You conveniently forget that the railway was forced to use modernisation plan funds to serve the common carrier obligation.
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What if theory on the railway network
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You conveniently forget that the railway was forced to use modernisation plan funds to serve the common carrier obligation.
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Merle Haggard
Established Member
Indeed, the common carrier obligation resulted in very unprofitable traffic.
Road hauliers around here would have contracts to convey all of a firms' traffic. They would use their lorries to deliver to bigger towns and conurbations where the bulk of the traffic was consigned, and take all their unprofitable traffic (to Cornwall for example) down to the local railway station to be conveyed at scale rates. Delivered the profitable traffic themselves, left B.R. to shift the 'too difficult' stuff.
Dr Hoo
Established Member
These claims keep getting trotted out (and have been rebutted before). I am still yet to see any reputable, scholarly or official history of BR that contains any evidence that the Common Carrier Obligation had this effect. Most obviously Gourvish's definitive and official history of BR doesn't even mention the Obligation so far as I am aware.
I can accept that issues like parity and transparency of rates cramped BR's overall commercial flexibility until Marples 1962 Act but that is a very long way from 'having to' buy lots of underpowered, untested and unreliable diesels, build lots of new short wheelbase vacuum braked wagons that were hardly advanced on the previous generation of stock or build a new set of marshalling yards.
BR could and did withdraw freight services from many stations and lines. Some 933 'goods stations/facilities' at BR stations, not private sidings closed between vesting day on 1.1.1948 and the end of 1961. I.e. over 14% had shut.
The Good Doctor (aided by some excellent experienced railway managers like Gerry Fiennes) was quick to realise that the future for freight lay in block trains (not wagonload), merry-go-round, containerisation, air braking, higher axle loads and speeds up to 75mph but it was sadly rather late. Earlier railway managers had simply lacked the imagination or awareness of what was happening in some other countries to use the Modernisation Plan funds (insofar as they were related to freight activities) wisely.
I still say "what if" less money had been spent on dead freight servies and invested in rationalising secondary routes instead.
Dr Hoo
Established Member
So you do at least (and 'at last') accept that the Common Carrier claim is a complete red herring/canard/load of bull (other animal metaphors may be available)? Perhaps we won't see it wheeled out again.
If you read the Modernisation and Re-equipment Plan (December 1954), the BTC Proposals for the Railways (October 1956) that fleshed it out and the Re-appraisal of the Plan (July 1959) you will know that there is a minimal amount about rationalisation, centralised traffic control, level crossings and so on. These concepts were simply not in the BR mindset, at least at Board/strategic level. Where infrastructure expenditure is mentioned it is generally about enabling higher speeds, fitting AWS, compatibility with electrification and what have you. There were precious few 'good ideas' around to implement, no 'shovel ready' schemes, little recognition of 'low hanging fruit', etc.
Tragic, I know, but that is what Marples and Beeching found when they opened the bonnet.
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I don't accept anything from you, no.
I am not sure that is really quite right. The railway was in a position of being a Common Carrier and having its rates fixed and published. If any given traffic was profitable or not was not really taken into account, apart from an averaging exercise. This would have meant that road hauliers, who had no such regulation, could undercut those traffics which were profitable to the railways and to them, and leave the unprofitable traffic. If the common carrier obligation was there , but no price control, then the railway would have priced the traffic away or at a rate they were happy to convey the traffic for.
The fact that both the obligation and rate control was there would have meant that there was unprofitable traffic that the railway was forced to carry. Management would also have been painfully aware that the railway was losing profitable business to road. In the absence of being able to change the framework, the only possibility was to spend money in reducing costs and improving efficiency. Which is what the freight part of the modernisation plan was aimed at. Yes, there had been closures of little used freight facilities, but it took an outside consultant to map the way forward and get the framework changed.
Of course, the same could be said about secondary passenger traffic - mass conversion to DMUs were the extent of reducing costs, and improving efficiency. Management could see that local and secondary train passengers had deserted them for buses (initially) and then private cars - most people dreamed of having private transport, themselves included. Indeed, in the USA they could already see mass passenger train cancellations. Yes, there had been closures of little used passenger facilities (on spite of all sorts of obstruction tactics), but it took an outside consultant to map the way forward holistically and get the framework changed.
As neither passenger or freight management had a crystal ball, it is hard to see why the secondary passenger business would have had any priority over the freight business for modernisation funds. I believe that investment in local freight or passenger services would have been to no avail and the lines closed anyway.
Would this be the same Eastern Region that ordered a fleet of DMUs for the M&GN line, and then closed it before they entered service? (No, because the York-Market Weighton-Beverley line was North Eastern Region then). The regions were not to be trusted, as understandably the management are concerned for their jobs and parochial interests, and just hoped money would be found somewhere.
Just because the railway industry wanted to retain something doesn't mean it was the financially right thing to do. The railway industry wanted to spend loads of money on the Central Wales line too. It is very difficult to re-orientate and slim down a business from within. British Railways had shown they were incapable (not entirely their fault, but still incapable) Hence the correct decision to parachute in an outside consultant to sort things out, cutting through the parochial interests. That is the way of the world.
Dr Hoo
Established Member
I have already accepted that the Common Carrier Obligation cramped BR's commercial freedom in the sector until it was abolished. Nevertheless, it only applied to flows where BR was 'in business'. This just happened to be around 6,000 goods depots, the vast majority of which were wayside facilities with tiny amounts of traffic, at least on an all-year-round basis. Please don't get me started on why it was deemed appropriate to maintain the capability for 'six train working' (Yes, really!) on the Wisbech & Upwell Tramway for the peak week of the strawberry harvest.
No amount of 'modernisation' with new marshalling yards, vast numbers of what became Class 08 shunters and Type 1 trip locomotives working pick-up goods trains, still almost always with a crew of three because of the complexities of shunting, was ever going to eliminate the deficits. The answer was complete withdrawal from the business - the M&GN closure was the right kind of thing to do in terms of the real freight traffic potential of somewhere like Holbeach but all too rare in the 1950s.
I still see no evidence whatsoever that railway managers were really saying: "You do realise that if the CCO was abolished we could spend much of the £365 million earmarked for freight in the Modernisation Plan on Centralised Traffic Control and automatic half barrier level crossings.
The post I was responding to said something along the lines that if the investment decision taken made a service economical at the time, it was likely a sound decision.
Judging by the worked example in the Beeching Report, investment in, and rationalisation of York - Beverley could well have made it economical, therefore it would have been a sound decision.
What you have said about the freight business applies to local and secondary passenger business to, which is what the external consultant recommended - close it down, it was never going to pay its way. We only have to look at the kind of subsidies paid for the remaining lines (with lots of modernisation money spent on them) of this type to see what an (intolerable ?) burden such a quantity would be now. Spending money modernising them in 1955 would have been throwing good money after bad and I suspect the lines would have still shut.
If the £365million earmarked for freight had been diverted to the passenger business, surely this would have been spent on upgrading the main lines, some of which still in 2022 have manual signalling and level crossings. It is inconceivable that any quantity of modernisation money would have gone to local and secondary passenger routes (except to replace steam traction; even then DMUs were bought for lines that were quickly closed and the consultant reduced the order considerably.). If Beeching hadn't been parachuted in, it would have been someone else.
The question that is never answered ["what if" less money had been spent on dead freight servies and invested in rationalising secondary routes instead] is because it is inconceivable that this would have happened. Well nearly inconceivable, because railway management could have wasted money modernising secondary routes in 1955, and the consultant would have still come along and shut them.
No it wouldn't. The cost of the modernisation of this line (not mentioned in the report) would have been such a financial burden that the line would never have been economical, and the deteriorating financial ratios across the whole network would have soon plunged the line back into operating deficit anyway. Additionally, the main lines remaining would not have gained the benefit of the investment money put to this purpose, thereby making them less competitive with road and worsening their financial position. If it wasn't shut in 1965, it would likely have been in 1969 or 1973 or 1982 ......
It was a cost that had partially already been accounted for. And apart from the level crossings (which were already being paid for) and the trains (which had already been provided) what would have been this vast modernisation expense remaining ?
Not signalling - you could close most boxes along with yards and leave as is.
Not stations - you could de-staff and flog off the buildings.
Not track - this could be maintained in a steady state as we're many lines at the time.
It strikes me as very unlikely that such a route, with intermediate traffic generators would have been at risk of closure in 1973 or 83.
The level crossings would have been moved elsewhere and replaced manual crossings on a main line, thereby saving that additional investment cost.
The trains were moved elsewhere, to replace steam traction or ineffective new diesels, thereby saving that additional investment cost.
This notion that because something has been bought already it is therefore of no value and therefore can be wasted just does not stack up. The equipment and land of that line could be reused or disposed of and re-invested somewhere else more useful and financially advantageous.
If this, and other lines (because York-Beverley would not have been the only line in the UK in this category for you) had still been open and a financial burden, there would have been closures of this type in 1973 and 1983.
You forget political context. By the 1970's, people were beginning to see through the closure programme and route closures were becoming politically unpopular.
In a way, I take your point in that I read that some of the equipment intended for the electrification of the Marshlink was later diverted to the south west. However, that didn't preclude the route being successfully rationalised to enable it to thrive today.
The political context may well have been different if less lines had closed in 1964-7, the main lines less improved because some of the investment money had been spent on secondary routes, and the railway deficit a greater burden on taxpayers.
Marshlink is not thriving - it is propped up with subsidies. There was always going to be a political angle with the rationalisation of British Railways - it was a nationalised undertaking. Inevitably there were going to be some lines that Government ultimately decided were going to remain open even though there was no direct economic sense in doing so. Such is politics and democracy. It was pretty much of a lotto as to which these were (as you have pointed out) The quantity of these (and the subsidy required) has moved down and up in the intervening years, but the point is that Governments have decided what level of subsidy that they have been prepared to fund and the network has been adjusted accordingly. The existence of one subsidised line does not mean that Governments over the years would have been prepared to fund/subsidise other similar or lots more lines.
Marshlink is thriving. The definition of a successful passenger railway is not solely one that doesn't require passenger subsidy.
Subsidy of a railway does not mean that it makes no economic sense for it to be there.
The inability of the British establishment to grasp these facts (in contrast to many of our continental neighbours) has long been the route cause of many of the railways problems.
As you say, governments have decided what level of subsidy they have been prepared to pay over the years. Had the subsidy required for a given level of route milage been lower at various times, it might well have resulted in more routes surviving past the danger zone. If York -Beverley had Ben rationalised earlier, it might not have fallen within Beechings net.
This is why I stated no direct economic sense (i.e. to British Railways, as opposed to any wider economic benefits)
This is not a fact: this is an opinion. Our establishment is of the same opinion, otherwise it would not have been subsidising the railways for the last 70 years nearly. What is of contention is how much network makes wider economic sense, because clearly not all of that as existing in 1950 could possibly be.
Most of our continental neighbours have closed parts of their passenger network down, to a greater or lesser degree, taking a view on how much makes wider economic sense and how much not. Those that haven't (and some that have) had regulated their buses to a subservient role to the railways since the 1920s. In this country we did not (we regulated them, but not as subservient). By the 1950s our railways had lost the battle for local and secondary passenger and goods to road motor vehicles. The genie was out of the bottle, and not going back in.
After WW2 all of the railway needed renewal and modernisation. There was limited funds available and initially the railway management backed some of the wrong horses (for all sorts of reasons, no doubt). It took an external consultant to get them back on track so to speak, and concentrate on developing the business that had a bright future, quite difficult following the initial squandering of some of the money and no more/little where it came from . It is not hard at all to see why and how the decision of priorities came about and the axe of the moribund local and secondary business - selling redundant equipment and land providing a source of investment cash for the more profitable parts of the network
Dr Hoo
Established Member
As you know, Rob, I really like facts and figures rather than just unquantified claims.
I use the Marshlink line from time to time and accept that it has relatively attractive trains with 'material' loads of passengers. However, it only has a basic hourly service and in that respect has hardly changed in decades. Connections at either end are, perhaps inevitably, a bit hit and miss if you are travelling more widely.
In some ways the route reminds me of Hull-Scarborough.
Some local lines have undoubtedly 'thrived' with developments like significant student traffic, park-and-ride, new stations serving major new housing developments or whatever. Exmouth is a good example.
So, genuine question: in what respects and to what extent is Marshlink thriving in your view?
Through anecdotal evidence, it's always busy when I put my family use it.
Perhaps the biggest indication of it thriving is that Southern have seen for to double up to four carriages a lot of the time.
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However, our establishment was not of the opinion that a passenger railway could be important without turning a profit during the period that these policies were in practice. If this nettle has been grasped earlier on and a blueprint for operating secondary routes more efficiently developed earlier on, the cuts might not have been so drastic and damaging.
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That is hardly surprising, given the flight of passengers (and goods) from the railways that had already happened - the empty trains, the massive operating losses, the huge requirement for investment funds, the Industrial Relations issues etc. They had already seen the collapse of passenger trains across much of the USA, apparently without causing economic blight. It was for the railway management to grasp this nettle and they failed to do so - but there was no blueprint possible without investment funds, and these funds were earmarked for other priorities. Rationalisation doesn't cost nothing - equipment to be purchased, plans to be drawn up, resources used in negotiation and then implementation. Automatic level crossings hadn't been developed here in 1955.
Rationalisation eventually came to the Railways - after the Beeching plan had taken effect - initially largely to mitigate against the losses caused by the Government refusal to allow some lines to be closed. Management, faced with having to cut costs somewhere in order to accommodate the losses on these lines got the impetus to overcome the obstacles to do it. I'm not sure the railway Industrial Relations climate in the 1950s would have permitted this earlier. (There are certain parallels to today....).
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Basically the railway got its finger out when forced to do so. The "what if" is what if it had been forced to rationalize earlier without having carte blanche with regards to closures.
I know it is annoying, but it does rather depend on what the surrounding financials were. On the assumption that funding levels were the same as for the network as reduced by Beeching, I guess that the whole network would have descended into a quagmire of deferred maintenance and decay, with services reduced to 'parliamentary' levels on many lines, train crew worked level crossings etc, eventually being replaced by buses 'temporarily'. A bit like what happened to the Argentinian Railways. WCML electrification probably not happening/HSTs definitely not etc as revenue dropped and all the money taken up with the burden of these basket cases. All of the modernisation money (excluding the steam to diesel transition) would have been a drop in the ocean to the financial requirements of rationalising the branch and secondary lines.
So for any kind of functioning system, your 'what if' would also have to include sufficient funds to carry out the rationalisation, as well as the funds for carrying out main line improvements, including the funds generated from re-use or scrapping/sale of closed line equipment/ trains and property. On this assumption you can assume all the lines which were closed would now look like the Preston-Ormskirk, Lowestoft, Cromer or Looe lines.
Well Indeed, but it wouldn't be a "what if" scenario if one didn't play with the variables.
Two points - I don't make an assumption that no lines would have closed - rather that more could have been brought over the finishing line with different circumstances.
Secondly, for most of the period, there wasn't a notional budget to subsidize the railway. The assumption was that it should pay its way, and even when it closed, specific routes were supported. Had the need for subsidy been recognised earlier, perhaps alongside a more limited, considered closure programme, the outcome for the network could have been very different.
In respect of your last point, I use the Preston - Ormskirk, Sheringham, Lowestoft and Looe lines and find them very useful, so such an outcome would have been very good indeed.
If in 1960 the Government had told the external consultant to get the losses of British Railways down to the level of subsidy which they actually paid in 1970 (adjusted for inflation), would the external consultant have done anything substantially different? Doubt it. The external consultant had a pretty good idea of which way the railway business was going.
I think the only way to have got a larger network would have been government setting parameters about levels of losses on individual lines and/or setting connectivity targets. But these would have been hugely expensive, a financial unknown, and government at that time had the goal of no subsidies (after all, that is what the USA were doing at that time, and they did not appear to be economically disadvantaged by it).
I am really not sure how the need for subsidy could have been recognised earlier .... the USA had closed vast swathes of passenger service seemingly without economic and social collapse, and just about every other Anglophone country was to shut down passenger service to some extent or another, and close lots of lines completely. The only way to find out the minimum levels of subsidy that can be got away with is to keep on reducing it until further reductions become untenable - I don't think any other country had caused themselves any apparent economic damage by closing passenger trains/lines at that point, to act as an example.
But that isn't what happened and was extremely unlikely to have happened given the circumstances (political, social and financial) of the time or since. It doesn't take a genius (or even me) to look at the current rationalised railway and extrapolate that to all or some of the closed network, given fanciful 'what if' scenarios that are tailored to get that answer.. Not quite sure why you needed to ask? Whether the country now would be able or prepared to fund such a network is another question, and whether this network of lines has more than one train a day, but then if you adjust the 'what if' scenario to your heart's content they could all be electrified and served by dining car trains too.
Well, you were the one who said "on this assumption......" So I don't see why you're antagonised by me running with that point. Quite why you now seem to seeing between "one train a day" and "dining cars" when the surviving routes have tended not to follow either of these scenarios, I don't know !
You assume that it was inevitable that we would follow Anglophone countries, but most Anglophone countries are very large and not very densely populated. Given geographical reality one could equally envisage a scenario where we followed similar European countries.
uglymonkey
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Exmouth avoided Beeching and is thriving for want of a better word. However it still lost a lot due to "the dustbowl" years of financial desert. It lost the double track from Exmouth Junction to Topsham, leaving only a passing loop. With Increased traffic there is no " slack" in this "long siding" particularly if trains are delayed by Rugby supporters trying to get to the match. With each new station opened, there must a knock on effect on Timing and "slack" What was the timing for example Topsham - Exmouth Junction when the only station was polesloe bridge ? Its busy but there is simply no space to run additonal trains - so A lone that escaped Beeching is now so busy, the end to ebd times are slower and also the service pattern can't be improved as all the "paths" are taken.
Okehampton is just being upgraded to 1 Tph, but many places in the sourh west ( as well as Wales) are almost hours away from a railway station ( Bude was the famus one, which is now closer because of Okehampton. Would Padstow be as successful as Newquay if it remained open? ( accessed via Bodmin and not the LSWR route)
It all comes down to some lines wew " basket" cases and should have closed even before they did, others should have stayed open, with hindsight ( Tavistock-Bere Alston)
The old, if you close the branch there was no counting of how that branch helped the "mainline" by bringing customers to it. If subsidy is your concern, close the entire network as they don't generate income. You have also got to remember, "managed decline" was the thing, the network was forever shinking and the car was king.
Okehampton is just being upgraded to 1 Tph, but many places in the sourh west ( as well as Wales) are almost hours away from a railway station ( Bude was the famus one, which is now closer because of Okehampton. Would Padstow be as successful as Newquay if it remained open? ( accessed via Bodmin and not the LSWR route)
It all comes down to some lines wew " basket" cases and should have closed even before they did, others should have stayed open, with hindsight ( Tavistock-Bere Alston)
The old, if you close the branch there was no counting of how that branch helped the "mainline" by bringing customers to it. If subsidy is your concern, close the entire network as they don't generate income. You have also got to remember, "managed decline" was the thing, the network was forever shinking and the car was king.
No antagonism, everything is an assumption - including whether the rationalised larger network could be operated within the confines of current subsidy (or are there more 'what ifs' to be taken into account, such as larger subsidies etc) - probably not, so hence the possibility of lower train frequency, or much higher subsidies even allowing for more luxurious services. I suspect that the surviving routes only follow the current scenario because there are relatively few of them - if there were 10+ times more than perhaps things would be a lot different (unless there are other 'what ifs' to be brought into play)
What is really not clear is how these different decisions would have been arrived at by British Railways and the politicians of the time (given the political, social and financial circumstances of the time). The UK was already considerably divergent from continental european practice (of regulating buses and having them subservient to trains) , and therefore branch and secondary services had already become pretty irrelevant and empty. So it is not 1950s politicians to be accused of the root error, but those of an earlier era, and even earlier the laissez faire building of railways with separate stations etc.
Being Anglophone, and our 'kith and kin' our connections with those countries would have been closer than those of continental Europe, even though Europe is closer geographically After the war the USA was heralded as a successful country to be emulated and trends that happened there usually came across to the UK later. Car ownership was a goal for many, and this had already been achieved in the USA. Why would this not come here - everybody desired it? Universal car ownership had been the death knell of passenger trains in the USA - why would that not happen here, particularly as many of the trains were already running nearly empty? The process had already begun. What politician, hearing, knowing what the constituents aspired to, was going to try and stymie this and spend (waste) money on old fashioned railways? Especially railways with such an Industrial Relations issue? Anybody from the UK looking at the policy towards passenger railways in Europe would have concluded that they were making a gross error.
I do not think one could 'equally envisage' a scenario in which we followed similar European countries - by the 1950s the circumstances were too stacked up against that.
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How many people travel to Newquay by train??? Comparatively few. Its success is more to do with better road links and more development space, I suspect.
My local station (a junction, but formerly many more junction lines) has lots of people arriving by car and catching a train. Most of the stations on the closed lines were far from the villages they purported to serve and, if open now, would all do little business.
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It's worth remembering that even by the early 1960's, the UK was manoeuvring to form EFTA, followed by the EEC, so our policies weren't so divergent.
Also there simply weren't enough railways to start off with to have ten times the distance of secondary route we have today. The need to cut route milage was very much exaggerated, as illustrated by the proposals over the years to cut many more miles than were actually closed.
Also there simply weren't enough railways to start off with to have ten times the distance of secondary route we have today. The need to cut route milage was very much exaggerated, as illustrated by the proposals over the years to cut many more miles than were actually closed.
What has EFTA got to do with railway closures?
Never said 10 times the distance - 10 times the number - a lot were short branch lines or intermediate stations on main lines.
It would be unrealistic to suggest that 1960's Britain was entirely America focused.
Whichever way you look at it, a "ten times the number" scenario wouldn't have happened as there weren't ten times the number of secondary railways to begin with.
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8H
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Although the original question in this thread is a”what if” the exchanges it has set off really ought to point us in the other direction to “what next” Given climate crisis, and the percentage of pollution/greenhouse gasses caused by road vehicles, literally a threat to human life itself what railway do we need that we haven’t got? We are going to need a network that copes with a lot more passenger and freight than it does, whatever the road builders and oil burners believe. Bigger urban networks and more east west long distance railways may certainly be required.
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