Short-sightedness of 1960s line closures

[quantinghome]

Even with perfect hindsight many lines would have been shut as they were always basket cases. Beeching accelerated closures but the cause was ultimately the loss of freight. But the types of lines that I would have been kept open are:

1. Lines in urban areas and commuters routes around urban areas. This is an often-forgotten and major part of the closures. e.g. Central West Yorkshire, which had a dense network of lines which are almost entirely gone but would be well-used commuter routes today.
2. Strategic gaps - Oxford-Cambridge, Stainmore, Waverley (maybe).
3. Lines that would enable a more efficient railway by reducing mixed use traffic e.g. Great Central (particularly the midlands - yorkshire section).
4. Rural branch lines with obvious potential (judged by the success of similar lines) e.g. Padstow, Keswick.

What I wouldn't open is any old line, PARTICULARLY lines whose potential reopening is argued for today on the basis of providing a diversionary route. I'm afraid Little-chuffington-in-the-sticks is sadly going to remain disconnected.

 

[Killingworth]

Obviously every line is different and most were built when horses hauled road traffic. Walking a mile or more to a station to travel much longer distances was accepted as part of the novelty of reaching much wider horizons.

I look at two specific routes about which a lot has been written. Both the Woodhead and Hope Valley routes between Sheffield and Manchester were built to transport very heavy volumes of coal westwards across the Pennines. That was still the case into the 1960s. Passengers were very much a secondary source of income. Retail domestic coal merchants were based at most stations across the nation, delivering door to door - in my youth one such was still horse drawn!

Early in the 20th Century the electric tram started to take traffic from suburban routes and after WW2 motor vehicles, both private and commercial, really started to bite. The growth of new housing estates away from tightly congested urban areas, plus the large industrial and commercial premises built out of towns and away from railway connections led to the graphs for rail traffic volumes going only one way, see below.

Look at that graph and think how any business manager wouldn't be having nightmares.

We now know that passenger traffic stabilised in the mid 1980s but it wasn't until the mid 1990s that anyone would have foreseen the rises that subsequently occurred. Serpell's 1983 report was a very big shock, especially to me when I saw the ECML suggested for closure north of Newcastle!

Thankfully most of the suggested Serpell cuts didn't happen BUT at about this time British Railways was incentivised to reduce operational costs by reducing track mileage and to sell off surplus land. Arguably that did far more damage to the future operational effectiveness of today's railway than most of the closed branch lines. The subsequent building on vacated land, sometimes used for road improvements, simplified and slewed tracks and junctions, singled sections, removed and shortened platforms has made it much harder to build back the capacity we clearly needed in January 2020.

For me restoring Beeching's cuts is a badly focussed initiative. It's too strongly aimed at restoring passenger services to lightly used and long closed branch lines. The investment needs to go into restoring greater resilience and capacity into the tracks and routes that are still carrying heavy loads, but could carry even more.

'

I ramble back in time to the late 1950s and watching A4 Pacific locomotives running through what is now Ilford Road Metro station on diverted ECML weekend trains during engineering work. If only I'd got a picture. Times changed.

We have to move forward from where we are now. The past happened for business reasons that were generally seen as sound at the time. Details maybe not. Look again at that graph and the panic mind set is easier to understand.

 

[A0]

3. Of course there were borderline cases where one route could have been spared, just as there are lines they did survive which continue to struggle today. I’m certainly sympathetic to some reopening campaigns. But a number of these campaigns only look a lot better after years of closure. For example, I can buy into the argument that we should have something linking the MML and WCML in the Leicester/ Northampton/ Beford. But then the MML-WCML link from Bedford to Bletchley isn’t exactly busy! Compare the SELRAP ambitions, where they claim a route from Skipton to Colne would have electrification and three passenger trains per hour (from Leeds and Bradford to Manchester Airport etc) plus an hourly freight, with how poorly used the surviving Skipton to Carnforth line is.

Bit in bold - I can't.

Once EWR is up and running Northampton - Bedford via Bletchley would be just as quick as the old direct Bedford - Northampton line was. Even then there isn't *that* much demand to travel between Northampton and Bedford. The only place on the south part of the MML which might attract some business is Luton Airport.

The claims (usually peddled by the mad as a box of frogs English Regional Transport Association) that there is loads of demand for such a link is laughable.

The only link I *do* think that's missing is actually Milton Keynes to Luton - because MK has grown massively over the last 40 years and Luton has the airport - but for the life of me, I can't see a sensible way to (i) build a route and (ii) do it in such a way that providing services on there doesn't royally screw up the existing WCML and MML services.

File Leicester - Northampton - Bedford in the same place as SELRAP or MEMRAP.

 

[A0]

Thankfully most of the suggested Serpell cuts didn't happen BUT at about this time British Railways was incentivised to reduce operational costs by reducing track mileage and to sell off surplus land. Arguably that did far more damage to the future operational effectiveness of today's railway than most of the closed branch lines. The subsequent building on vacated land, sometimes used for road improvements, simplified and slewed tracks and junctions, singled sections, removed and shortened platforms has made it much harder to build back the capacity we clearly need in January 2020.

Bit in bold - but did it really ? Can you provide *any* examples where sales of such land in the 1980s is now preventing capacity improvements which are needed ?

The main capacity issues seem to be on the approaches to certain key stations - mainly London termini but also Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street - but I'm not aware that any such land was sold off around those which would today be useful for adding capacity.

 

[3141]

Motorway construction would have happened whatever (as it did in every other Western country) and it seems unlikely that the country would have afforded to retain (and pay for the modernisation) of the railways and build the motorways that everyone wanted for their cars and trucks.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Aug 2022 ==


Yes, but I doubt this really had any bearing on the railway decisions. It is this which people add 2 + 2 to make 5.

Agreed. When people claim that Marples encouraged railway closures so that his construction firm could build new roads, they overlook the fact that most closures were lines that were underused, sometimes massively (as pointed out by several earlier posts), so no-one would plan a new road to replace them. Yes, there are a few cases where a new road follows sections of a former railway track, but for the most part rail closures weren't followed by new roads along the same alignment, because the lack of traffic that killed off the railway didn't justify a replacement.

 

[Bald Rick]

That graph also, helpfully, shows that the Beeching closures o fine mid 60s had very little impact on passenger numbers.

 

[Western Sunset]

Indeed, Marples personally didn't encourage rail closures per se, as Motorways were already under construction (and some open) before Beeching. There was just no joined-up thinking at all - look at the M1 built for miles alongside the ex-GC line which totally closed within a few years of the Motorway opening. Even the cavalier Marples, at the height of his powers, couldn't have arranged that...

 

[RT4038]

Indeed, Marples personally didn't encourage rail closures per se, as Motorways were already under construction (and some open) before Beeching. There was just no joined-up thinking at all - look at the M1 built for miles alongside the ex-GC line which totally closed within a few years of the Motorway opening. Even the cavalier Marples, at the height of his powers, couldn't have arranged that...

But that is politics - I am sure BR would have closed the line earlier but closing it before the motorway was finished was a hot potato......

 

[A0]

Even with perfect hindsight many lines would have been shut as they were always basket cases. Beeching accelerated closures but the cause was ultimately the loss of freight. But the types of lines that I would have been kept open are:

1. Lines in urban areas and commuters routes around urban areas. This is an often-forgotten and major part of the closures. e.g. Central West Yorkshire, which had a dense network of lines which are almost entirely gone but would be well-used commuter routes today.
2. Strategic gaps - Oxford-Cambridge, Stainmore, Waverley (maybe).
3. Lines that would enable a more efficient railway by reducing mixed use traffic e.g. Great Central (particularly the midlands - yorkshire section).
4. Rural branch lines with obvious potential (judged by the success of similar lines) e.g. Padstow, Keswick.

What I wouldn't open is any old line, PARTICULARLY lines whose potential reopening is argued for today on the basis of providing a diversionary route. I'm afraid Little-chuffington-in-the-sticks is sadly going to remain disconnected.

Bit in bold - Stainmore wasn't "strategic" by any length. And was actually a pre-Beeching closure, which gives you some idea of how busy it was.

South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"A proposal to close the line between Barnard Castle and Penrith was published at the end of 1959. Freight was diverted via Newcastle and Carlisle from July 1960 and, despite objections, the last train ran on 20 January 1962."

The Darlington - Barnard Castle - Middleton in Teesdale was a Beeching closure but that was being run as a solely passenger service by that time.

 

[nw1]

While I can reluctantly accept the case for closure of many lines which basically served the middle of nowhere, I do think the closures went too far.

A number of lines which were later closed (admittedly some post-Beeching) already had an hourly clockface service of DMUs or DEMUs in the mid-60s. I'm thinking, for example, of the Mid Hants or Swanage.

Or, lines which today might have allowed cross-country links between major centres that are only possible by roundabout routes, expensive due to high rail mileage, and cause yet more loading on already-busy trunk routes. Links to allow more direct travel from Bournemouth-Exeter, or Bournemouth-Salisbury, or Southampton-Swindon, for example.

Those two types of line are the kind of lines which I think should have been saved.

And even for those which have closed, they should have protected the trackbed from development.

But as others have said, there was the cultural landscape of the time and rail wasn't held in that high esteem, so it's easy to see why they closed given things as they were at that time. In many ways, the decade from about 1966-75 was a very forward looking and progressive period, certainly compared to the current times at least. But rail was not seen as part of that progressive future, other than high-profit IC or commuter routes.

 

[A0]

While I can reluctantly accept the case for closure of many lines which basically served the middle of nowhere, I do think the closures went too far.

A number of lines which were later closed (admittedly some post-Beeching) already had an hourly clockface service of DMUs or DEMUs in the mid-60s. I'm thinking, for example, of the Mid Hants or Swanage.

Or, lines which today might have allowed cross-country links between major centres that are only possible by roundabout routes, expensive due to high rail mileage, and cause yet more loading on already-busy trunk routes.

Bournemouth-Exeter, or Bournemouth-Salisbury, or Southampton-Swindon, for example.

Those are the kind of lines which I think should have been saved.

And even for those which have closed, they should have protected the trackbed from development.

But as others have said, there was the cultural landscape of the time and rail wasn't held in that high esteem, so it's easy to see why they closed given things as they were at that time. In many ways, the decade from about 1966-75 was a very forward looking and progressive period, certainly compared to the current times at least. But rail was not seen as part of that progressive future, other than high-profit IC or commuter routes.

There was never a direct 'Bournemouth - Exeter' line though.......

And the Midland & South West Junction Railway (Southampton - Swindon) was a pre-Beeching closure - and travelling via Reading was almost certainly quicker even then.

 

[bingleybong]

That graph also, helpfully, shows that the Beeching closures o fine mid 60s had very little impact on passenger numbers.

If you look at passenger miles instead of journeys the lack of use is even more obvious - they fell very little from the 60s to 80s compared with journeys meaning that longer distance traffic was increasing at the expense of local.

Are there tables of passenger route mileage and number of stations going back further than the 80s anywhere (a google did not turn any up)? It would be interesting to see what passengers per route mile or passengers per station looks like over the main closure period, I suspect it would confirm that most of what closed was very little used.

The other thing often forgotten was lack of capital - to a great extent the length of the surviving network was dictated by how much rolling stock was available for local trains. Beeching actually asked for more DEMUs and had he got them quite a few of the marginal closures on the Southern might have been avoided.

 

[Falcon1200]

Predicting future transport needs is fraught with difficulty, over 20 years never mind 60. Take for example the Glasgow & South Western route between Kilmarnock and Gretna Jc via Dumfries; Earlier this century there was a heavy traffic of coal trains between Scottish opencast sites and Hunterston Port, and English power stations; Resulting in Thornhill SB, which had been permanently switched out for years, being brought back into use with an Up Loop being provided there, the Long Lyes at Kilmarnock being constructed for coal trains to run round, and last but certainly not least, redoubling between Annan and Gretna Jc. Now ? That coal traffic has almost, if not totally, disappeared, and most of the time the sole use of the route is 2-car DMUs on stopping passenger trains. Therefore IMHO it is unfair to accuse the planners and politicians of the past of short sightedness when no-one can accurately predict the future.

 

[anthony263]

Pyle to Porthcawl one route I think should never have been closed as these days it. Would probably be part of the valley lines network and we’d be arguing for more services.

Lines to Usk and Monmouth plus the routes to Brecon I think
Should never have been
Closed

 

[infobleep]

Obviously every line is different and most were built when horses hauled road traffic. Walking a mile or more to a station to travel much longer distances was accepted as part of the novelty of reaching much wider horizons.

I look at two specific routes about which a lot has been written. Both the Woodhead and Hope Valley routes between Sheffield and Manchester were built to transport very heavy volumes of coal westwards across the Pennines. That was still the case into the 1960s. Passengers were very much a secondary source of income. Retail domestic coal merchants were based at most stations across the nation, delivering door to door - in my youth one such was still horse drawn!

Early in the 20th Century the electric tram started to take traffic from suburban routes and after WW2 motor vehicles, both private and commercial, really started to bite. The growth of new housing estates away from tightly congested urban areas, plus the large industrial and commercial premises built out of towns and away from railway connections led to the graphs for rail traffic volumes going only one way, see below.

Look at that graph and think how any business manager wouldn't be having nightmares.

We now know that passenger traffic stabilised in the mid 1980s but it wasn't until the mid 1990s that anyone would have foreseen the rises that subsequently occurred. Serpell's 1983 report was a very big shock, especially to me when I saw the ECML suggested for closure north of Newcastle!

Thankfully most of the suggested Serpell cuts didn't happen BUT at about this time British Railways was incentivised to reduce operational costs by reducing track mileage and to sell off surplus land. Arguably that did far more damage to the future operational effectiveness of today's railway than most of the closed branch lines. The subsequent building on vacated land, sometimes used for road improvements, simplified and slewed tracks and junctions, singled sections, removed and shortened platforms has made it much harder to build back the capacity we clearly needed in January 2020.

For me restoring Beeching's cuts is a badly focussed initiative. It's too strongly aimed at restoring passenger services to lightly used and long closed branch lines. The investment needs to go into restoring greater resilience and capacity into the tracks and routes that are still carrying heavy loads, but could carry even more.

' View attachment 119380

I ramble back in time to the late 1950s and watching A4 Pacific locomotives running through what is now Ilford Road Metro station on diverted ECML weekend trains during engineering work. If only I'd got a picture. Times changed.

We have to move forward from where we are now. The past happened for business reasons that were generally seen as sound at the time. Details maybe not. Look again at that graph and the panic mind set is easier to understand.

Really interesting graph. Would be interesting to see an updated one up to the current time period.

 

[Marton]

Nunthorpe to Guisborough closure in 1964 was short sighted given the growth in population since then.

 

[infobleep]

Branch lines to places like Bridport closed in the early 70s.

Would these have more chance of being useful today or did they just remain open as the roads were not up to a good enough standard whilst open?

In other words, does how late a line closed have any bearing on how useful it might be today? I'm excluding those closed and replaced by trams or guided busways.

 

[yorksrob]

Bit in bold - but did it really ? Can you provide *any* examples where sales of such land in the 1980s is now preventing capacity improvements which are needed ?

The main capacity issues seem to be on the approaches to certain key stations - mainly London termini but also Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street - but I'm not aware that any such land was sold off around those which would today be useful for adding capacity.

The bit of Manchester Victoria that went under the MEN arena arguably falls into this category.

 

[A0]

The bit of Manchester Victoria that went under the MEN arena arguably falls into this category.

But the capacity constraint through Manchester isn't Victoria station - it's Castlefield and the approaches to Piccadilly.

 

[yorksrob]

But the capacity constraint through Manchester isn't Victoria station - it's Castlefield and the approaches to Piccadilly.

It closes down options though, when you kust need to get trains into Manchester.

 

[A0]

It closes down options though, when you kust need to get trains into Manchester.

Except it really doesn't, because the narrowest part of the pipe is Castlefield through to Salford Crescent. Not a lack of space at Victoria.

AIUI there are 4 through tracks at Victoria - that's loads of capacity. The problem is the two track sections further west.

 

[NoRoute]

The failure to protect some of the more strategic routes from development was short sighted.

I wonder how 'optimal' the rationalisation of some parts of the network was, where competing routes and stations needed to be shut down, were the best routes and stations always retained, or did the politics of which railway company or unit was dominant determine which bits survived or got removed. I'm thinking about Nottingham, where Victoria station right in the heart of the city and on a north-south axis with a tunnelled route under the city got demolished, while the badly located Midland station stuck out on the edge of the city was retained, that was massively short-sighted.

The loss of the East-West routes, and even North-South routes between the mainlines in the Midlands is a major issue, it left a railway which was fine for commuting to London but not much use for regional travel.

 

[Philip]

What about routes like Bolton to Bury, Clifton to Radcliffe & Bury, Nantwich to Market Drayton/Wellington, Stafford to Shrewsbury, Chorley to Blackburn - and of course the complete closure of all lines into Leigh? These weren't rural branch lines linking villages, these were lines which connected towns with other towns and cities and their closures would've been an inconvenience to passengers then and still is now in many cases, particularly considering the sorry state of affairs of bus operators in large towns and cities.

 

[Chester1]

Closure of relatively short lines connecting towns to cities was a mistake but most were hopeless basket cases following the end of the traffic they were built for. Some people struggle with change and as they get older they see the past through increasingly rose tinted tinted glasses. There are some reopening proposals that are absolutely bonkers. The tell tale sign for me is the attitude towards new lines. A short new alignment to connect Skelmersdale (population 38,000) to Liverpool and Manchester doesn't have the same level of enthusiast support as reopening rural routes.

The rail network should connect or reconnect towns and even under the current financial climate the money should be found if the town is poorer than the UK average. If such a line happens to pass through or near a village that can justify a station then thats is fine but villages and very small towns don't justify rail links on their own merit.

 

[quantinghome]

Bit in bold - Stainmore wasn't "strategic" by any length. And was actually a pre-Beeching closure, which gives you some idea of how busy it was.

South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"A proposal to close the line between Barnard Castle and Penrith was published at the end of 1959. Freight was diverted via Newcastle and Carlisle from July 1960 and, despite objections, the last train ran on 20 January 1962."

The Darlington - Barnard Castle - Middleton in Teesdale was a Beeching closure but that was being run as a solely passenger service by that time.

The problem is we're left with no Pennine crossing between the Tyne and the Aire. The A66 is being dualled which indicates the level of demand along the route.

Of course at the time there was insufficient demand as the West Cumbrian pits had closed, but we are talking 'with hindsight'.

 

[infobleep]

I don't think any of the closures in England or Wales were remotely comparable. The bit everyone keeps forgetting is places like Galashiels were *much* further away from their nearest railhead than any of the places on the Great Central or Somerset and Dorset.

For example Galashiels was over 20 miles from its nearest station, Hawick even further.

Yet on the GC places like Lutterworth is only 7 miles to Rugby, Woodford Halse 12 miles to Banbury. On the S&D Blandford's about 14 miles to Poole.

So the reality is in England, none of the lines which were closed created remote communities of the same scale - Hawick + Galashiels + Melrose + Selkirk is ~30,000. Whereas the longer lines in England which were closed were either closer to other rail links (GCR, M&GN, S&D) or ran through areas which even today are very rural with small communities e.g. Northallerton - Garsdale or Darlington - Penrith via Stainmore.

I can see your point but are there not lines in England and Wales still open through rural areas? Are the areas with poor road connections or nowhere near other stations?

I guess the point is whoy are some rural lines viable but not others.

 

[coppercapped]

The reason given for the closure of many lines in the 1960s was that they were operating at a loss and that their continuing operation would be financially unsustainable. However, was this a short-sighted decision, considering the road traffic problems we have now and the pollution levels this causes? Also if we still had the railway network of the 1950s in operation now then travel would be a lot more convenient across the country, particularly getting to and from towns/villages in more rural areas.

Nothing is beyond extra (if emergency) funding from the government and this includes keeping all railways open, even the ones not making a profit, for public convenience reasons. Do people think that the 1960s closures should never have happened, could these loss-making lines have even become profit-making, or were the closures necessary for the sustainability of the railway over the following decades?

What do people think the railway would be like now if we still had the pre-1960s network in operation?

This, or a similar, topic returns every six months or so...

In the 50s personal transport became affordable to a greater proportion of the population due to increasing affluence and technological development reduced the real costs of motoring. Car ownership increased by about 5% per year from about 1948-50 and the trend is only now slowing. There are now more households with 2 cars than there are with none. This growth in car ownership happened under governments of all persuasions starting from the time before the First World War.[1]

Other posters have mentioned the influence of Ernest Marples on road and railway building. It cannot be too strongly emphasised that these changes had nothing whatsoever to do with one allegedly corrupt Minister of Transport. The motorways would have been built anyway — models of this type of road already existed in the US, Germany and Italy. The Great West Road was carved through west London suburbs in the 1920s and the first autostrada/freeways/autobahnen were also built in the 1920s. The first motorway in the UK, the Preston by-pass, opened in 1958 - planned and built at the same time the Government was funding BR's Modernisation Plan. No anti-rail bias there. Anyone who thinks the UK was not going to build any motor-roads, Marples or no, is living in cloud cuckooland.

By the early fifties British Railways no longer made sufficient money to cover the interest on the capital it employed and shortly afterwards it ceased to cover its operating costs. The British Transport Commission published the report 'Modernisation and Re-equipment of British Railways' in December 1954. The (Conservative) Government of the day under Anthony Eden made £1,200 million available over the period covered by the Plan - an enormous sum in those days - with the intention of returning BR to profitability.

Beeching was called in because the Modernisation Plan had failed to stem the losses, and BR had (so far as anyone could tell) wasted essentially every penny: on a system-wide basis the "investments" showed no sign of making any sort of return. Indeed, losses had increased by a factor of about six over less than ten years — a line that might have been marginally profitable in 1956 was certainly running at a loss by 1966. It simply couldn't continue; by 1960 BR was losing about £100m a year (say about £5bn in today's terms) and that with only about a quarter of families owning a car; imagine what the finances would have looked like by 1970 without radical action.

As I wrote, much of the Modernisation Plan money was spent with little or no improvement in operations or competitiveness on a system wide basis (there were some local improvements but even then the actual overall financial improvements were shrouded in mystery) and there was no long-term reduction of the deficit. This was underlined by the 'Re-appraisal' of the Modernisation Plan in 1959. The ASLEF strike from May to June 1955 had shown that the country could continue to function without the railways so when it came to the implementation of the Beeching Plan, there were no objections to many of the proposals for closure. In 'British Railways, 1948-73: A Business History' by T. R. Gourvish and N. Blake (published in 1986) it is pointed out that the Central Transport Consultative Committee's Report for 1960 showed that over 500 of the 700 proposals for station closures in that year had been unopposed.

British Railways at the time was seen as outmoded, dirty and inefficient. Don't look at what happened then and subsequently using only today's knowledge.

The closure programme was then mostly implemented by the next Government which was in power from 1964 to 1970. The railways got off lightly in that only about one third of the network was closed.

If the network had continued to exist in its early 1950s form to the present day it would now be run-down and pretty much useless as a method of transport as the money for maintenance would have to be spread more thinly over a network one third bigger. The result would have been a loss of competitiveness bringing yet further reductions in passenger numbers and freight volumes. In view of the costs avoided by not having to maintain and operate thousands of miles of little used railways, I would maintain that Britain, in the sense of benefits to its taxpayers, has been the winner.


[1] In 1909 there were 53,000 private cars registered for use on the road. This number increased to 187,000 in 1920, reached 1,056 million in 1930 and doubled over the next ten years to 2,034 million when the Second World War broke out.

 

[Killingworth]

Bit in bold - but did it really ? Can you provide *any* examples where sales of such land in the 1980s is now preventing capacity improvements which are needed ?

The main capacity issues seem to be on the approaches to certain key stations - mainly London termini but also Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street - but I'm not aware that any such land was sold off around those which would today be useful for adding capacity.

Many of the sales and rationalisations were surreptitious and all but unseen by the travelling public. For starters three examples within 3 miles of my home.

To the south of Sheffield was Millhouses motive power depot, the engine sheds, and Millhouses station with 4 platforms on a length of track quadrupled in 1900 from Dore Station into Sheffield. Millhouses station went in the 1960s. Half the track bed and the MPD site was sold off for a Tesco store and other units, see picture. Rebuilding Millhouses station is no longer feasible on the two congested tracks. Safe restoration of both those removed tracks would now be very difficult without major demolition and rebuilding. HS2 and MML electrification down the Sheaf Valley into Sheffield was supposed to require a 3rd operational track. Even that will be a lot harder than if the land had been retained.

Buildings to west of tracks between Archer Road bridges

At Dore & Totley station 3 of the 1900 4 platforms were removed in 1985 and the one remaining was reduced from 6 to 4 car length. TPE and Northern now stop 6 car trains. It's having to be extended back to where it was.

Worse, in 1985 a kilometre of track was also singled through Dore station causing a major bottleneck that's taking until 2024 to resolve. Slewing of tracks marginally increased speeds across junctions but the extra congestion has caused far more lost minutes on many services. That is now being reinstated together with one of the 3 removed platforms.

Across the nation there will be many other situations where hindsight says it would have been very helpful to have retained track bed even if tracks were simplified. Very many platforms were partially demolished and are now having to be rebuilt. The graph I added earlier helps explain why.

Adding new junctions, loops and chords to improve modern traffic flows is a lot easier when the railway already owns the land. Having to repurchase land that was previously sold off is unfortunate, but being unable to rebuild infrastructure because the formerly owned land has been built upon complicates many apparently easy improvements.

 

[HullRailMan]

Unfortunately, many enthusiasts find it difficult to take emotions out of the equation on this issue. The reality, in my opinion, is that Beeching was right in identifying that the railway does well in shifting bulk freight and providing intercity passenger links and commuter flows into large cities. It will always be marginal when it comes to connecting small towns, and even less relevant the smaller the settlement.

Times change and the idea that many lines that were built to meet nineteenth century requirements for freight could match twenty-first century passenger needs is fantasy. Personal door to door transport is hard for any system to compete against. Economic activity has moved beyond central business districts. Working patterns have changed. Leisure time and disposable income have risen.

Rail has its niche and does well for connecting city centres and providing some suburban flows into cities. However, it will never match the flexibility of the car for connecting suburb with suburb or small towns. For most people, rail is an irrelevance that they may, at best, use a couple of times a year. Celebrate what rail does well, but be realistic on its limitations.

 

[yorksrob]

Except it really doesn't, because the narrowest part of the pipe is Castlefield through to Salford Crescent. Not a lack of space at Victoria.

AIUI there are 4 through tracks at Victoria - that's loads of capacity. The problem is the two track sections further west.

The main reason for sending trains through to Stalybridge and Rochdale is due to the lack of capacity.

In terms of routes West of Vic, you currently have one to Deansgate, one towards Chat Moss and one towards Salford Crescent, leaving not so much option to have trains standing about. If six through platforms were there today, they would all be well used.