Was this a common British Railways strategy?

[Harlesden]

Two towns - in different parts of the country. Buntingford and Hunstanton. Buntingford had its commuter traffic and Hunstanton - an east coast seaside resort - had its holiday specials but would now presumably have similar usage as Cleethorpes.
In both cases, the first nail in the coffin was the withdrawal of direct trains to/from London. This led to a reduction in usage as people began to drive to the nearest (faster) route, with the more adventurous abandoning rail travel completely to drive all the way to their destination.
This led to reductions in service to cater for a smaller passenger flow.
People can live with a half-hourly service, but when the service reduces further to one train every two hours, many give up and go by road instead.
As usage further declines, up jumps British Railways claiming there is no demand and so no justification in keeping the line open. Gone.
As for Cleethorpes, I feel that the only reason it still has a service is because of the layout of the station and the facilities available there. Were it not for that, I feel that the present day level of service is such that the stretch of line between Grimsby Town and Cleethorpes would not merely have been reduced to a single track as it was in 1985. It would have been closed with all services reversing at Grimsby Town.

 

[Wath Yard]

You're comparing towns with fewer than 5,000 residents with one with over 30,000. Do you have any passenger figures and timetable data to back up your claims that these 2 places had viable passenger numbers that only reduced because BR withdrew services?

 

[steamybrian]

It was a different world living in the 1960s (I was there!)
In the 1960s visitors to seaside resorts like Hunstanton were dropping rapidly as people took their holidays abroad. Coupled to the fact the increase in car usage resulting in the falling rail passenger numbers.
A last ditch attempt was made to single line, destaff the stations and make other economies which still did not make the books balance.
To give you another example in 1969 I had a week at holiday camp at Hopton-on-sea which was similar to that portrayed in TV series "Hi-de-Hi". I used the nearby unstaffed station at Hopton-on-sea on the Lowestoft-Yarmouth South Town. During July and August the 2 car trains were well used but the other 10 months of the year they were lightly loaded.
Buntingford branch served a rural area which apart from a few commuter services they were lightly used. The line needed heavy investment to upgrade the stations and line so it was an easy decision to close a loss making line rather than spend thousands of pounds loosing more money in the age when motorways and road building was the "in thing".
Back in the 1960s many, many stations had gas or oil lighting. Signalling had much dating back to pre-grouping times. You could say many lines were similar to todays Heritage Railways.
As late as 1966 you could still travel in pre-grouping coaches on the Isle of Wight Ryde-Shanklin line.

 

[Donny Dave]

If Hunstanton was still open today, I think it would be well used, as while the roads are well maintained around North Norfolk, access to North Norfolk isn't the best when you consider there is only 2 major roads into the area for a lot of the country, and they merge into a single road for a couple of miles at Kings Lynn.

Queueing from Sutton Bridge to Hunstanton isn't uncommon in the summer months .....

 

[JohnB57]

As late as 1966 you could still travel in pre-grouping coaches on the Isle of Wight Ryde-Shanklin line.

They've come on a long way - now it's just pre-nationalisation stock! (And I know LU wasn't part of that but hey...)

I was taken to the Norfolk coast every year from 1963 and I have family connections in Hunstanton (and webbed feet to prove it!) so it's an area I know quite well.

I think the Hunstanton branch would have closed much earlier had it not been for Sandringham traffic and the sensitivities of withdrawing both goods and passenger services, which by the sixties were much reduced. If you've never seen it, this is a lovely little piece of telly from the sixties that gives a flavour of the line.

 

[eMeS]

... If you've never seen it, this is a lovely little piece of telly from the sixties that gives a flavour of the line.

Thanks for the link. We were in that area last May for a few days, and never realised how awful our pronunciation must have been! Back in 1981 I visited Wolferton Station after it had turned into a museum.

I do prefer to sound the "h" in "hotel" though, despite what the Poet Laureate's views might have been.

 

[Oswyntail]

Was it not Hunstanton where the Dept. of Transport justified severe reduction in rail services because they were only really used for holiday traffic, while at the same time justifying a new by-pass because of the expected increase in holiday traffic?

 

[yorksrob]

I'm not sure that the withdrawal of direct trains can be given the lions share of the blame for the decline in passenger demand on those routes. Certainly a lot thriving routes today have had through services withdrawn at some stage, and in some cases the rationalisation allowed by this, helped those lines to survive.

The Yarmouth - Lowestoft line is an excellent example of a route that linked two large towns as well as a number of smaller settlements, and which could have easily been added to the rationalised East Suffolk line had the political will (and the will within BR management of the time) been there. It's hard to see how its closure could ever have been justified with any sort of strategic forsight.

 

[HH]

If Hunstanton was still open today, I think it would be well used

I agree and would go further. The survival of this area has been despite the railway closure, and I believe that if rail had been kept it would currently boast a considerably larger population. Compare and contrast with Cromer/Sheringham.

 

[Gareth Marston]

Kings Lynn- Hunstaton was not listed for closure by the Reshaping report - though the report gave no rational as to why!

So it was a BR Management choice, the Swanage was another coastal resort not listed that was closed. The whole closure process both that wanted by Beeching and subsequently is full of inconsistency and contradiction to what survived and what didn't dont look for any logical reasoning to the decisions made. I suspect a lot of it was at the whim of the regional management of BR at the time.

 

[Mugby]

I had a weekend in Hunstanton once. I travelled there using the rail link coach service from Peterborough. I don't remember what year it was, probably late 80's.

Does anyone know when the coach link was withdrawn, or if there is any similar bus service today?

 

[Donny Dave]

I had a weekend in Hunstanton once. I travelled there using the rail link coach service from Peterborough. I don't remember what year it was, probably late 80's.

Does anyone know when the coach link was withdrawn, or if there is any similar bus service today?

X1 (I think it is), Peterborough - Kings Lynn - Norwich - Gt Yarmouth I think is the closest you'll get to a similar service. It's half hourly as well.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

I don't think there are any dedicated ones any more, however public buses still run 4 times an hour between Kings Lynn and Hunstanton during the week. First Capital Connect openly advertise them too in their timetable, and apparently through ticketing is available (page 130+ here - http://www.firstcapitalconnect.co.uk/static/timetables/timetable/FC1212_GN_Compiled_Web.pdf). Note also the services from Kings Lynn to Sandringham, Burnham Market and Wells-next-the-Sea advertised, plus Fakenham, as well as half-hourly ones from Peterborough to Kings Lynn via Wisbech.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I am mindful of similarities to this thread, as the matter of the Mablethorpe loop line that served small holiday communities many years ago in the area of the Lincolnshire coast was mentioned on another thread recently and in that case, the direct line from Louth to Boston was cited as a reason for the terminal decline of that loop line.

 

[Helvellyn]

Kings Lynn- Hunstaton was not listed for closure by the Reshaping report - though the report gave no rational as to why!

So it was a BR Management choice, the Swanage was another coastal resort not listed that was closed. The whole closure process both that wanted by Beeching and subsequently is full of inconsistency and contradiction to what survived and what didn't dont look for any logical reasoning to the decisions made. I suspect a lot of it was at the whim of the regional management of BR at the time.

Penrith - Keswick was another line that wasn't proposed for closure under Beeching, but that BR closed in the 1970s.

 

[Gareth Marston]

Penrith - Keswick was another line that wasn't proposed for closure under Beeching, but that BR closed in the 1970s.

I think there were some BR Managers that ran with the hounds and were keen on closing lines as a means to further there own career - I'm sure we've all seen these characters where we work who unquestionably do what they believe the prevailing direction of travel is and seem very keen on it. Promote me!

 

[Dolive22]

Two towns - in different parts of the country. Buntingford and Hunstanton. Buntingford had its commuter traffic and Hunstanton - an east coast seaside resort - had its holiday specials but would now presumably have similar usage as Cleethorpes.
In both cases, the first nail in the coffin was the withdrawal of direct trains to/from London. This led to a reduction in usage as people began to drive to the nearest (faster) route, with the more adventurous abandoning rail travel completely to drive all the way to their destination.
This led to reductions in service to cater for a smaller passenger flow.
People can live with a half-hourly service, but when the service reduces further to one train every two hours, many give up and go by road instead.
As usage further declines, up jumps British Railways claiming there is no demand and so no justification in keeping the line open. Gone.
As for Cleethorpes, I feel that the only reason it still has a service is because of the layout of the station and the facilities available there. Were it not for that, I feel that the present day level of service is such that the stretch of line between Grimsby Town and Cleethorpes would not merely have been reduced to a single track as it was in 1985. It would have been closed with all services reversing at Grimsby Town.

I'm not sure it was always intentional. It may never have been. It can happen without any plan like this:
Need to cutback, cut direct service.
Need to cutback, cut frequency.
Need to cutback, cut frequency.
Need to cutback (or just generally), can't justify keeping line open with current numbers. Close line/station.

BR didn't really have the reputation that attracted people who wanted to destroy the railways.

 

[yorksrob]

I think there were some BR Managers that ran with the hounds and were keen on closing lines as a means to further there own career - I'm sure we've all seen these characters where we work who unquestionably do what they believe the prevailing direction of travel is and seem very keen on it. Promote me!

Any organisation will have its share of followers. It's up to executive management to develop a company ethos, and the ethos instilled by Dr Beeching seems to have lasted a long time after he'd left.

 

[Domeyhead]

There is a lot of anecdotal material suggesting that altering timetables to sever connections, reducing train lengths, removing services etc were performed deliberately to hasten or justify a proposed closure. Where I live in the south most lines that were closed after 1965 have such stories attached to them. To give just one example Andover Jn. to Mottisfont Jn. in the 1960s carried a growing number of students to and from Eastleigh College, and the story goes that the direct train was withdrawn to make this journey less attractive. The only possible reason to do this would be if an area manager had a closure quota that he had to meet, and needed to spike the guns of the opposition so he could get on with his job in peace. But I have never seen a serious analysis of these stories, and there are many of them. It would make a good thesis if somebody wanted to get the old timetables out, the diagrams, the staff levels etc. etc. and "prove" whether the destruction of demand preceded or proceeded a run down in services. I'd love to read the conclusion.

 

[mr williams]

In the Ian Hislop documentary shown on the BBC a few years ago there was an interview with somebody who was a young BR manager at the time, and he recalled how his manager had sent in a proposal to the Regional Manager as to how to reduce costs and improve services on a local branch line.

The reply he received was blunt and unequivocal: "it isn't your job to improve the line, it's your job to close it"!

Having said that, it's so easy with the benefit of hindsight to forget what a mess the railways were in in the early 1960s and that they were losing a fortune. If all the people who protested at the closures had actually used the trains there wouldn't have been a problem in the first place.

 

[exile]

In the Ian Hislop documentary shown on the BBC a few years ago there was an interview with somebody who was a young BR manager at the time, and he recalled how his manager had sent in a proposal to the Regional Manager as to how to reduce costs and improve services on a local branch line.

The reply he received was blunt and unequivocal: "it isn't your job to improve the line, it's your job to close it"!

Having said that, it's so easy with the benefit of hindsight to forget what a mess the railways were in in the early 1960s and that they were losing a fortune. If all the people who protested at the closures had actually used the trains there wouldn't have been a problem in the first place.

Too right. British Railways were losing a lot of money - and yet somehow the branch line to Little Snoring was profitable with a taxiload of passengers per day...... to halt closures it required an acceptance by government that railways needed a general subsidy if they were to survive at all - and that didn't come until 1968 - and even then part of the quid quo pro was that the most hopeless cases would have to close.

 

[yorksrob]

Wasn't the manager in question talking about somewhere like the Swanage branch rather than one of the taxi-load per day cases ?

It's certainly not a very dynamic and positive approach for a railway manager to take. I'm certainly rather wary of the rose tinted revisionism that seems to be creeping in about the Beeching area.

 

[RichmondCommu]

If all the people who protested at the closures had actually used the trains there wouldn't have been a problem in the first place.

It was wasn't just that. BR had an awful lot of rolling stock that was kept because 'we might need one day'. All this rolling stock still needed to be maintained which must have cost a fortune.

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of money was squandered after nationalisation. Not only building steam loco's which then had ludicrously short life spans but allowing the Western Region to do its own thing with diesel loco procurement. And then scrapping the whole lot to fit in with the rest of BR!

 

[Tiny Tim]

It's difficult to resist the allegation that BR closed lines on an arbitrary basis. It's clear today that the Settle & Carlisle should never have been considered for closure, and BR's reasoning was little short of deception. There's no doubt that reduced services and connections on some branch lines led to less passengers, but that's always going to be a chicken-and-egg argument. BR was haemorrhaging money in the early 60s, and mass closures were inevitable, but perhaps not very well-considered.

 

[yorksrob]

It was wasn't just that. BR had an awful lot of rolling stock that was kept because 'we might need one day'. All this rolling stock still needed to be maintained which must have cost a fortune.

Rationalising that was at least, one fairly sensible thing that he instigated.

 

[Gareth Marston]

It was wasn't just that. BR had an awful lot of rolling stock that was kept because 'we might need one day'. All this rolling stock still needed to be maintained which must have cost a fortune.

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of money was squandered after nationalisation. Not only building steam loco's which then had ludicrously short life spans but allowing the Western Region to do its own thing with diesel loco procurement. And then scrapping the whole lot to fit in with the rest of BR!

You have to go back further for the real reasons- a succession of Government interventions and decisions going back to the 1844 Parliamentary train act and Govt reluctance to pay for what it wanted.
The railways had common carrier status by law until the 1962 Railways Act - it had to offer a service to carry anything presented it to and have a published fixed rate to carry it. The marshaling yards and Type 1 & 2 Pick Up good diesels of the modernization plan were not because British Railway Manager incompetently wasted £ millions - the law of the land required them to have system in place to carry everything brought to every wayside halt, Managers at the time designed a system to accommodate that. the trouble was this was inherently unprofitable as road competition and rendered the railways monopoly status over some 30 years earlier yet Govt still treated it as a monopoly.

 

[RichmondCommu]

The railways had common carrier status by law until the 1962 Railways Act - it had to offer a service to carry anything presented it to and have a published fixed rate to carry it. The marshaling yards and Type 1 & 2 Pick Up good diesels of the modernization plan were not because British Railway Manager incompetently wasted £ millions - the law of the land required them to have system in place to carry everything brought to every wayside halt, Managers at the time designed a system to accommodate that. the trouble was this was inherently unprofitable as road competition and rendered the railways monopoly status over some 30 years earlier yet Govt still treated it as a monopoly.

Well damn me I didn't know that! That's the great thing about this forum; always learning! Thanks for this.

 

[Tiny Tim]

You have to go back further for the real reasons- a succession of Government interventions and decisions going back to the 1844 Parliamentary train act and Govt reluctance to pay for what it wanted.
The railways had common carrier status by law until the 1962 Railways Act - it had to offer a service to carry anything presented it to and have a published fixed rate to carry it. The marshaling yards and Type 1 & 2 Pick Up good diesels of the modernization plan were not because British Railway Manager incompetently wasted £ millions - the law of the land required them to have system in place to carry everything brought to every wayside halt, Managers at the time designed a system to accommodate that. the trouble was this was inherently unprofitable as road competition and rendered the railways monopoly status over some 30 years earlier yet Govt still treated it as a monopoly.

Common carrier status was indeed an increasingly onerous burden on the railways as road transport could cherry pick the market. However, I'm not sure that the mixed goods and parcels trains that are so fondly remembered were ever profitable. A very slow train stopping and shunting one or two wagons or unloading a few parcels at every station on a rural branch line may reek of nostalgia, but it seems unlikely to me it ever made much money, even when the railways had an effective monopoly.

 

[Gareth Marston]

Common carrier status was indeed an increasingly onerous burden on the railways as road transport could cherry pick the market. However, I'm not sure that the mixed goods and parcels trains that are so fondly remembered were ever profitable. A very slow train stopping and shunting one or two wagons or unloading a few parcels at every station on a rural branch line may reek of nostalgia, but it seems unlikely to me it ever made much money, even when the railways had an effective monopoly.

The Big 4 launched a campaign in the late 30's called the square deal to be allowed to get rid of common carrier status and set rates and choose traffic of their own - to no avail- they could see the writing on the wall, it took Govt (Beechings liner trains etc) another 25 years after the damage was done to realise too late.

Historically it was coal and steel where the big profits were made. The Cambrian Railways who had neither just about managed to be in the black up to WW1. The Cambrian being entirely rural as well though it did have considerable summer traffic.

The closure debate has over focused on the branch line/lost lines aspect fundamentally the problem was really about archaic Victorian legislation that forced the railways to be unprofitable.

 

[RichmondCommu]

The Big 4 launched a campaign in the late 30's called the square deal to be allowed to get rid of common carrier status and set rates and choose traffic of their own - to no avail- they could see the writing on the wall, it took Govt (Beechings liner trains etc) another 25 years after the damage was done to realise too late.

The GWR autocoaches and DMU's certainly prove this point, albeit for passengers. I've often wondered why the Big 4 didn't come up with longer wheel base wagons as that would have surely helped with efficiency? It certainly worked with the LMS ICI wagons.