Short-sightedness of 1960s line closures

[RT4038]

It goes to illustrate that in reality, bus services have always been "here today, gone tomorrow" and we should have been a lot more selective about which railway routes were closed.

The rules could have been changed to change that, but they weren't. Doesn't need to to be an excuse to keep expensive railways going.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Aug 2022 ==

While the 1960's railway was nearer to that of 1860 by modern standards, its quality did still stimulate passenger traffic which replacement buses promptly lost. The doubling of passenger volume in recent years in spite of better roads and cars shows what could be done.

Did replacement buses promptly lose the passenger traffic - was it ever there in the first place (at closure)? Plenty of trains running about empty or near empty, but the bus companies had to operate the services on a commercial or near commercial basis, something these railway lines had not done for years (being cross subsidised by freight traffic elsewhere on the network which was now evaporating)
The doubling of passenger volumes is more to do with increased affluence generating more journeys, than trains being better than roads or cars. Don't think many of the lines closed would have been made proportionately much better use of, but would be a deep pit for subsidy money to be thrown into.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Aug 2022 ==

I don’t think that a lot of Railway people realise how badly hit bus networks have permanently been (Sorry to hear that you currently need to change trains to get from Bournemouth to Newcastle, but there are a lot of suburbs/ villages that have lost their last public transport in the last couple of years with little hope of it coming back

Jam for the Railways and peanuts for the buses

 

[Irascible]

Just looking at the network around me now, and where I grew up... the line to where I am now was completely pointless by the time of the bus, three miles long & served a junction in the middle of nowhere. The branches to the towns either side, well one was awkward to operate and the other ended in a badly placed station but that one might have been a handy place to terminate a commuter service now ( although looking at the demographics of that place I am not sure there's that many commuters ). So that's one definitely right, one very likely right, and one probably right, out of three.

The Exe valley line where I grew up is a slightly different story - north of Tiverton was an absolute basket case, there's one small town up there, a closed quarry, and then the Taunton-Barnstaple line which was pretty awful all by itself. *South* of Tiverton to Exeter though - 2-3 double deck busses running to replace the rush-hour trains? admittedly the bus in the middle of the day was usually quite empty by the time I was using it ( 20+ years later ), but by then most people had given up on the bus as it went round all the villages on the way & then got stuck in traffic. And the legendary traffic jams at Exeter from the north, still awful now. I'm reasonably sure the line was looked at as a whole, rather than the two segments it was built as, or the bottom half might have survived ( and add the line to Tiverton Jct - basket case as standalone & you get a loop of possibilities - that bit was massively overbuilt ).

Other lines - Barnstaple to Halwill via Torrington, certainly a basket case for passengers from Torrington south and I'll accept the whole line - however should have qualified for a grant to upgrade the clay handling facilities in the early 80s to keep the road traffic off the insane roads up there, but we didn't really do that until a few years later ( and anyway that's out of scope because full closure wasn't a 60s decision ). Okehampton-Padstow? shouldn't have been built in the first place. Okehampton-Holsworthy-Bude? these days that might get a social needs pass but I'm not really convinced ( pity, bet that was a lovely journey ). Ilfracombe came up recently & that one is mostly a victim of unfortunate circumstance, if it didn't have all those crossings it might be the end of the Tarka line now. At the time it wasn't renumerative & no real desire to make a good enough social case ( actually that one wasn't 60s either but near enough ).

So from those, four and a half definites, one probable but would fill a transport hole now, one unfortunate, half possibly a bad decision. Some of the closures might seem like they'd have been useful now, but really probably wouldn't have - a line from Taunton to all the holiday areas in North Devon? sounds a great shortcut, right? except the line was done on the cheap & wasn't very good.

Doing pretty well on the good decisions! the one's I've queried are either dormitary towns with connection problems, or remote towns with awkward connections - cars are just far too useful in rural areas, the only time they really aren't the best way to get around is either if you can't afford to fuel them, or you're going to a built-up area with traffic problems. Rural buses aren't really that attractive these days ( probably for a lot of reasons trains aren't - you have to get to the bus first, and then a rural bus is definitely not as comfortable as a train and still share traffic problems, so that's even less a reason to get out of a car ) but the 60s were a different era.

And, looking locally at the eastern side of Devon, Exeter didn't turn into the place the entire half of the county wanted to commute to ( as opposed to just go shopping in ) until probably the 90s - that's not something anyone would have predicted in the 60s. Taking a trip on the Barnstaple line in the 80s you could probably have struggled to meet anyone sometimes.

Pretty much all railways were built by nineteenth century capitalists to make profit

“Profit” is a dirty word to a lot of enthusiasts nowadays, but that’s the reality of it. These industrialists weren’t trying to construct a “social” railway, they were trying to make cash getting goods (and people) across land better than our roads/canals managed

Only decades later, as their lines were looking inefficient compared to modern more cars/ trucks etc, did this “public service” justification come in to it, to demand subsidy

“A public sector service requiring support” is a nice sounding slogan but there are still limits to how much money governments want to keep spaffing on branch lines that are better suited to minibuses, or even taxis!

Taken holistically, "Public service" profits everyone including the economy. As you say though that should subsidise the service rather than the means. Given the trouble local authorities are having keeping a lot of bus routes running, this seems a literally foreign concept these days.

Two points stand out to me on the Beeching closures.

1. There seems to be a correlation between closed lines and heavy gradients, i.e the problems of traction on the grades (S&D, the SR to Plymouth, the Waverley route, even the GCR, etc)

2. Lines were built both to meet existing transport demand and also to anticipate it, admittedly with duplication. WW1 and 2 and de-industrialisation put paid to regional growth, leaving many lines without enough traffic - Beeching's targets.

While the 1960's railway was nearer to that of 1860 by modern standards, its quality did still stimulate passenger traffic which replacement buses promptly lost. The doubling of passenger volume in recent years in spite of better roads and cars shows what could be done.

WAO

I think you might want to compare the SR line to Plymouth with the GWR one for gradients the fact that the GWR line was already the main route even before nationalisation killed the SR one - much the same with the others you mentioned, really? mostly duplicate links and less useful than the route they're duplicating.

That is a point about buses ( one I brought up too ) - some places buses really would have been better than the railway, but I wonder how many people just went straight to the car.

 

[Magdalia]

Two points stand out to me on the Beeching closures.

1. There seems to be a correlation between closed lines and heavy gradients, i.e the problems of traction on the grades (S&D, the SR to Plymouth, the Waverley route, even the GCR, etc)

That's more to do with upland areas being rural and sparsely populated. The GCR London extension was not steeply graded, it had a ruling gradient of 1/176.

 

[Killingworth]

I don’t think that a lot of Railway people realise how badly hit bus networks have permanently been (Sorry to hear that you currently need to change trains to get from Bournemouth to Newcastle, but there are a lot of suburbs/ villages that have lost their last public transport in the last couple of years with little hope of it coming back

The Department of Transport publishes weekly figures for Use of Transport Modes since 1st March 2020 . Here are extracts from the figures from last week (latest are incomplete). Buses are doing far worse than trains outside London, but this is a digression too far, other than to say that bus services are currently more threatened than trains, and that threat is imminent, like October.
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[joebassman]

Could more have been done to allow the railways to compete with frieght?

Why was the safety standards then and still now so much lower on the roads than on public transport?

For example level crossings are being phased out in many places as they are seen as unsafe and yet it is seen as perfectly fine having 40 tonne vehicles sharing the roads with 1 tonne vehicles, bycicles and pedestrians. That its ok to put in the hands of the average Joe vehicles that can do 2x or in some cases 3x the national speed limit. That all you have to do to drive one of these is one test and then that's it.

What about the added costs on the roads of accidents, serious injuries and deaths bith in lost productivity and to the NHS?

Why was, what appeared to be, a blind eye turned to around 7k deaths on the roads at the time whereas if people in single numbers died on the railways there was a national outcry?

Wasn't it obvious that a small island with a growing population was eventually going to have a massive traffic issue if everyone was driving?

 

[yorksrob]

The fact that demand between two places wasn’t sufficient to sustain a bus (with may will have been one person operation, certainly didn’t have many other costs associated) generally seems proof that heavy rail was never going to be sustainable


… feels like you’ve been a hostage to fortune with these claims before somehow…



If we kept dozens of extra lines open then we’d have needed hundreds of DMU carriages to operate them

Rob Porter to pay Paul as much as you want but there’d have been an opportunity cost to keeping all of these lines open (on top of increasing annual subsidies etc)



It’s the way you talk about how it took unenlightened Britain far too long to realise that the true purpose of the railways should always have been a massively subsidised “social” network (rather than it being intended as a practical solution to large flows of passengers/ goods, which people only tried to ascribe the “social” side to once it started failing)



The fact that your biggest regrets / priorities are as minor as Bodmin to Padstow says a lot



Complete agreement

We’ll probably have lost more significant bus routes during covid than the rail routes closed by Beeching

I don’t think that a lot of Railway people realise how badly hit bus networks have permanently been (Sorry to hear that you currently need to change trains to get from Bournemouth to Newcastle, but there are a lot of suburbs/ villages that have lost their last public transport in the last couple of years with little hope of it coming back

Where did I say Bodmin Road was my "biggest regret" ? You're making that up I'm afraid. It happens to be a route where I've used the replacement bus service and found it wanting.

That said, I get that bus services are struggling, however I don't see how it automatically follows that the entire closure programme was justified. As it happens, buses do an important job serving local transport needs and that needs to be maintained. That is a separate argument though.

As for "massively subsidised" network, isn't that what we have now ? only I'd rather have the 3% paid out to keep the private sector interested, and the however much it is siphoned off to keep the rolling stock leasing system going, used to run some more socially useful lines, such as Tonbridge - Brighton, York - Beverley, Bournemouth - Bath etc going.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Aug 2022 ==

Just looking at the network around me now, and where I grew up... the line to where I am now was completely pointless by the time of the bus, three miles long & served a junction in the middle of nowhere. The branches to the towns either side, well one was awkward to operate and the other ended in a badly placed station but that one might have been a handy place to terminate a commuter service now ( although looking at the demographics of that place I am not sure there's that many commuters ). So that's one definitely right, one very likely right, and one probably right, out of three.

The Exe valley line where I grew up is a slightly different story - north of Tiverton was an absolute basket case, there's one small town up there, a closed quarry, and then the Taunton-Barnstaple line which was pretty awful all by itself. *South* of Tiverton to Exeter though - 2-3 double deck busses running to replace the rush-hour trains? admittedly the bus in the middle of the day was usually quite empty by the time I was using it ( 20+ years later ), but by then most people had given up on the bus as it went round all the villages on the way & then got stuck in traffic. And the legendary traffic jams at Exeter from the north, still awful now. I'm reasonably sure the line was looked at as a whole, rather than the two segments it was built as, or the bottom half might have survived ( and add the line to Tiverton Jct - basket case as standalone & you get a loop of possibilities - that bit was massively overbuilt ).

Other lines - Barnstaple to Halwill via Torrington, certainly a basket case for passengers from Torrington south and I'll accept the whole line - however should have qualified for a grant to upgrade the clay handling facilities in the early 80s to keep the road traffic off the insane roads up there, but we didn't really do that until a few years later ( and anyway that's out of scope because full closure wasn't a 60s decision ). Okehampton-Padstow? shouldn't have been built in the first place. Okehampton-Holsworthy-Bude? these days that might get a social needs pass but I'm not really convinced ( pity, bet that was a lovely journey ). Ilfracombe came up recently & that one is mostly a victim of unfortunate circumstance, if it didn't have all those crossings it might be the end of the Tarka line now. At the time it wasn't renumerative & no real desire to make a good enough social case ( actually that one wasn't 60s either but near enough ).

So from those, four and a half definites, one probable but would fill a transport hole now, one unfortunate, half possibly a bad decision. Some of the closures might seem like they'd have been useful now, but really probably wouldn't have - a line from Taunton to all the holiday areas in North Devon? sounds a great shortcut, right? except the line was done on the cheap & wasn't very good.

Doing pretty well on the good decisions! the one's I've queried are either dormitary towns with connection problems, or remote towns with awkward connections - cars are just far too useful in rural areas, the only time they really aren't the best way to get around is either if you can't afford to fuel them, or you're going to a built-up area with traffic problems. Rural buses aren't really that attractive these days ( probably for a lot of reasons trains aren't - you have to get to the bus first, and then a rural bus is definitely not as comfortable as a train and still share traffic problems, so that's even less a reason to get out of a car ) but the 60s were a different era.

And, looking locally at the eastern side of Devon, Exeter didn't turn into the place the entire half of the county wanted to commute to ( as opposed to just go shopping in ) until probably the 90s - that's not something anyone would have predicted in the 60s. Taking a trip on the Barnstaple line in the 80s you could probably have struggled to meet anyone sometimes.



Taken holistically, "Public service" profits everyone including the economy. As you say though that should subsidise the service rather than the means. Given the trouble local authorities are having keeping a lot of bus routes running, this seems a literally foreign concept these days.



I think you might want to compare the SR line to Plymouth with the GWR one for gradients the fact that the GWR line was already the main route even before nationalisation killed the SR one - much the same with the others you mentioned, really? mostly duplicate links and less useful than the route they're duplicating.

That is a point about buses ( one I brought up too ) - some places buses really would have been better than the railway, but I wonder how many people just went straight to the car.

Some good examples there.

I've always felt that something should have been done for Tiverton, and Ilfracombe should have stayed (along with the branch as far as Bideford). Those three comparatively close settlements would have made the Tarka line an important regional route in itself.

I suspect that if the Bude line had been in a politically disputed area of Wales or Scotland, it would still be with us today.

 

[JamieL]

My parents live near the site of Shandon old railway station. It always surprises me that they closed this in the early 1960s just as the adjacent major naval base was being devised to serve the Polaris submarines. Insane!

 

[infobleep]

I suspect quite a few rural lines that were saved were reprieved for political reasons

If they have a business to keep them running now, wouldn't some of the others that closed have a similar or stronger case now if they were still open?

 

[yorksrob]

If they have a business to keep them running now, wouldn't some of the others that closed have a similar or stronger case now if they were still open?

Yes, absolutely.

 

[Bald Rick]

If they have a business to keep them running now, wouldn't some of the others that closed have a similar or stronger case now if they were still open?

It is politics that is keeping some of the lowest utilised routes open now, nothing else.

If the politics turns, the routes will close. We have never been closer to that point in the past 40 years.

 

[yorksrob]

It is politics that is keeping some of the lowest utilised routes open now, nothing else.

If the politics turns, the routes will close. We have never been closer to that point in the past 40 years.

Do they actually mean "lowest utilised" services, or services they don't want to cough up for ?

I say that because in the aftermath of the pandemic, there was talk of reshaping services to meet post pandemic needs, whereas what we've actually got was a budget cut across the board, regardless of how traffic on a particular TOC had recovered.

 

[stuu]

a line from Taunton to all the holiday areas in North Devon? sounds a great shortcut, right? except the line was done on the cheap & wasn't very good.

I grew up in Milverton and have read a fair amount about the history of the line. Given it had some very substantial engineering works I'm puzzled by the "on the cheap" comment. It's bigger problem was surely the fact the biggest town it served was South Molton and the rest of the route is through, by English standards, the middle of nowhere

 

[Bald Rick]

Do they actually mean "lowest utilised" services, or services they don't want to cough up for ?

Services that cost the most to provide whilst providing little in the way of income or social utility.

 

[zwk500]

If they have a business to keep them running now, wouldn't some of the others that closed have a similar or stronger case now if they were still open?

Big 'If' though. And also consider this: how long did it take before that business came back around? Lots of lines were still losing money hand over fist into the 80's, it's only at the end of that decade that an upturn in passenger numbers really started to come in (I can't quite remember whether passenger numbers came back before sectorisation or the other way round)

 

[yorksrob]

Services that cost the most to provide whilst providing little in the way of income or social utility.

It will be interesting to see how they define that.

However, I can't see cuts being politically palatable when we're still paying 3% towards company profits and three times as much for rolling stock to lease it rather than buy outright.

 

[Clarence Yard]

But buying stock outright means you get stuck with the overhaul costs, which are very lumpy items for a TOC to fund. So it’s not a direct comparison.

Also where does this 3% figure come in? TOCs are not earning that - they are on management fees now.

 

[infobleep]

Big 'If' though. And also consider this: how long did it take before that business came back around? Lots of lines were still losing money hand over fist into the 80's, it's only at the end of that decade that an upturn in passenger numbers really started to come in (I can't quite remember whether passenger numbers came back before sectorisation or the other way round)

It is a big if but what if those that remained open had closed, those would have been a big if too.

 

[Bald Rick]

It will be interesting to see how they define that.

That’s easy, it will be by the same definition that transport decisions are taken by the DfT now, ie using the standard transport business case assessment methodology.

However, I can't see cuts being politically palatable when we're still paying 3% towards company profits and three times as much for rolling stock to lease it rather than buy outright.

My point was that it’s not politically acceptable now, however the tide is turning on that. With the current level of industrial action closing much of the railway for 13% of the summer so far, the politicians patience will only go so far. If action escalates and continues much longer, it’s not too much of a stretch to hear politicians say “well it’s closed half the time anyway, 95% of the community isn’t inconvenienced, therefore we may as well save £20m a year and close the line to (wherever).“

The profit / leasing company issue is of no concern to the current politicians. It might be of concern to others of course

 

[61653 HTAFC]

A few have said that not protecting alignments from being put beyond use was the biggest problem with the 1960s closures. A prime example of that in my local area was the Holmfirth branch. This was a pre-Beeching closure in the late 1950s, and at the time was probably the correct decision: buses could do the journey quicker than a tank engine pulling a couple of pre-grouping coaches, and the main road into Huddersfield wasn't congested. Commuting into Huddersfield or beyond from Holmfirth was also a much more niche case back then.
Fast forward 40 years and congestion on the A616 into Huddersfield is terrible in the morning peaks, and if it wasn't for the houses built on the trackbed near Brockholes and the small matter of the missing viaduct at Thongsbridge, the railway would be an absolute godsend for the communities along the valley.

Of course if it was still open, you'd also need to redouble the line from Brockholes to Huddersfield or at the very least add at least one extra loop. There's also the matter of platform capacity at Huddersfield, and there'd be an insistence on a through service to Leeds which would be difficult to path.

 

[Magdalia]

Why was, what appeared to be, a blind eye turned to around 7k deaths on the roads at the time whereas if people in single numbers died on the railways there was a national outcry?

Fatalities on UK roads have been fewer than 2000 per year for many years now.

Reported road casualties in Great Britain, provisional estimates: year ending June 2021

www.gov.uk

 

[RailWonderer]

If anything the Beeching cuts were shrewd since railway usage declined further until the late 1990s. You cannot expect anybody to predict trends that far into the future.
The Bishops Stortford- Braintree should definitely reopen and it was confusing why the Maldon branch closed yet the equally sparse Braintree branch remained open.

Motor car use took off more in the South East where incomes were higher hence some lines were closed yet in poorer communities up North and in Scotland they remained open since more of the community was still dependent on them.

 

[RT4038]

Why was the safety standards then and still now so much lower on the roads than on public transport?

Because most deaths and injuries on the roads relate to pedestrians at fault or car drivers at fault, and pedestrians and car drivers are individuals, not employees or companies. Proscribing what pedestrians or car drivers do is cutting an individuals freedom, so it is much more difficult to do than curbing or blaming a commercial or quasi commercial activity such as public transport.

Politicians want to get re-elected. Companies do not have a vote.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Aug 2022 ==

Motor car use took off more in the South East where incomes were higher hence some lines were closed yet in poorer communities up North and in Scotland they remained open since more of the community was still dependent on them.

Not sure that Scotland or the North had any less percentage of lines closed?

 

[MarkyT]

If anything the Beeching cuts were shrewd since railway usage declined further until the late 1990s. You cannot expect anybody to predict trends that far into the future.
The Bishops Stortford- Braintree should definitely reopen and it was confusing why the Maldon branch closed yet the equally sparse Braintree branch remained open.

Post WW2 network shrinkage was inevitable, and nothing new apart from the scale of closures within such a short time. Of course some went too far, but there were also probably cases where they didn't go far enough. There was an indecent haste I think because politicians knew the public would eventually turn against further closures and halt the process. I don't think there was any method in the legislative process to protect alignments. The endless closure acts were simple votes to extinguish the powers of the individual originating acts that gave railway companies rights to acquire property and create and maintain the rights of way. I believe in many cases the original legislation meant land had to be offered back to previous owners or local authorities once the powers were extinguished, and British Railways wanted to be shot of the land as quickly as possible anyway to avoid maintenance and other liabilities.

Braintree looks to be significantly larger than Maldon today but I don't know whether that was the case back in the 1960s. Certainly on current population if you were going to retain one branch for London trains to terminate on as they thin out into East Anglia, Braintree is the better choice from the two possible Whitham branches.

 

[RT4038]

Post WW2 network shrinkage was inevitable, and nothing new apart from the scale of closures within such a short time. Of course some went too far, but there were also probably cases where they didn't go far enough. There was an indecent haste I think because politicians knew the public would eventually turn against further closures and halt the process. I don't think there was any method in the legislative process to protect alignments. The endless closure acts were simple votes to extinguish the powers of the individual originating acts that gave railway companies rights to acquire property and create and maintain the rights of way. I believe in many cases the original legislation meant land had to be offered back to previous owners or local authorities once the powers were extinguished, and British Railways wanted to be shot of the land as quickly as possible anyway to avoid maintenance and other liabilities.

British Railways wanted the money from land and property sales to invest in modernising the rest of the system. Keeping land, structures and stations intact was just not an option. Imagine just locking up (and guarding/maintaining) Nottingham Victoria station and leaving it for 50 years - the thought is just ridiculous. The Govt. had said - no more investment money - fund the investments yourself. Sell the land, sell the buildings, scrap the surplus locomotives, track and rolling stock. Redeploy any that you can. Local Authorities wanted under height bridges demolished, trackbeds for road improvement schemes, awkward underline bridges demolished, level crossings removed etc. too.

Braintree looks to be significantly larger than Maldon today but I don't know whether that was the case back in the 1960s. Certainly on current population if you were going to retain one branch for London trains to terminate on as they thin out into East Anglia, Braintree is the better choice from the two possible Whitham branches.

Didn't the Maldon line have some weak wooden bridges that would have required expensive replacement? No money for that.

 

[Greybeard33]

Having lived through the 1960s, I can remember how labour intensive the railways were back then. Minor stations with a station master, ticket clerk, porter, signaller and shunter. Crossing keepers at every level crossing. Manual Absolute Block signal boxes almost everywhere. "Clickety-clack" track needing lots of maintenance. A minimum of three traincrew on every train, on fixed 8 hour shifts. Consequently the cost savings from closing a lightly used line or station were proportionately greater than they would be today. Much of today's labour saving technology would have seemed like science fiction in those days.

With living standards and wage rates rising as other industries modernised, but revenue declining as freight and passenger traffic switched to road, rationalisation of the network was inevitable.

 

[Killingworth]

Fatalities on UK roads have been fewer than 2000 per year for many years now.

Reported road casualties in Great Britain, provisional estimates: year ending June 2021

www.gov.uk

But they were running around 7,000 each year in the 1960s peaking at 7,985 in 1966, see; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reported_Road_Casualties_Great_Britain

Seat belts and the breathalyser helped a lot.

 

[Irascible]

I grew up in Milverton and have read a fair amount about the history of the line. Given it had some very substantial engineering works I'm puzzled by the "on the cheap" comment. It's bigger problem was surely the fact the biggest town it served was South Molton and the rest of the route is through, by English standards, the middle of nowhere

You'll know more than me then - mostly going off comments from long ago about there being a lot of engineering but somewhat hit & miss quality.

---

Has anyone anywhere actually taken some detailed numbers from one of the more borderline closure reports, and then attempted to make the sums work as a basic railway? that's surely been done over the years, no?. Perhaps then apply today's operating costs & safety standards ( and population ) & see if it still works. That might actually make a decent piece for a magazine equivalent.

 

[Magdalia]

But they were running around 7,000 each year in the 1960s peaking at 7,985 in 1966, see; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reported_Road_Casualties_Great_Britain

Seat belts and the breathalyser helped a lot.

Point taken, you were referring to the number of casualties back then. But the railway was a very dangerous place too. I have read the records of the British Railways Board meetings in the 1960s. Every meeting would start with approval of payments to families of the railwaymen who had died in accidents while on duty since the last meeting

You're right that seat belts and the breathalyser made a difference to road casualties, so it is not right to say that a blind eye was turned.

As with the railways, improvements in design have made a big difference too.

 

[MarkyT]

British Railways wanted the money from land and property sales to invest in modernising the rest of the system. Keeping land, structures and stations intact was just not an option. Imagine just locking up (and guarding/maintaining) Nottingham Victoria station and leaving it for 50 years - the thought is just ridiculous. The Govt. had said - no more investment money - fund the investments yourself. Sell the land, sell the buildings, scrap the surplus locomotives, track and rolling stock. Redeploy any that you can.

And major city centre sites such as Nottingham would have had the most value to realise. Even in relatively rural areas, there was a perception that unused and unsupervised railway alignments might be used for unauthorised access to private land along the thousands of miles of unmaintained fencing. That could have been yet another liability for BR for which they would have been unfunded. Sell the narrow strip of land to local farmers, block off access from old stations and level crossings and you've now largely solved that problem.

Didn't the Maldon line have some weak wooden bridges that would have required expensive replacement? No money for that.

Often the case that some relatively minor asset renewal was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Point taken, you were referring to the number of casualties back then. But the railway was a very dangerous place too. I have read the records of the British Railways Board meetings in the 1960s. Every meeting would start with approval of payments to families of the railwaymen who had died in accidents while on duty since the last meeting

Shunting in goods yards was one of the most dangerous professions of all, up there with mining and deep sea fishing.

 

[joebassman]

British Railways wanted the money from land and property sales to invest in modernising the rest of the system. Keeping land, structures and stations intact was just not an option. Imagine just locking up (and guarding/maintaining) Nottingham Victoria station and leaving it for 50 years - the thought is just ridiculous. The Govt. had said - no more investment money - fund the investments yourself. Sell the land, sell the buildings, scrap the surplus locomotives, track and rolling stock. Redeploy any that you can. Local Authorities wanted under height bridges demolished, trackbeds for road improvement schemes, awkward underline bridges demolished, level crossings removed etc. too.

What about Louth station?

East Lincolshire railway wanted to reopen the line but BR made sure they sold it off before they had the chance. Or at least according to the ELR site anyway.