Dr Beeching

[robd]

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.

Correct me if I am wrong but given the much greater distances involved in the US compared to the relatively short distances in the UK isn't mass air travel the preffered method for long distance passenger travel within the US?

If so, wouldn't this render long distance passenger rail travel in the US obsolete, hence causing lack of incentive, funds and investment to improve the situation?

 

[cascaderailroad]

It is just that people don't like connecting by taxi, bus, and several trolley system transfer tickets anymore ... they are all addicted to the automobile that puts you within a block or two of your final destination.

The once daily each way, Phila to Pittsburgh train leaves at some ungodly hour in the predawn hours on a Saturday morning, and gets to Altoona in 8 hours (a 5 hour automobile drive). And the return trip is on a sunday at 9:00 AM ... which leaves such a short time to visit a town (unless you stay for a week or two).

Train schedual and service in the US is unergonomic, and not user freindly ... wheras in WWII there were 300 to 400 passenger trains passing Altoona each day ... nowdays there are but 3-4 passenger trains.

 

[Paulsw2]

Marples and Beeching were in the grip of two delusions:
(1) "the great car economy is the future; railways are the past"
(2) "a tree can better live through its trunk; it does not need branches"

To see where these twin delusions led you only need to look at the stories of the closure of the Waverley and Haverhill routes to see how BR management was in the grip of a closure mania by the mid-1960s. Perfectly good and viable railways were being closed, some of which have had to be rebuilt and reopened years later.

However, this is not why Beeching is reviled. His greatest fault is that he would not accept that railways are a public service with a public service obligation. In other words, railways bestow an external public benefit (for example, connecting up isolated rural communities) which cannot be internalised onto the railway's balance sheet, particularly for individual stations and lines. Beeching's closures meant the death of communities on the lines that were closed and the extinguishing of the public benefits that had been enjoyed by those communities through the provision of a railway.

By insisting that the railway operate as a commercial 'going concern' Beeching sowed the seeds for privatisation and the death of British Rail. Ironically, his closures did not eliminate British Rail's deficit. The closure of a third of the network (and over half the stations) saved only £30 million from a network that was losing £100 million a year. The closure of branches simply stopped them feeding passengers and goods into the primary and secondary trunk routes, ultimately making them more uneconomic as well. The whole railway was threatened with a downward spiral. When Beeching published his second report in 1965 which proposed the systematic run down of many of the country's mainlines, including all those in Wales and most in Scotland, he was finally sacked by a (Labour) government that had finally run out of patience with the direction that in which he was taking Britain's railways. The 1968 Transport Act introduced the concept of the 'social' railway and there have been no major closures since 1970.

Truly, Beeching has much to answer for!

Paul (17,830 route miles and nothing less!)

 

[cascaderailroad]

Very odd thread, but quite interesting, especially since there seemingly is a comedy show series on TV about this topic ... sort of like: "Seinfeld", sort of like: "Keeping Up Appearances", but not quite as dry as: "Little Brittian" TV show.

 

[rjhowie]

Not an odd thread at all cionsidering that passeneger rail in GB has always been a vibrant thing unlike in America. We could also claim that any thread is all about words, words too but that is too much a simplification. Dropping from what was it - around 18,000 miles to around 11,000 is an interesting and challenging matter. Being a much larger country it is perhaps too difficult to compare America with Britain but even on jounries here of 400 miles plus we out train the US with a list of trains daily.

To be fair to Beeching he wasn't to know about population changes or shifts back then and there were lines that could no longer be justified indeed as a youth I was rather suprised at places passenger lines had been built running through sparse country ( locally, Balloch - Stirling comes to mind as a boy!). Never-the-less passenger rail is a vitally important and burgeoning thing here and I am mighty pleased with that even if we leave the private v State argument to one side! The constant increase in passengers and improvements to catch up with the numbers getting on trains. is tremendous. Locally abgain, one of my lines is reaching saturation point for train running.

 

[Paulsw2]

To be fair to Beeching he wasn't to know about population changes or shifts back then....

I disagree. If you look at the closure of the Haverhill route in Cambs/Suffolk, the area had already been schedueld for new town expansion as a dormitory of Greater London by the time of closure with an extra 30,000 population expected within a decade. There's no question the route would now be extremely valuable as a commuter branch. Yet BR managers zealously pursued the closure of the railway, even though the councils on the route were prepared to subsidise it.

Beeching operated in a complete silo in terms of his view of the 'economic' railway: there was no consideration of social and environmental externalities or of future demographic or economic trends. The obsession was to make railways pay today. Something of course he didn't achieve!

Paul

 

[james73]

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!!

IIRC for the sum of £1 - on the understanding that should he stop being Minister of Transport he could buy them back for the
same amount!

Marples ended up fleeing the UK as he had been avoiding paying tax for 30 years, and he was apparently in the habit of using
prostitutes. A politician with staggeringly obvious vested interests that cheats on his wife and has his snout well and truly in
the trough. Whoda thunk it?

The more things change...


James H

 

[rjhowie]

Accept your point Paulsw2 on that particular local issue that was known about. However the 1960's were a completely fifferent time than now amd movement has been a lot more pronounced in general although we can always find discrepancies of course.populations have also grown. in the late fo's the GB population was around 48 million now ov er 60.

Amusing point there UJames H on politicians. Living here in Glasgow for decades with what we havein the city Chambers is definitely in the long suffering camp.

 

[davidbird]

IIRC for the sum of £1 - on the understanding that should he stop being Minister of Transport he could buy them back for the
same amount!

Knew about the buy-back agreement, didn't know it was for £1!
I've re-read parts of the Henshaw book, also a little book I found recently on ebay "Blueprints for Bankruptcy" (EA Gibbins, 1993, pub. Leisure Products, Alsaeger, Stoke-on-Trent, ISBN 0-9521039-0-7). Both books, especially Henshaw, draw heavily on papers released in the 1990s after being kept secret under the 30 years rule. Kept secret even from Parliament!
Together they paint a picture of BR structure, management and finances from 1948 to the Beeching era, which is very, very hard to believe is merely incompetence. But given the state that BR was in in the early 1960s, "Beeching" was inevitable and did save the railway.

 

[davidbird]

With the 50th Anniversary of the publication of the "Report" coming up on 27th March, I thought I'd bump this back up.

I found this here http://www.davidheyscollection.com/page3.htm

Hello David,
First of all, let me say how much I enjoyed your site and all the amazing photos of railways of yore.
However I think that you, like so many current commentators, are rather harsh on Beeching. I say this as a committed lefty who works for an environmental charity, is building a model railway, and who doesn't drive, so I have a number of reasons to hate what Beeching did to the rail network!
Neverthelss, I am also a historian and as such I would argue that we shouldn't judge the past by the standards of the present. The railways are currently enjoying a boom, with passenger numbers the highest since the early 50sand widespread overcrowding on trains (and on the motorways too). And as oil prices rise and the roads become more crowded, we may see a move of freight back on to the rails. But none of this was obvious in the early 60s. The railways seemed old and tired, a creaking 19th century infrastructure that wasn't fit for the white heat of the modern economy. Passenger numbers were declining steadily and freight revenues had fallen through the floor. It seemed like roads were the transport of the future.
Even if Beeching had known that rail would undergo its remarkable renaissance four decades later, many of the lines that he (and his predecessors and successors) closed would still be entirely uneconomic today. In Northumberland, the area I know best, long rural branch lines serving small villages were not cost effective, and wouldn't be today; many of the lines closed can't even support a regular bus service! The Border Counties line, Alston branch, Wannie line, and Coldstream branch could never have been economically viable; they barely were even in the years before the First World War. Many of the branch lines closed in East Anglia, Scotland and the south west peninsula are just the same. A whole other group of lines were originally created for the transportation of either coal, steel or iron. Coal, not passengers, was the backbone of the LNER despite Gresley's best efforts with Mallard et al; and still the LNER was only just profitable The Middleton in Teesdale, Consett, and Redcar to Whitby lines fit this pattern, as do most of the closed lines around the Tyne and the Tees. Looked at in the cold light of day, there really was no future for these lines. This leaves a group of lines which arguably should have been kept open, like the Blyth line, the line along the north bank of the Tyne to Scotswood and the line through Washington. These are mostly short lines in densely populated areas, not the romantic rural banch lines so beloved of Beeching's detractors. A number of the commuter stations closed on lines that survived the axe should also probably have been kept. But potentially viable rural lines like the Waverley Route and the Penrith-Keswick branch are very much the exceptions, not typical of what Beeching cut. Perhaps one in ten of the railway miles Beeching et al closed should, in hindsight, have been kept open.
What Beeching did was prune the network to keep a viable trunk preserved while cutting out most of the dead wood. In doing so he laid the foundation for preserving the railways as a viable form of transport for the fiuture, and left a sound base for some re-building and redevelopment in the years after 2012. Without Beeching, the rail network could well have suffered death by a thousand cuts, eventually withering away almost completely.
In fact I believe this was exactly what was proposed under the second Wilson government, luckily resisted by transport minister Barbara Castle. All-in-all the railway network he created has survived the test of time pretty well, with almost all Britain's major towns and cities still well served by regular trains. I won't go so far as to propose a toast to Beeching, but overall I think an objective analysis, free from the sentimentality which steam branch lines so easily produce in all of us, leads to the conclusion that he was a friend rather than an enemy of Britain's railways.
Best wishes and thanks for all your hard work on a great web site...
Dr. Chris Warburton Brown.

 

[rjhowie]

I have to accept that there isn't much of a passenger rail system in America and I noted an earlier point on the regular derailmen over there along with comment on longer distances. We are of course a much smaller place but have 400+routes. The US President also said publicly in a recent speech that there were 70,000 bridges in dodgy situations including both road and rail! but don't have the bridge and track probs of across the pond. So the infrastructure there has a problem. . Our railway system is heavily used so much so that longer trains and longer platforms are now coming. It is also being forecast that at the rate passenger rail is going here in Great Britain in two decades we could be almost at gridlock in many places. May I further say that I stick by my earlier assertion that Beeching although correct that some lines should go gave no credence to population movement. Perhaps in fairness it was only just happening in the 60's but we had several new towns created here in Scotland. Looking to the future was miniscule. Each of the lines that Beeching closed and have been re-opened up here have broke passenger number targets. Glasgow has a suburban system which is second behind the capital, London. Even in the Glasgow suburban there are points where there is no space for adding any more trains to timetables and one of our 2 main city stations, Central has added a platform!

We are so fortunate in general here as even long routes have a fleet of trains a day and if cities across the pond get two or three a week or one a day they are doing great. There are equally goodly reasons why passenger rail has declined in the USA and most of us understand that but America is way beyond other big modernising countries like China - and Russia the biggest.

 

[fen_tiger]

Latest news on the disused/closed March to Wisbech (Cambridgeshire) Railway line - UK Railfuture organisation is pushing to get it reopened to passenger trains following its closure to passenger trains in 1968. Please add your voice to help get this closed railway re-opened. Thank you. I have signed the petition to get my home town reconnected to the UK rail network - http://wisbechrail.org.uk/

 

[rjhowie]

Well I really hope you will be successful as I have indicated that up here in Scotland we have re-opened lines and done better than even forecast and yet another in the popeline.

 

[fen_tiger]

A lot of people have suggested time and time that it was Dr. Beeching who in Sep 1968 closed the former G.E.R route from March through my town of Wisbech (Cambs) to Watlington Jnc (Norfolk) on the Ely - King's Lynn main line, but in actual fact the line in question closed due to hardly anyone using it towards the end of its passenger life - 1847 to 1968. However, the section from March to Wisbech was saved albiet singled with the down rails into wisbech lifted in 1972,(originally double track from march to wisbech and single track onto the junction with the king's lynn line and kept open purely only for freight traffic three to four days a week - neslle purina pet food trains, but in the end freight stop running in summer 2000 when our pet food factory switched from rail to road traffic and in 2001 the line finally was mothballed and closed in 2003. There have been many attempts since the late 1970s to re-open the remaining section to passenger and freight again, but railfuture org is the very latest attemnpt to get the line re-opened with hourly passenger trains connecting wisbech to Cambridge via March and Ely.

 

[rjhowie]

In thinking a bit more about Dr Beeching there are perhaps things to be considered. The number of stations thatdrew in a tiny revenue ran into hundreds and often as low as 1% of the cost of running them. This also applied to branch lines as well. Even when i was much younger and for a time was a booking clerk at a suburban electric line station (Glasgow). On Monday afternoon one of us would have to walk down to another parallel line tat Kilbowie Station (DMU only) and pick upo the morning takings and I couldn't believe how low they were. The route had long since seen it's support having vanished first by trams then bus and car. For many planners the car had well and truly arrived and they perhaps et that influence decisions. Many were the cases where people protested about a line closure under the Beeching revue when it ws hardly ever patronised1 Even today in my suburb bus services over the city boundary to the next town of Clydebank were taken off through lack of use. There was a public protest and there was a public meeting held at the Community Centre with a councillor. So another bus company came along and ran a service and that wasn't used either so that was withdrawn as it was a waste. You lucky if you seen more than 2 on it. So much for protesting. Use it or lose it.

What we also have to take on board is that Beeching gave recommendations which a government does not have to agree with. Even the Carlisle and Settle the lack of adequatre numbers led to it's scheduled closure and it was Michael Portillo that refused to accept cloure and ensured it's survuval and subsequent success. Beeching could only recommend and it was the government who decided not him. If my memor is is correct I am sure that when Harold wilson and the labour government came in they did so in a policy of re-opening many closures but didn't.

 

[Steamdemon]

Well, it's the 50th aniversary of that vile miscreant's dreaded report. if Awdry was still alive, he would have probably written a book where the Fat controller threatens that if Richard Beeching's report meant the closure of the NWR, he would personally boot Richard Beeching off the Island of Sodor, whilst he bellows his trademark 'YOU ARE CAUSING CONFUSION AND DELAY!'

Joking aside, I am glad he is dead. such a proposal to close a lot of railway lines today would probably end up being tossed into the incinerator of laughter.

 

[mezzoprezzo]

Look on the bright side.

That massive and sudden glut of dumped steam locos in the Barry scrap yard would not have been available for cheap purchase by enthusiasts had they been allowed to gradually end their lives over a longer period.

Had there not been all of those line closures I very much doubt that we would have the several Heritage railways we see today. If those old lines had stayed open they would have been modernised and updated and be just as bland as the rest of the current UK rail network.

The living and working steam trains we see today are a great reminder of the late 1950s and early 60s (although they are now far more pristine than I remember them).

Beeching’s report was a cloud at the time but we do seem to have been rewarded with a silver lining which can still be enjoyed today, and hopefully for several years to come.

 

[rjhowie]

You are still missing the basic point Steamdemon regarding Beeching.

There were lines that should have been considered more closely but at the same time there were a heck of a lot of lines that drew in next to nothing and I was aware of it when much younger and worked on the rail passenger side. Those lines were drawing in virtually nothing - sometimes 1 or 2% revenue. One accepts that he is a controversial figure and i regret that lines up here in the northern part of the Kingdom lost some tremendous scenery routes but he reported and recommended only. It was the government that decided whether to accept, reject or alter a report although he has been the whipping boy for decades. If anyone deserves the acrimony it is the politicians. The Conservative Govt accepted it and thus the "wrath" should be dumped on their heads. However equally, may I remind again that Harold Wilson and the Labour Party in opposition categorically promised to rescind the government's decision once they won the General Election. Then having won the trust When they didn't bother their backsides and ignored the matter. That was another damnable disgrace.

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.
Steamdemon, I very much find myself agreeing with rjhowie on this one. Doctor Beeching was only a civil servant that was asked to produce a report setting out for the government of the day what he saw as the future of the railways, if any at that time.

I was 19 years old at the time of the report and what history cannot convey to later generations is the public attitudes that prevail at the time that historic decisions are made. The 1960s was a decade of great change. The austere, drab years of the 1950s following the Second World War had at last come to an end. This was the era of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the likes of Gerry and the pacemakers. It was also the era of full employment, good wages and with that for the first time the motor car came within the price range of average working people.

Having your own “personal transport” was the way that we all wished to go and nobody wanted to wait at railway stations or bus stops when you could jump into your car or as I did jump onto your 500cc BSA Goldstar motorbike and be where you wanted to go in a fraction of the time it took on public transport. With hindsight anyone can say that the above was a short-sighted gigantic mistake for which we are paying a heavy price today. However, hindsight is a wonderful thing and the overwhelming attitude of the British population following publication of the Beeching report was acceptance with many doubting that the railways had any future at all.

For evidence of the above you only have to look at the fact that many thousands of railwaymen lost their jobs, but there were no large-scale protests as might have been expected today. Instead they all found new, cleaner and better paid jobs in other industries with very few problems. There were also virtually no protests as one at a time the rail lines were closed, it was over, the car was the future and the government of the day, the British press and the population in general all seen it that way.

Let’s also not forget that for three decades following the Beeching closures the car and the road transport industry in general was very much the driving force behind an expanding British economy. It had an enormous impact on the British tourist trade, the entertainments industry and the ability of the population in general to easily move about and spend their earned income on whatever they wished which included their cars.

The foregoing was the public attitude of the day, it may not be easy to accept by today’s generation but no one from my generation is going to apologise for it as it seemed to us to be the way forward and for many years it was a good way forward.

Bill

 

[amigacooke]

Doctor Beeching was only a civil servant

Dr Beeching wasn't a civil servant at all. He came from ICI, returned to ICI, and was Chairman of the Board of British Railways which was a statutory corporation.