Doctor Beeching's cuts

[ac6000cw]

I'm with Taunton and steamybrian on this one - Beeching got it about right.

The report suggested that the future for railfreight was block trains and intermodal - exactly what we have now (despite several attempts to make wagonload freight commercially viable).

As for passenger services, BR seemed to have done very little over the 15 years since nationalisation towards reducing the costs of secondary and branchline services. The train frequencies and speeds on many branches were low enough that they could easily have been converted to 'one train working' with no signalling or station staff (and open level crossings) but nothing much happened. It's not surprising that in the 'white heat of technology' era steam railways were seen as dirty, slow and hopelessly old-fashioned. If BR had tackled the financial problems seriously much earlier 'Beeching' might never have happened (some railway managers understood this, as Taunton mentioned, but I suspect that too many of the people in 222 Marylebone Road didn't - 'I Tried to Run a Railway' anyone ?).

 

[muddythefish]

The vast number of important towns that have been cut off from the railway network and are in dire need of alternatives to the car, the growth of road congestion since the 1960s, the soaring cost of petrol forcing the lower paid off the roads, the migration of work to the main centres of employment (increasing commuting), the failure to foresee population growth and the short-termist nature of the Beeching cuts and that lines might be needed in the future (short-termism admittedly is not new in this country), suggest you and and Beeching are wrong.


Rather than celebrating Beeching compile a list of lines that should never have closed and would be extremely busy and useful if they were still around today

 

[nw1]

The conclusion from this thread seems to be that the flawed "1960s railway mindset" which saw the railways as old-fashioned and out-of-date and therefore needed to go, was at least partly to blame. It is very unfortunate it happened when it did - I suspect had the lines survived a bit longer the increase in commuting and introduction of high-speed services on main lines would have fed the branch lines.

It seems a form of defeatist, short-termist, penny-pinching conservatism here, like in so many other situations, is at least partly to blame - rather than have a vision of 10 years in the future (HSTs came only 10 years or so after Beeching? People must have had a vision of high-speed railways by 1965) railways were short-sightedly chopped. OK fair enough I guess to close a line which only serves the village of Twistleton-Fife-on-the-Wold, the Red Lion Inn Halt and Farmer Giles' Junction, but no sizeable town should have lost its railway.

 

[Spamcan81]

To be fair, the “social railway“ as implemented by Castle, was an important step forward, particularly for regional urban areas, but alas IMO could be described as too little, too late.

Agreed but oe should not forget the damage she had already done by agreeing to closures. It's interesting to note that after she championed the social railway, she was shunted off into another department. A case of "job done" or shoved out of the way for ruffling too many feathers in the road lobby?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The conclusion from this thread seems to be that the flawed "1960s railway mindset" which saw the railways as old-fashioned and out-of-date and therefore needed to go, was at least partly to blame. It is very unfortunate it happened when it did - I suspect had the lines survived a bit longer the increase in commuting and introduction of high-speed services on main lines would have fed the branch lines.

It seems a form of defeatist, short-termist, penny-pinching conservatism here, like in so many other situations, is at least partly to blame - rather than have a vision of 10 years in the future (HSTs came only 10 years or so after Beeching? People must have had a vision of high-speed railways by 1965) railways were short-sightedly chopped. OK fair enough I guess to close a line which only serves the village of Twistleton-Fife-on-the-Wold, the Red Lion Inn Halt and Farmer Giles' Junction, but no sizeable town should have lost its railway.

Agreed. Some lines were built purely because of inter company rivalry. Company A would build a line from Y to Z mainly to stop Company B from doing it and thus invading their rival's territory. The fact that it made little or no profit was the price Company A was prepared to pay to keep their rivals at bay. Such lines were doomed to close eventually under any normal rationale but the "economics" used to justify the closure of busier lines was flawed at best and downright dishonest at worst.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The vast number of important towns that have been cut off from the railway network and are in dire need of alternatives to the car, the growth of road congestion since the 1960s, the soaring cost of petrol forcing the lower paid off the roads, the migration of work to the main centres of employment (increasing commuting), the failure to foresee population growth and the short-termist nature of the Beeching cuts and that lines might be needed in the future (short-termism admittedly is not new in this country), suggest you and and Beeching are wrong.


Rather than celebrating Beeching compile a list of lines that should never have closed and would be extremely busy and useful if they were still around today

For once we are in agreement.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
A good read. Blaming Oxford - Cambridge on Beeching is an error but otherwise an interesting article IMO.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/02/beeching-wrong-about-britains-railways
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Blaming Oxford - Cambridge close on Beecing is an error but otherwise a good article IMO.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/02/beeching-wrong-about-britains-railways
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The conclusion from this thread seems to be that the flawed "1960s railway mindset" which saw the railways as old-fashioned and out-of-date and therefore needed to go, was at least partly to blame. It is very unfortunate it happened when it did - I suspect had the lines survived a bit longer the increase in commuting and introduction of high-speed services on main lines would have fed the branch lines.

It seems a form of defeatist, short-termist, penny-pinching conservatism here, like in so many other situations, is at least partly to blame - rather than have a vision of 10 years in the future (HSTs came only 10 years or so after Beeching? People must have had a vision of high-speed railways by 1965) railways were short-sightedly chopped. OK fair enough I guess to close a line which only serves the village of Twistleton-Fife-on-the-Wold, the Red Lion Inn Halt and Farmer Giles' Junction, but no sizeable town should have lost its railway.

Blaming Oxford - Cambridge close on Beecing is an error but otherwise a good article IMO.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/02/beeching-wrong-about-britains-railways

 

[ac6000cw]

Personally, I think the BR upper management of the 1950s/early 1960s were far more to blame for what happened, by wasting Modernisation Plan money on traffics that were in long term decline and not pushing ahead with electrification as fast as possible. The LNER had already developed plans to electrify London-York, but didn't have the money to do it, so why didn't BR just get on with it when money became available ? With a short extension from Doncaster to Sheffield we could have had an electrified route from London to most of the northern cities/industrial/coal mining areas in the 1950s, with a considerable reduction in operating expenses compared to steam power. This would also have demonstrated that the railway was forward-looking (building steam locomotives demonstrated the opposite, really).

No one has a reliable crystal ball - the politicians of the day were just responding to voters buying cars and abandoning trains (and industry moving to road transport because railway goods services were slow and inflexible in comparison to the fast door-to-door service that trucks could offer). That's really what led to the motorway building program - it was felt that it was what a modern economy should have.

 

[yorksrob]

Unfortunately the railway still had to adhere by law to common carrier legislation, which sucked up a lot of modernisation plan investment. Also, I understand that Beeching was luke warm on the benefits of electrification at best. The mk 2's were definately an excellent development though.

 

[ac6000cw]

Unfortunately the railway still had to adhere by law to common carrier legislation, which sucked up a lot of modernisation plan investment. Also, I understand that Beeching was luke warm on the benefits of electrification at best. The mk 2's were definately an excellent development though.

Even if they were legally obliged to carry stuff, it presumably didn't have to go by train all the way (the railways had sizeable local road transport capability as well, and British Road Services was also nationalised, so there were other options for freight BR didn't want to carry). If the 'common carrier' obligations were so much of a problem, why were BR not lobbying government hard to repeal the legislation - after all, railways were far from being the monopoly transport provider by the 1950s, so the reason for the 'common carrier' obligation had largely gone. Even if they thought wagonload freight had a future, why invest in expensive fixed plant (hump yards) when there was an obvious need for more modern brake-fitted wagons to reduce transit times (to compete with trucks), combined with a rethink of services to minimise en-route switching - Speedlink was a reasonable idea but 20 years too late....

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Even if they were legally obliged to carry stuff, it presumably didn't have to go by train all the way (the railways had sizeable local road transport capability as well, and British Road Services was also nationalised, so there were other options for freight BR didn't want to carry). If the 'common carrier' obligations were so much of a problem, why were BR not lobbying government hard to repeal the legislation - after all, railways were far from being the monopoly transport provider by the 1950s, so the reason for the 'common carrier' obligation had largely gone. Even if they thought wagonload freight had a future, why invest in expensive fixed plant (hump yards) when there was an obvious need for more modern brake-fitted wagons to reduce transit times (to compete with trucks), combined with a rethink of services to minimise en-route switching - Speedlink was a reasonable idea but 20 years too late....

All good stuff - but BR could not modernise / replace fast enough in "Austerity Britain" - as combination of the 1955 (?) strike and a changing economy lost much of the better rated traffic to a rapidly growing private road haulage interest - leaving the railways to try and catch up with some success in the Freightliner / block train era. Some ground was retained - but even in the 1980's - the enthusiast friendly , hopeless unfitted freights were knocking around. I agree "Speedlink" was 30 - not 20 years too late.

 

[Spamcan81]

Even if they were legally obliged to carry stuff, it presumably didn't have to go by train all the way (the railways had sizeable local road transport capability as well, and British Road Services was also nationalised, so there were other options for freight BR didn't want to carry). If the 'common carrier' obligations were so much of a problem, why were BR not lobbying government hard to repeal the legislation - after all, railways were far from being the monopoly transport provider by the 1950s, so the reason for the 'common carrier' obligation had largely gone. Even if they thought wagonload freight had a future, why invest in expensive fixed plant (hump yards) when there was an obvious need for more modern brake-fitted wagons to reduce transit times (to compete with trucks), combined with a rethink of services to minimise en-route switching - Speedlink was a reasonable idea but 20 years too late....

As a common carrier there was no such thing as "freight BR didn't want to carry" as they had to take anything offered to them - subject to gauging limits of course. As for lobbying for a fair deal on the freight front, that had been going on since well before nationalisation with the Big Four companies seeking change in the common carrier legislation.

 

[Taunton]

As a common carrier there was no such thing as "freight BR didn't want to carry" as they had to take anything offered to them.

Again, the railway was a Common Carrier, not an Enforced Rail Carrier. There was nothing to stop the railway actually moving such loads by road if they found that more efficient, or even subcontracting it out to a road haulier. I suspect it was just management inertia and union demands came together to prevent this.

 

[yorksrob]

Again, the railway was a Common Carrier, not an Enforced Rail Carrier. There was nothing to stop the railway actually moving such loads by road if they found that more efficient, or even subcontracting it out to a road haulier. I suspect it was just management inertia and union demands came together to prevent this.

Moving things by road or subcontracting to road hauliers would still involve cost, for an unprofitable and peripheral part of the business. The square deal should have been implemented decades previously.

 

[21C101]

One thing that also had a terribble impact was the 1955 national drivers/firemans strike which shut the network for two weeks. This caused utter chaos, not just for passengers but, more importantly, the entire economy was damaged as much, if not most, freight went by rail and was at a standstill. (so there was a similar effect to the lorry driver blockades in the year 2000 on both the economy and an aghast government).

The government appeared to concede and the drivers got a pay rise ending the strike, but the government were more bothered with the long term. Much freight never returned to the railways after this strike and it appears that the government as a result of the strike resolved to push on rapidly to start building motorways and upgrading roads so that the general economy would never ever be at the mercy of the rail unions again.

Clearly the road lobby had an influence, but the union gave the road lobby a wide open goal with a suicidal and economically devastating strike. Without this, and other strikes, the freight revenue in particular would not have collapsed so fast, meaning drastic measures were taken to stem the financial losses on the railways and inevitably the pruning went too far.

Similarly, national strikes in the '80s and '90s heavily influenced the decision to privatise BR by splitting it into dozens of companies, since when there has never been a national strike. As a result franchises/concessions are here to stay, even with a labour government.

 

[yorksrob]

Even if they were legally obliged to carry stuff, it presumably didn't have to go by train all the way (the railways had sizeable local road transport capability as well, and British Road Services was also nationalised, so there were other options for freight BR didn't want to carry). If the 'common carrier' obligations were so much of a problem, why were BR not lobbying government hard to repeal the legislation - after all, railways were far from being the monopoly transport provider by the 1950s, so the reason for the 'common carrier' obligation had largely gone. Even if they thought wagonload freight had a future, why invest in expensive fixed plant (hump yards) when there was an obvious need for more modern brake-fitted wagons to reduce transit times (to compete with trucks), combined with a rethink of services to minimise en-route switching - Speedlink was a reasonable idea but 20 years too late....

Freight, of course, was only a part of the story.

I think the worst thing that Beeching did was to instill a poisonous ethos within railway management of closure first. It is particularly noticeable how, once support for individual routes had been agglomerated into a block grant, railway management was so keen to aquiesce to, and even propose closure of routes in the first instance, rather than make an effort with them.

Take the Marshlink as an example. During the 80's it was rationalised with minimal signalling and singling to ensure it's survival. This was after a long and bitterly fought public campaign which led to the minister rejecting closure. My point is, why did rationalisation not happen until after the line had been proposed for closure and a campaign fought ? Surely a half decent management would have done everything in its power to keep trains running as efficiently as possible before closure ? The fact that if didn't, I put very much down to the Beeching ethos. I don't believe that this malignant way of thinking began to give way until sectorisation (and even then, continued in some quarters).

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Take the Marshlink as an example. During the 80's it was rationalised with minimal signalling and singling to ensure it's survival. This was after a long and bitterly fought public campaign which led to the minister rejecting closure. My point is, why did rationalisation not happen until after the line had been proposed for closure and a campaign fought ? Surely a half decent management would have done everything in its power to keep trains running as efficiently as possible before closure ? The fact that if didn't, I put very much down to the Beeching ethos. I don't believe that this malignant way of thinking began to give way until sectorisation (and even then, continued in some quarters

Some areas of the railways were a bit more pro-active in reducing costs and saving lines - think of G Fiennes on East Anglia with his basic railway campaign. I suspect the Southern of the day was far more concerned with the issues of the London commuter area than the rural lines on the periphery. Also - BR - had a Govt imposed task of reducing the network - so the fall of Swanage - Wareham for example fell into this category.

 

[yorksrob]

Some areas of the railways were a bit more pro-active in reducing costs and saving lines - think of G Fiennes on East Anglia with his basic railway campaign. I suspect the Southern of the day was far more concerned with the issues of the London commuter area than the rural lines on the periphery. Also - BR - had a Govt imposed task of reducing the network - so the fall of Swanage - Wareham for example fell into this category.

Indeed. I read once that it was a toss up between closing the Mid Hants and Marshlink (can't remember where). Luckily for me as an Ashfordian, the Marshlink seems to have been the squeakier wheel that got the grease.

1969-70 seems to have been a particularly damaging period in this respect.

 

[21C101]

Freight, of course, was only a part of the story.

I think the worst thing that Beeching did was to instill a poisonous ethos within railway management of closure first.

I think that this attitude was there well before Beeching. A poster further up shows that BR got rid of more mileage before Beeching than after. Indeed Fiennes recounted how eastern region had been quietly closing down lines en masse both brachches and secondary mains like the m&gn long before beeching ruined it for everyone with a high publicity report (he said beeching had two faults, an over fondness for maps and an over fondness for publishing them). Fiennes also referred to happy bands of nihilists taking pleasure in closing lines.

With the exception of the SR and to some extent the WR wholesale closures took place in the '50s. It was only with the collapse of the holiday traffic to the south and west in the '60s that the south was hit badly. This was caused by the new advent of cheap flights to spain with guaranteed sunshine and hotels not grotty boarding houses, but coincided with beeching.

Perhaps because beeching brought such closures to the south is one reason for the fuss.

However I read that even OVS bulleid in his last years said that we [ie the southern railway] would have done much the same if we were still in charge.

Also, many of the closures in the beeching report were already in the process of closure when it was published and some mentioned in it, eg the chard bracnch, closed before publication.

The real disaster was the piecemeal selling off of the land and rights of way, preventing future reopening if required, something Beeching opposed.

 

[yorksrob]

I think that this attitude was there well before Beeching. A poster further up shows that BR got rid of more mileage before Beeching than after. Indeed Fiennes recounted how eastern region had been quietly closing down lines en masse both brachches and secondary mains like the m&gn long before beeching ruined it for everyone with a high publicity report (he said beeching had two faults, an over fondness for maps and an over fondness for publishing them). Fiennes also referred to happy bands of nihilists taking pleasure in closing lines.

With the exception of the SR and to some extent the WR wholesale closures took place in the '50s. It was only with the collapse of the holiday traffic to the south and west in the '60s that the south was hit badly. This was caused by the new advent of cheap flights to spain with guaranteed sunshine and hotels not grotty boarding houses, but coincided with beeching.

Perhaps because beeching brought such closures to the south is one reason for the fuss.

However I read that even OVS bulleid in his last years said that we [ie the southern railway] would have done much the same if we were still in charge.

Also, many of the closures in the beeching report were already in the process of closure when it was published and some mentioned in it, eg the chard bracnch, closed before publication.

The real disaster was the piecemeal selling off of the land and rights of way, preventing future reopening if required, something Beeching opposed.

Well, a lot of those which closed in the 50's probably did need to go - thinking of the Hythe branch in Kent and the Meon Valley in Hampshire, one of which didn't pass any towns and the other wasn't even completed in the first place.

Occasionally you hear about a route which closed during the fifties which would have been useful today, but the vast majority of mistakes happened during or after Beeching.

Still, if the report helped to galvanise opposition, perhaps that was a not so bad thing about it.

 

[edwin_m]

Didn't Fiennes agree that the M&GN was a no-hoper and indeed was instrumental in closing it? Different attitude to the East Suffolk which suggests to me that he realised certain routes should be saved but others shouldn't.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Melton Constable, once the hub for the M & GN, saw a decline of population after the line closures and I think is now in the region of circa 550. There is a plan for a railway station to be opened there by the Norfolk Orbital Railway (?) but I have not been all that involved with news of this project since my stroke in July 2012, so I would appreciate any recent news on it, please.

 

[Feathers44]

Melton Constable, once the hub for the M & GN, saw a decline of population after the line closures and I think is now in the region of circa 550. There is a plan for a railway station to be opened there by the Norfolk Orbital Railway (?) but I have not been all that involved with news of this project since my stroke in July 2012, so I would appreciate any recent news on it, please.

I can't claim 'recent news' but I'm interested in your comment because I was chatting with some of the guys on the Mid Norfolk Railway in Dereham a couple of weeks ago. I came away from that conversation with the idea that the Norfolk Orbital plan was nothing more than a pipe dream of its creators with no chance of actually happening so I'd be interested to know if there really is anything more behind it.

Unless I got completely the wrong end of the stick, the MNR guys seemed to believe the NOR plan to focus on obtaining the route then relying on others to supply (and maintain) the infrastructure and rolling stock. The feeling I came away with was very much that someone needed to do some serious work on maintenance costs and projected revenue before even thinking about taking this seriously.

(I'm not intending to offend anyone in Norfolk with this, nor am I claiming it's true or even my own view. I know very little on the topic and this is the only 'informed' opinion I've heard to date))

 

[Spamcan81]

Again, the railway was a Common Carrier, not an Enforced Rail Carrier. There was nothing to stop the railway actually moving such loads by road if they found that more efficient, or even subcontracting it out to a road haulier. I suspect it was just management inertia and union demands came together to prevent this.

Since the road hauliers cherry picked freight flows do you honestly think they would have quoted a cheap price on a load that they didn't want in the first place? They would have been under no obligation to take it off of BR's hands anyway.

 

[Taunton]

Didn't Fiennes agree that the M&GN was a no-hoper and indeed was instrumental in closing it? Different attitude to the East Suffolk which suggests to me that he realised certain routes should be saved but others shouldn't.

It did of course help that Gerry Fiennes lived on the East Suffolk He commuted daily on that one remaining loco-hauled through train from Saxmundham to Liverpool Street.

eg the Chard branch, closed before publication.

Ah, my neck of the woods. About six trains a day from Taunton, two-coach GWR B-set to the end, maybe a dozen passengers on the busiest, some I bet were completely empty. Chard station was nowhere near the town centre, it was probably the most north-easterly building of the town, mostly surrounded by fields. However, for much of the day you would find at least one, and often two, trains with full Taunton crews sat at the station there. Ilminster is the main intermediate small town. In that case the station was even worse, way beyond the western edge of the town. Meanwhile the Western National bus ran hourly, at least, and went right down the main street of all these places. The same was true of all the other branches, and main line stoppers, that radiated from Taunton, whose own station is none-too-convenient for the commercial and shopping centre of the town, a fact I know only too well from personal experience.

 

[21C101]

It did of course help that Gerry Fiennes lived on the East Suffolk He commuted daily on that one remaining loco-hauled through train from Saxmundham to Liverpool Street.


Ah, my neck of the woods. About six trains a day from Taunton, two-coach GWR B-set to the end, maybe a dozen passengers on the busiest, some I bet were completely empty. Chard station was nowhere near the town centre, it was probably the most north-easterly building of the town, mostly surrounded by fields. However, for much of the day you would find at least one, and often two, trains with full Taunton crews sat at the station there. Ilminster is the main intermediate small town. In that case the station was even worse, way beyond the western edge of the town. Meanwhile the Western National bus ran hourly, at least, and went right down the main street of all these places. The same was true of all the other branches, and main line stoppers, that radiated from Taunton, whose own station is none-too-convenient for the commercial and shopping centre of the town, a fact I know only too well from personal experience.

Ironically there was a lswr station with a through platform on a curve in the town centre where Tescos is. It was closed after WW1. BR then sarcastically? renamed the remaining station Chard Central in 1948.

Post singling, there was an hourly service Waterloo - Salisbury and then two hourly onto Eexeter. With a bit more imagination and investment the Wat-Sal only service could have been extended to become Waterloo - Taunton calling at stns to Yeovil Junction then Crewkerne, Chard (resited station where Tesco is), Ilminster (passing loop), ilton, Thornfalcon (park and ride) and Taunton. I suspect had that been done it would be well used now but it would have needed vitually a complete rebuild like so many secondary lines that shut and that was never going to happen.

what is more annoying is that unlike axminster where the buses to seaton terminate at the station and connect with the trains in both directions that pass there, at Taunton this dosenmt happen and you have a 15 minute walk through the town to the bus stop where an horly express bus to axminster (fast to Ilminster) runs.

You can now get the stagecoach 99 to chard from outside crewkerne station though, with roughly a 20 minute connection if coming from london, but alas for ilminstonians the 99 dosent go there.

 

[yorksrob]

It did of course help that Gerry Fiennes lived on the East Suffolk He commuted daily on that one remaining loco-hauled through train from Saxmundham to Liverpool Street.

I was under the impression that the East Suffolk was one of the lines that they tried to close but was rejected. A case of Mr Fiennes coming up with the right solution whilst still believing in the wrong one perhaps ?

Ah, my neck of the woods. About six trains a day from Taunton, two-coach GWR B-set to the end, maybe a dozen passengers on the busiest, some I bet were completely empty. Chard station was nowhere near the town centre, it was probably the most north-easterly building of the town, mostly surrounded by fields. However, for much of the day you would find at least one, and often two, trains with full Taunton crews sat at the station there. Ilminster is the main intermediate small town. In that case the station was even worse, way beyond the western edge of the town. Meanwhile the Western National bus ran hourly, at least, and went right down the main street of all these places. The same was true of all the other branches, and main line stoppers, that radiated from Taunton, whose own station is none-too-convenient for the commercial and shopping centre of the town, a fact I know only too well from personal experience.

Conversely, Tiverton, a large town with many thousands of people, went from having a station conveniently situated near the centre of town, to a "parkway" station miles away in the middle of nowhere. I wonder how many more people would use the train today with a station in town !

 

[Helvellyn]

Personally, I think the BR upper management of the 1950s/early 1960s were far more to blame for what happened, by wasting Modernisation Plan money on traffics that were in long term decline and not pushing ahead with electrification as fast as possible.

And look at how much money was wasted by a proliferation of locomotives and multiple units. It's odd that the Mark 1 carriage was standardised fairly early, and whilst there were a lot of variants (and regional variations on top of that, e.g. six seater or eight seater Third Class compartments), it was a universal vehicle.

Electric Multiple Units saw some standardisation. More so than DMUs, where it took until the Derby designs started coming through (even by other builders), but a lot of experimental or orphan fleets came through too (engine and coupling combinations).

As to locomotives, well the pilot designs multipled before sufficent testin.

So by the early 1960s a lot of money had been spent for what? No wonder Government was having kittens over the cost of the railways, the way money was swallowed up and the growing losses.

Beeching, as has been said, got a lot right, but is remembered for the "axe" he wielded.

But also remember the road building going on. The car was king; Motorways were the future. Heck, if the road network planned had been built we might not actually have seen the degree of rail revival we have today. It can be said that a lot of congestion in many areas is because the trunk road capacity planned was never delivered (although I doubt that would have been enough).

Also, who could have foreseen the growth of long distance commuting, for various reasons? A few threads have mentioned timetableword website and the fact that Reading/Oxford seemed so underserved. Now look at how FGW is having to use long distance trains to serve the Thames Valley commuter traffic. In the 1960s that wasn't really there, and the Western had shunned shorter distance commuter traffic to a greater degree than the Great Eastern or Southern, so it couldn't generate the capacity easily.

 

[steamybrian]

Beeching, as has been said, got a lot right, but is remembered for the "axe" he wielded.

But also remember the road building going on. The car was king; Motorways were the future. Heck, if the road network planned had been built we might not actually have seen the degree of rail revival we have today. It can be said that a lot of congestion in many areas is because the trunk road capacity planned was never delivered (although I doubt that would have been enough).

......

I fully agree..
To take another point forward that in the late 1960s the road protesters started to form and their work caused many road building schemes to bee scrapped such as the inner "box" ring road in London or the extension of the M23 from Merstham to Central London ( even today- the motorway starts with Junction 7). Road building was brought to adverse publicity with building of Newbury-by-pass and Twyford Down (Winchester).
By then Beeching and Marples had gone..

 

[yorksrob]

I wonder how much exactly was lost by these different multiple unit types.

What was it in terms of coupling systems. Diamond, double diamond. Did this really make the difference in terms of profitability.

We're frequently told what Beeching was supposed to have got right - usually in terms of freight wagons. But nothing to counter the disaster of the closures.

The fact remains, if Beeching had had his way, many of the routes we rely on now would not edxist and have housing estates and supermarkets over them.

 

[nw1]

I fully agree..
To take another point forward that in the late 1960s the road protesters started to form and their work caused many road building schemes to bee scrapped such as the inner "box" ring road in London or the extension of the M23 from Merstham to Central London ( even today- the motorway starts with Junction 7). Road building was brought to adverse publicity with building of Newbury-by-pass and Twyford Down (Winchester).
By then Beeching and Marples had gone..

I've always wondered about some of these motorway anomalies. The M23 starting with 7, the M62 starting (IIRC) with 4 and the M11 with 3.

We do seem to be taking a more sensitive approach to road building these days; while sadly a tunnel was not built at Twyford Down, the Hindhead tunnel has avoided the desecration of the Devil's Punchbowl area that would have resulted from an overground bypass. How long such an approach will last with Osborne pulling the strings, though, I don't know.

 

[yorksrob]

I think Twyford Down was the “Euston Arch“ moment in terms of the environmental effects of road building.

I wonder what Swampy's up to now.

 

[RT4038]

Post singling, there was an hourly service Waterloo - Salisbury and then two hourly onto Eexeter. With a bit more imagination and investment the Wat-Sal only service could have been extended to become Waterloo - Taunton calling at stns to Yeovil Junction then Crewkerne, Chard (resited station where Tesco is), Ilminster (passing loop), ilton, Thornfalcon (park and ride) and Taunton. I suspect had that been done it would be well used now but it would have needed vitually a complete rebuild like so many secondary lines that shut and that was never going to happen.

I think this would have required a lot more than 'imagination' at the time the Chard-Yeovil line was shut! Local passenger services west of Salisbury were slated for closure, and I can't imagine a huge demand for Tisbury to Taunton even now. Quite what requirement there was for a park & ride at Thornfalcon in 1962 I do not know. If a through Salisbury - Taunton via Gillingham service could be economically justified in 1962 surely it would have run via Yeovil Town and Martock?
However it would have required a crystal ball the size of Jupiter to foresee the change of travel demand by 2014. Even now Chard-Taunton would only be affordable as a one man operated railcar on a unsignalled long siding line!