Before examining the Beeching Report we really need to take a look at what the railways were like in the early Sixties. Branch line closures, to passengers, had been implemented throughout the Fifties and most of those were justifiable having outlived their purpose. Passenger services, on many lines, were often an adjunct to their primary purpose, which was to transport minerals, and when the minerals ran out, or became too expensive to win, the railway became redundant. Quite a few of those lines would not have been built, had there been a National Strategic Plan, but were the result of free enterprise and many never turned in even a modest profit. They were often built to stick two fingers up at a rival company or in the vain hope that they might bring prosperity.
So, by the Sixties, we were left with a core of railways which, for the most part, were useful. What we did not have was a proper plan for developing what was left. When the Beeching Report was published it was entitled The Reshaping of British Railways. Now, didnt that sound promising? It was, of course, anything but reshaping. My idea of reshaping would have been to sit down and look carefully at the services on offer. Many services had not altered in many decades. They stuck rigidly, year in year out, to the traffic patterns that pertained prior to WW1, when there was no need to accelerate or alter the frequency of services because, at that time, it was either the train or nothing. Why did so many branch line trains terminate at a Junction station instead of running through to the nearest important place? This often involved passengers in a lot time wasted by hanging around for connections.
At the time of, and prior to, the Report, I was heavily involved in the Cardiff Valleys Division. We were perfectly aware of the demographic changes as the rundown of traditional heavy industry meant that people would increasingly have to travel to work. A start had been made, in 1953, with the introduction of the interval services between Barry and the Rhondda and Merthyr Valleys. It was an immediate success and, for several years after, Booking Clerks sent in a weekly revenue return to evaluate the advantages of the interval service.* The idea was that the principle would be extended to the Rhymney Valley. Nothing came of it because Paddington was responsible for timetabling and it was really nothing to do with us.
The Aberdare line runs through a much more heavily populated valley than the Merthyr line but why was it singled out for closure in the Report? Its downfall was that it didnt run through to Cardiff but simply shuttled between Abercynon and Aberdare involving a change of train, both ways, with a ten to twelve minute wait for the connection. It should have been a through service to Barry providing extra capacity on the busy Pontypridd Cardiff Barry corridor. The Senghenydd Branch was another which shuttled between Senghenydd and Caerphilly. Why didnt those trains run through to Cardiff and Penarth? The heavily used services between Cardiff and Caerphilly would have benefited from the extra services. The Rhondda Fach Branch was another shuttle between Porth and Maerdy involving a change of train to reach Pontypridd and Cardiff. It had a weaker case because some of the stations were awkwardly placed, a legacy of its mineral origins, but it should have been given a chance.
There were other places that looked ripe for development, for example, Tredegar - Blackwood Cardiff, the infrastructure was in place but the line continued to be operated in a pattern that was long outmoded. As it turned out everything that went through to Cardiff was saved; anything that didnt was doomed.
This might seem to be a little parochial but I can only speak for my own patch. Im sure that there were many similar situations all over the country and a proper evaluation of train services might have resulted in a much different result than the infamous Report. The re-openings, in south Wales, have shown beyond doubt that a service tailored to the needs of the community will succeed. The prospect of electric trains to Ebbw Vale; Aberdare; Maesteg and the Vale of Glamorgan? Who would have believed that in the Sixties? Well, some of us did and we have been proved right.
As I have written before; Beechings brief was to make the railways profitable. He didnt succeed and the losses continued to climb. Neither did he succeed in halting the growth of freight on the roads. The whole exercise was a failure.
* I later found out from a colleague that no one ever looked at those revenue returns.
