home territories. With the guise of streamlining operations, they killed off the Lehigh Valley, and a good hunk of the Erie Lackawanna. The Erie mainline through Ohio and Indiana is far more superior for fast shipping than either the old NYC Waterlevel Route, or the Pennsy mainline. The Erie line was flat and wide which is perfect for the fast intermodals the current railroads are running today. Instead Conrail cut up the Erie and kept the NYC and Pennsy lines intact. With the Lehigh Valley, the kept the parts in areas where their own roads weren't there, such as eastern New Jersey, but killed the lines at the New York border. They eliminated the lines across northern New York state so now there's a whole swath of towns without rail service.

There are probably other examples of this, but the cuts made during the Beeching era sound all too similar.

John
 
The name of Dr Beeching will always carry the blame, but if it hadn't been him it would have been somebody else! Unfortunately for him, the phrase coined by the press - "Beeching's Axe" - is easily remembered and has been used for evermore to remember the great hacking away of the network which occurred on 3rd October 1966 - my 9th birthday! The British railway network was too vast, and too inefficient, for the taxpayer to continually foot the bill without sweeping changes. The railways had reached the crucial stage where massive re-investment was needed.

The proposals made to Dr Beeching were actually a lot worse than those he recommended to the government. I remember seeing a documentary report on my next door neighbour's "Ecko" black and white TV (colour TV had not yet been invented, and only about one in three families in our village had a TV) where only the arteries - the East Coast Main Line, the West Coast Main Line and a line from London to Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth would remain. Even the commuter lines of the Southern Railway would have either been handed over to the London Transport Executive or axed. Having seen the way governments have behaved ever since, I suspect this was a deliberate programme designed to shock so that the real announcement, which came a few weeks later, appears a lot better! (For example, they deliberately leaked news that VAT tax would go up to 25% in the budget. When budget day came and the increase to 20% was announced, the sighs of relief were evident.)

Unfortnately, in my own part of the world "the Pruning of Withered Arm" caused a whole lot of misery with thousands losing their jobs. Whole communities, such as that at Halwill Junction, came into existence solely to support the old LSWR and all those people suddenly found themselves with no purpose in life, and no future. Halwill Junction, among other villages, is quite remote from any major towns and commuting was not much of an option at a time few "ordinary" families owned cars.
 
I believe it was the then Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, who appointed Dr. Beeching to BRB and to report on Britains' railways.

Ernest Marples was also a managing director of civil engineering firm Marples Ridgeway, I also believe that some of Marples Ridgeway projects included motorway construction in the UK!
 
Hi Everybody.
robd said:
scratched it was the then Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, who appointed Dr. Beeching to BRB and to report on Britains' railways.

Ernest Marples was also a managing director of civil engineering firm Marples Ridgeway, I also believe that some of Marples Ridgeway projects included motorway construction in the UK!
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You are very right their Robd in what you state. There where at that time very powerful forces at work promoting road transport as the way forward for Britain. The loudest voices were coming from politicians with interests in the construction companies tendering to build Britain's motorway systems.

However, we also have to look at the general ethos in the country in the mid-1960s. I was 22 years of age in 1966 and a HGV truck driver (my dream job at that time). Britain had emerged from the grey austerity years of the 1950s following the Second World War and by 1960 we came into a new era of freedom and general wealth that had not been seen in this country before.

By the mid-1960s Ford and General Motors along with the British motor Corporation where producing cars which for the first time where within the price range of the working man. Britain was a country with more jobs than there where people to fill them, wages were high, unemployment unknown and the post-war council house building programme meant that most people lived in good cheap rented accommodation without the worry of high cost mortgages.

With high confidence these people were buying their first cars and everyone agreed that their car would be King and the days of public transport were over. Successive governments had not helped the railways by clinging to steam power throughout the 50s and even into the early part of the 60s when the road haulage industry was proving that the diesel engine was the commercial motive power for the future. The British railways had achieved a reputation for the stations being dirty through ash and coal dust and the timetable was a thing of fiction as you were never going to run most trains anywhere near their timetabled operation due to the vagaries of the quality of coal and the high maintenance schedules needed for steam engines. Britain's labour shortage ensured that there were just not enough skilled engineers available.

It was in the above atmosphere at Dr Beeching carried out his review of Britain's railway industry. The cuts when they came where not half as drastic as expected. Many politicians argued for far more stringent cutbacks. There were even suggestions such as ripping up the entire network and then tarmac over the mainlines to create more roads. Many agreed with their arguments as it was believed that we would never need the railways again.

However, the Beeching report when published was accepted in the main and the network was trimmed to what we have today. In many ways it can be said at Dr Beeching was the saviour of the British rail system. For if many industrialists and politicians had achieved in entirety their way, Britain would be very much where American is today when it comes to railways.

Bill
 
robd said:
I believe it was the then Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, who appointed Dr. Beeching to BRB and to report on Britains' railways.

Ernest Marples was also a managing director of civil engineering firm Marples Ridgeway, I also believe that some of Marples Ridgeway projects included motorway construction in the UK!
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When the main shareholder of Marples Ridgeway Construction, the motorway construction company, was made Minister of Transport, to ensure complete even-handedness he announced to The House that he had sold his entire shareholding in the company. What he didn't say in Parliament was who he'd sold them to - it was his wife!!
 
wholbr said:
...
Successive governments had not helped the railways by clinging to steam power throughout the 50s and even into the early part of the 60s when the road haulage industry was proving that the diesel engine was the commercial motive power for the future. The British railways had achieved a reputation for the stations being dirty through ash and coal dust and the timetable was a thing of fiction as you were never going to run most trains anywhere near their timetabled operation due to the vagaries of the quality of coal and the high maintenance schedules needed for steam engines. Britain's labour shortage ensured that there were just not enough skilled engineers available.
...
In many ways it can be said at Dr Beeching was the saviour of the British rail system. For if many industrialists and politicians had achieved in entirety their way, Britain would be very much where American is today when it comes to railways.

Bill
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Indeed. Much of the financial problems of BR were due to the structure it was set up with. Basically, BR had to "buy itself", out of revenue, from the previous owners. Even when the govt finally conceeded that modernisation was needed, the 1955 Modernisation Plan was funded by loans, to be paid back out of the revenue of a system that was by then only just covering its operating costs, when such revenue was constrained by the government and only allowed to increase at a rate much less than the increase in the railway's supplier's costs.

All of the pre-war companies were actively considering modernisation in the late 1930s. The Southern already had a extensive electrified network and was planning main-line diesel locomotives, the LMS actually suceeded in building one, the LMS 10000, the LNER had plans for mainline electrification, firstly the transpennine route, to be quickly followed by the ECML. The GWR, different as ever, was building gas-turbine mainline locos and already had a fleet of diesel railcars. All 4 companies had small fleets of diesel shunters, variations of what would become the Class 08.
When the natinonalised BR came along it carried on building steam locos, 999 Standards as well as those ordered by the old companies.

Its now too far gone, nearly 70 years, to answer this question with any certainty, but what would have happened if Churchill's Conservative Party had won the election, the railways had not been nationalised, the private companies had been paid their due war reparations (not necessarily as a lump sum, but maybe as an annual payment, after all it was only in December 2006 that we finished paying back the USA for "Lend-Lease") and the "Common Carrier" legislation had been repealed?

What may have happened would have been the railways would have modernised a lot sooner, possibly with steam gone by about 1955, they would have fought tooth and nail to retain traffic, and being outside government rather than within, would have been able to lobby hard for equal treatment alongside road haulage which was enjoying taxpayer-funded motorways. There would not have been a Beeching Report.

Yes there would still have been closures, especially with the loss of much heavy industry in the 1980s, but not on the scale of the Beeching Axe, and the railway would still be a national network.

If, as Bill says, Dr Beeching was the saviour, the destructor of the British rail system was British Railways!

Again, just my humble opinion
 
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Hi David and everybody.
Yes I would fully agree with you David that the funding of the railway when they were nationalised in 1948 was woefully below what was necessary for it to be a success. However, you must remember that Britain was virtually bankrupt at that time and the government was also bringing into being the National Health Service, the welfare state and the council house building programme and therefore perfect funding for all projects was not possible. When you look back at what that Labour government achieved from the ashes of the Second World War in my humble opinion it ranks alongside the wartime Churchill government as possibly the two greatest governments Britain has ever had.

At the same time as the railways were being nationalised in 1948 so too was the road haulage industry. I think it was De-nationalised again under the Churchill government in 1953. In the de-nationalisation bill there was also a clause which stated that British rail freight contracts had to be openly published regarding the tender costs that British rail were placing. This meant that any haulage company could simply look at the prices that British rail were charging their freight customers and then undercut it.

With regard to why steam was retained as the main motive power post-war was that the coal mining industry (also nationalised) was a huge employer in Britain at that time. A large percentage of its output went to the rail industry for its use. The Labour party in 1945 came to power on the slogan sent out to the troops fighting abroad that they would create “homes fit for heroes”

With the above in mind it was essential that they avoided the unemployment which followed the end of the First World War and within that continued coal industry mass employment was essential in the policy of full employment. From a modern prospective it can be argued that some of the above beliefs and policies were flawed. However, the full employment policy created on the back of the homes fit for heroes slogan changed Britain for the better and avoided the recession that followed the First World War. in creating the National Health Service and the council house building programme that post-war government brought about much in Britain and we still benefit from today.

Yes, the nationalisation of the railways was not perfect but at the time it fitted into the overall plan of getting Britain back on its feet following the Second World War. The nationalised railways played an essential part in the re-vitalisation of Britain throughout the 1950s and then into the sunshine years of the 1960s. However, in that they laid the foundations of their own declinee and brought about the Beeching review and axe which followed

Bill
 
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In Glasgow we had a very intense suburban system and a whole chink of it disappeared. Amusingly when the Strathclyde Tram project was raised (and then vanished) they wanted to use a disused rail tunnel! I accept that those suburban lines we did lose were virtually unused sadly for me as a train enthusiast and in my younger days worked in a station. One of the rather interesting closures was the suburban route under Glasgow Central. Then years later re-opened at massive cost as the 'Argyle Line'. This is now a very important lynch pin in the still reasonable suburban system for Greater Glasgow, etc.

Over the Irish Sea in Ulster one of my long time holiday places there were some odd situations. They closed the line bang into the centre of Belfast and built a new 'Central Station' that wasn't central at all but outside the city centre. Nearly 20 years later they re-laid the track into Gt Victoria Street again at massive cost along with a new triangular junction. Likewise they re-routed Londonderry trains south of Belfast to Lisburn then up to Londonderry in the north (!) via Crumlin. Work that one out. This added time to the journey! Once more they re-opened the route via north Belfast and Bleeechers Green and put the service back where it was to the Maiden City.

There are places today in Gt Britain that could have a reasonable rail service again although cost will now come in to it. Where we have had lines brought back in Scotland we were fortunate that the track beds were still intact. How great it would be if we had monied people like those who provided the Killen Branch off the line via Callander as the lcoals paid for that one in Victorian times themselves!
 
cascaderailroad said:
This is like Sienfeld plot ... a show about nothing ... words, words, words ...

Have fun !
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A show about nothing, that would make it the same as talking about American railways. Judging by the threads on this forum what few routes America has got, they then seem to have great trouble keeping the locomotives on Them. Have fun.

posted from the 09:00 London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads HST service on approach to Reading using the on-board Wi-Fi system. Something else that those few behind the times American railways do not have.:hehe:

Bill
 
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wholbr said:
A show about nothing, that would make it the same as talking about American railways. Judging by the threads on this forum what few routes America has got, they then seem to have great trouble keeping the locomotives on Them. Have fun.

posted from the 09:00 London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads HST service on approach to Reading using the on-board Wi-Fi system. Something else that those few behind the times American railways do not have.:hehe:

Bill
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I tend to agree ... passenger service in the US is inept, at best ... what choice few long distance train service that remain today, is a real joke (Shamtrak) ... derailments are constant ... it was 1000% worse in Penn Central days, when the entire US was virtually a standing derailment, just waiting to happen.
 
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