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I think the Manifold Valley Light Railway might be in with a shout. It ran from Waterhouses at the very end of a minor branch line of the North Staffordshire Railway to nowhere in particular.
Agreed. Interestingly the trackbed, which hardly passes any houses or settlements along its length and is largely in two ‘secret’ valleys, was the first route to be sold as a recreational footpath. Cycles were actually forbidden at that stage.
(Yes I know that the tunnel and a short stretch were converted into a single-track road to effectively bypass a weak bridge on the original country lane.)
Once the Ecton dairy and some local quarries closed the line really was left with no reason to continue.
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I sometimes wonder how things would look if the various railway enabling Acts had included a requirement that upon possible closure all traces of rail infrastructure had to be removed, so there’d be no disused embankments, cuttings, bridges, or tunnels, or station buildings. So all the fields that were divided would be rejoined, roads would be altered back to ground level, etc etc.
A lot of original acts did have ‘reversion clauses’ that if a line was given up where it severed otherwise contiguous ownership that the landowner could just reclaim it. This would have destroyed many through alignments.
BR actually got an Act of Parliament to annul these provisions en masse.
Elmers End to Sanderstead, and arguably Addiscombe as well never made serious money, indeed the former was closed for much of the 1920s. Useful for the Croydon Tramlink once closed.
This one is always brought up. Where was the freight going once it got to the southern end? You would also have needed to comprehemsively upgraded it as well.
As I wrote in my previous post, new connections would have been needed, especially at the London end, and probably also near Rugby. and maybe Leicester or Nottingham.
I have a lot of experience of Cowes - Newport travel having had a friend who lived in Cowes. The bus service that replaced the trains was excellent and created a much better public transport service between the two towns. In the time when I was a regular visitor (2012-2015), the bus service was 4 per hour, and the single deck vehicles were short enough to go right to the Redjet terminal in West Cowes. Buses would run until after 11pm most days. They used two routes within Cowes, so served just about the whole of West Cowes, not just the centre. Between Cowes and Newport, the population lives along the main road, not near the railway at all.
The abandoned railway is now a very popular walking and cycling route between the two towns. All in all, closure has benefitted a lot of people!
One of the joys of this forum is its inability to stop scratching the Beeching itch. The moderators only put us out of our misery on this discussion less than a month ago.
With new people joining the forum all the time, this question and others are bound to be repeated ad infinitum. Perhaps there should be a separate 'Beeching Discourse' sub-forum of the Speculative discussion forum?
With new people joining the forum all the time, this question and others are bound to be repeated ad infinitum. Perhaps there should be a separate 'Beeching Discourse' sub-forum of the Speculative discussion forum?
If the railways had never been created in the first place then it wouldn't have been possible to close some of them, so I'd argue that the creation of the railways was more important. It could be argued that the creation wasn't a single event, but then nor was the closure "programme".
It could also be argued that the development of the remaining railways was more important than the closure of a proportion that was fairly large by mileage, but much smaller by useage.
The Red Wharf Bay line must be a strong contender. A mile from both Red Wharf Bay and the emerging resort of Benllech, a long way round to reach Bangor (15 or so miles versus 10 by road) and also at least one change of train to get there, or to Llangefni. It opened in about 1910, just in time for motor bus competition to start, and struggled on to about 1930, I think. It stayed opened for freight and parcels until 1950, allegedly because the LMS and then British Railways couldn't sell the trackbed to anyone. I think it also stayed open for a while for special excursion trains, which the LMS seemed to do with some of their other branches eg Llanberis.
Waverley's been mentioned; I think closing the Borders Counties Railway (Hexham – Riccarton Junction) was more justified. None of the places served bar Hexham have more than two thousand people now, and only Bellingham above one thousand.
I don't think it would have been capable of being a proper diversion route for Anglo-Scottish services now given slow speeds and the need to fit around Tyne Valley services, and I'd guess without checking that for Hexham to Edinburgh rather than Border towns it would have been slower than changing at Carlisle or Newcastle. Even for Hexham to Hawick or Galashiels, keeping Waverley open would have at least made more sense than the Borders Counties.
Ah, my apologies. Thinking fuzzed and was forgetting history, vaguely thinking, without thinking, it was part of the 74 Weaver - Motherwell scheme. However, the point remains the Waverley route was a basket case as freight traffic fell away, with next to no population to serve from Carlisle to Hawick, and not very much north of there. (And had they closed Edinburgh to Carstairs, it couldn't have been electrified later, could it? )
On the point about retaining land, it’s probably regrettable more lines weren’t kept as foot / cycle paths. Most of these are nowadays pretty popular, and it’s a way of keeping the route clear for any future rail use whilst offering something worthwhile to the population.
Possibly for another thread, but I can only think of one reopened line which required the replacement of a significant multi-span bridge, that being the Borders railway.
I'm not sure what bridge you're referring to. Four of the seventeen Gala Water bridges were replaced but I wouldn't describe any of them as significant. Newbattle and Redbridge viaducts were the only significant multi-span bridges and both were intact.
Why? Central alone has coped pretty well with the traffic offering for nearly 60 years, and having multiple termini is inconvenient for passengers and expensive for the railway.
I'm not sure what bridge you're referring to. Four of the seventeen Gala Water bridges were replaced but I wouldn't describe any of them as significant. Newbattle and Redbridge viaducts were the only significant multi-span bridges and both were intact.
I think if Midland had stayed open then everything would have been diverted into Oxford Road and Piccadilly, with the Hazel Grove Chord being built two decades earlier to divert express services. Manchester Central is best as a convention centre. It is very impressive for it is role and the city didnt need a terminal for a handful of services.
Perhaps you're thinking of the two span concrete bridge over the Hardengreen roundabout. This wasn't a replacement bridge as such, as it had been an embankment in Waverley route days.
(side by side map and satellite view from NLS website)
Perhaps you're thinking of the two span concrete bridge over the Hardengreen roundabout. This wasn't a replacement bridge as such, as it had been an embankment in Waverley route days.
(side by side map and satellite view from NLS website)
I'll comment on the officially defined East of England, even though Hertfordshire and Essex are clearly apart of the South East to me.
Nearly all pre-Beeching cuts in the region were justified in my opinion. Although with developments in recent decades, some should've been restored, namely Braintree but via Stansted instead of Bishop's Stortford.
I think what was unfortunate is the lack of foresight to preserve the alignments as a cross-county cycle/ walking route (Eg Alban Way) or a busway (Eg Dunstable) far more often. Croydon and Manchester's trams and the DLR all use former heavy rail alignments, a brilliant idea where trains may not be the best solution for an area's transport. Some of the lines that existed in Hertfordshire could've been turned into an excellent BRT system especially for Hertford-Welwyn or Hatfield-St Albans, where buses could come into their own if they got decent priority and an exclusive right of way in a really congested county. Interestingly, if the Hertfordshire Essex Rapid Transit ever happens in full, the Abbey Line would be converted from heavy rail to whatever vehicles this proposed system will use.
Looking at a map of what was left in the East Region in 1965, I'd say in many ways it was an ideal network and any further cuts beyond small individual stations shouldn't have happened. The failure to keep stations open in places of likely development like Haverhill (expanded in the 60s and since so mostly Londoners from the East End had somewhere to move to during 'slum clearance' as it was called) was reckless. The performance of the Sudbury branch today says it all, so I'd say only some villages like Glemsford and Cavendish for example, justified closure, a line with the following stops between Sudbury and Shelford - Long Melford, Clare, Haverhill and Linton would've done well today with the amount of housing today. So half of the stops of what existed before. Similar with the Bunt, a line with less stops and a decent timetable to Stratford or Liverpool Street would've been successful with the size of Buntingford today and growth of villages like Puckeridge and Standon.
St Ives, Cambs was another silly cut. Same with Hunstanton.
Norfolk and Lincolnshire, I will always believe the cuts went too far. Many lines up there shouldn't have ever existed, but I think the Norfolk Orbital Railway idea has a lot of merit, as most of the market towns will gain their railways back. I feel the loss of Kings Lynn as a junction was a major mistake, if the railways that follow today's Excel bus route still existed, it would've taken pressure off of Ely for sure. A stop we know all too well to be a massive bottleneck today. I similarly think the loss of services to Louth and Mablethorpe as well as Lincoln to Skegness and Boston to Grimsby to be a mistake.
I know I answered the opposite to the question but my omissions to this post are my answer basically, of which there are too many to list.
A line like Lowestoft to Great Yarmouth is better served by bus, few in Chatteris would find a train convenient in their town and would probably drive to Peterborough or Cambridge instead to use a train, no one will likely miss Lord's Bridge or Six Mile Bottom.
I think a rationalised network was ultimately a good thing but the rush to make it profitable destroyed so much needed regional connectivity across the whole country when a strategic network with far less stops or halts and a well connected bus system to the small towns and villages could've worked really well. Hadleigh likely has a better bus service than it ever did by train for example, as the bus goes to Ipswich, the train did not.
Overall, I think this shows how important it is to link railways and transport policies to development. Otherwise we end up with car dependent, congested and unattractive towns that lack investment and infrastructure and are ultimately left behind. Most people would agree Oxford to Cambridge should never have shut but since it did, it's a good thing it's not being reopened exactly as it was in 1965, these things need to serve the needs we have today and seeing the planned developments all along the East West Rail is a great thing. I'd even say the proposed rationalisation of stops on the Bletchley-Bedford section to be mostly justified.
The Beeching debate will likely be around forever but I think as a country, we shouldn't be afraid to create new railways to restore service to towns that are vastly different to how they were in the 60s. In places where the railway was repurposed instead of merely abandoned seems to have worked wonders and transformed towns and cities for the better.
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Given both routes are served by buses every 10 minutes and these are commercially run, there is clearly demand despite the rural nature of the Isle of Wight.
The Hazel Grove Chord, if built around the time of closure of Manchester Central instead of 20 years later would have been enough until relatively recently. Piccadilly wasn’t full in the 60s or 70s. Local stopping services could have been diverted into Oxford Road. At the time of the closure Manchester Central was completely unnecessary. There was massive over capacity at the Manchester terminals.
Here in the South East a few closures (since 1948) that I feel that were justified-
East Kent Railway Shepherds Well- Wingham- served a rural area with many stations a long way from places they are named to serve.
Appledore- New Romney- (The only Beeching closure in Kent)- Mainly used for a few months in the Summer.
Brighton- Kemp Town- Passengers until 1933 Goods until 1971- a one and half mile long branch line traversing a high viaduct and long tunnel so must have been expensive to maintain.
Nunhead- Crystal Palace High Level closed 1954. Needed extensive maintenance expenditure to maintain. Alternative stations nearby.
Kent and East Sussex Railway. Read somewhere that in a passenger count before decision to close line- 90 trains carried 110 passengers or just over 1 passenger per train. Bus service Headcorn- Tenterden is just as quick and convenient. Many stations were in remote locations.
Farningham Road- Gravesend West- The present Gravesend (Central) station has a better train service. The present Longfield station is better sited.
Dunton Green- Westerham- Two of the stations Brasted and Chevening are remote from settlements. Even if catching the train from Westerham it connected with stopping train to London. Just as quick to catch bus (from centre of villages) to Sevenoaks then catch fast train to London.
The Hazel Grove Chord, if built around the time of closure of Manchester Central instead of 20 years later would have been enough until relatively recently. Piccadilly wasn’t full in the 60s or 70s. Local stopping services could have been diverted into Oxford Road. At the time of the closure Manchester Central was completely unnecessary. There was massive over capacity at the Manchester terminals.
Dunton Green- Westerham- Two of the stations Brasted and Chevening are remote from settlements. Even if catching the train from Westerham it connected with stopping train to London. Just as quick to catch bus (from centre of villages) to Sevenoaks then catch fast train to London.
Shame very few buses run from Westerham to Sevenoaks, the 246 to Bromley (also serves Hayes Station) is by far the most usable service available today. Sevenoaks/ Dunton Green bus services are almost non-existent, in sharp contrast to the excellent rail service. Same with Westerham to Oxted.
Shame very few buses run from Westerham to Sevenoaks, the 246 to Bromley (also serves Hayes Station) is by far the most usable service available today. Sevenoaks/ Dunton Green bus services are almost non-existent, in sharp contrast to the excellent rail service. Same with Westerham to Oxted.
Go- coach operate an hourly daytime service On Mondays to Fridays, a slightly reduced service on Saturdays and some on summer Sundays. https://www.go-coach.co.uk/bus-routes/daytime-routes/1/. The last few years of the train service it ran on Mondays to Fridays peak hours and Saturdays to around 1300hrs with none on Sundays.
Oswestry to Gobowen in 1966. Oswestry station wasn't listed for closure in the Beeching Report. At the time of the report it served 3 routes. Oswestry to Gobowen, Whitchurch to Welshpool and Oswestry to Llanfyllin.
At the time of the Report, I assume it must have been generating enough traffic to avoid the closure list. I don't have any data on hand, but I assume Oswestry to Gobowen was probably the busier of the three routes, providing a connection to services on the Shrewsbury to Chester line. It was by far and away the most frequent. But I wonder if closure of the other two routes impacted upon viability of Oswestry to Gobowen? I appreciate other factors may also have been at play, including the cost of tripping the branch DMU to and from Gobowen each day.
The Hazel Grove Chord, if built around the time of closure of Manchester Central instead of 20 years later would have been enough until relatively recently. Piccadilly wasn’t full in the 60s or 70s. Local stopping services could have been diverted into Oxford Road. At the time of the closure Manchester Central was completely unnecessary. There was massive over capacity at the Manchester terminals.
If capacity became an issue with more routes retained, Mayfield would have been available to take some of the pressure off Piccadilly. Local services from the Styal and Stockport lines could have gone there.
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