Great Western Coffee Shop

Tonight BBC4 9pm

I can't remember seeing this posted elsewhere, and unsure if it might get wider visibility in 'Across the West', but posted here nontheless.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00drtpj

See also link below.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=3539.msg27520#msg27520

I'll certainly be watching.

Probably why I didn't spot it then Lee.  :)

I'm watching the original, much-quoted post-report interview with him right now.

He really was a complete and utter b******, wasn't he? Surely one of the most despised men in British history. A genuine figure of hate. And the thing is, he didn't seem to care! The original "Fat Cat", paid for quite handsomely out of a reluctant taxpayer's pocket.

I suppose one has to hand it to him for standing firm on his convictions though, as insanely short-sighted as they were. Whoever is behind the similarly stupid efforts to close the nation's network of Post Offices today doesn't have half the guts that Beeching had - I notice he or she is hiding firmly behind the committees and red tape.

Can I recommend the British Transport Films Collection Volume 4 - Reshaping British Railways.  It has the 23 min official film where Beeching explains the report.

Fascinating.

The whole BTF collection is well worth having.  Snowdrift at Bleath Gill, anyone?

Yeah, I have the complete set. You're right, that Snowdrift one is amazing!

Amazing programme. Applause for Ian, spot on I reckon.

So who on this forum thinks Beeching saved the railways by making the cuts he did? Would things be any different today if all those lines had remained open?

Whilst it would be pointless to argue that every single line, station and service could have been saved, I think Christian Wolmar made a good point that if a third of the lines that closed had remained open, they would have made a very useful contribution to today's rail network. You only have to look at some of the excellent re-opening proposals around to validate that.

From a CANBER perspective, Ian Hislop's point that very few lines were saved by what he described as the "militancy" of campaigners on the ground had obvious resonance. It is my belief (and hope) that campaigners and the public would stand a better chance of combatting a Beeching-style scenario if it happened today :


Could Beeching happen again? I think that it could, and perhaps sooner than people think :


I'm not sure that the danger would ease if/when the Conservatives come to power either. They have pledged to spend ^1.3bn a year for 12 years from within current levels of government capital spend on rail on a high-speed link. Logically, this money would have to come from "efficiencies" made to the current rail budget.

See also link below.
http://railwayeye.blogspot.com/2008/10/crankfest.html


The poilitician originally responsible for the Post Office closure plan has also been quoted as saying in the past "We cannot be in the business of carting fresh air round the country. If we are terrified to go near any service for fear of flak, then sooner or later we will come a cropper." (links below.)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article742099.ece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/05/post.publicservices

Given that this politician is now Chancellor, I refer you to one of the points I made earlier in this post.

For a taste of what rail services were like in the FGW area shortly before the Beeching cull took full effect, check out the link below.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=3042.msg23402#msg23402

Lets tot up the tory (recent) history on Britain's railways ....... McMillan = Marples = Beaching ........... John Major = privatization = RailTrack = Hatfiled & Potters Bar and the tory prime misters in between did not help much, to much party sponsorship from the road haulers and motorway builders.

Was Beaching right, something need to be done our railway network was not built to any National strategy in fact it was built totally adhoc something we still live with 150 years later; the Nationalized Railway did not make good use of the (in todays money) ^26B to rebuild the railway, perhaps they had their hands tied by Government policy etc that figure of ^26B is very close to to amount NR are seeking for CP4 NR have the vision but are often held back by Government be cautious.

We should not dwell on was Beaching right or wrong he was a man of his time in his time, what is more important is strengthen the system where needs it divert it if need be and build new routes / lines if that is required in the National interest and then in 50 years our descendants can say they got it right in naughties.

I agree pretty much with the above. Yes the network was built in an ad hoc fashion by competing companies. At the time of Beeching actual train services were pretty musch as at grouping. You went from Manchester to Sheffield by Midland or GC. My biggest complaint about Beeching was he didn't look at the Network he looked at services and say how do we serve A B & C which ight have two or three different services. Insteaed of saying if we rooute trains via E awe can shut one line between A & B an another between B & C. And maybe with a spur or two we can serve A, B, C, D And F.

I think what killed this approach was Leeds Hauptbahnhof an excellent scheme which like WCML modersation was perceived to be too expensive and was constantly stopped and started.

The WR did  put in  some links which shut some lenghts of line, most notably between Cymmer and Treherbert where two single lines were linked and about three miles of parallel track were shut and a viaduct and tunnel closed. But it was too late to save the line.

The third that Christian Wolmar mentions are probably the lines that could have most benefitted from new links to form an integrated network.

It's interesting that Chiltern are actually proposing a new link at Bivcester to give an Oxford Marylebone service. Given the pre Beeching network just think what other links could have been put in or services imginatively rerouted.

It seems to me that the biggest problem the railways face today (that arises from Beeching) is not so much the fact that so many lines were closed, but that the trackbeds were not safeguarded. Of course the attitude was that rail use was falling and would never rise again, so there would never be any need to reopen old lines.

In the current climate it might be possible to reopen a lot of old lines if the trackbed was more or less intact, which is for example why the Portishead freight branch could be re-opened, because since closure they hadn't got round to putting it permanently beyond use by building on it and destroying bridges and tunnels.

I remember reading in some report (I think it was the Atkins report on the Greater Bristol transport plan) a comment that rail campaigners are only interested in opening old lines. This ignores the fact that there is no chance whatever of totally new local lines being built, so it's not really worth campaigning for... besides, it's not as if there are campaigns for every former line.... at least I don't remember hearing calls to re-open Yatton to Blagdon, or Yelverton to Princetown....

Old news, as I know it was a repeat, but I watched Ian Hislop's program on Dr Beeching and the Beeching plan on BBC 2 at 8 p.m. last night - wonder if anyone else did?   

What struck me ("three golden nuggets")

1. How the 'moderniastion plan' poured huge amounts of money into freight facilities that hindsight / commentators say "could never have worked". And I wonder could that have been realistically forecast at the time, and the money more wisely put into passenger provision?

2. The suggestion that around a third of the lines that were axed should in fact have been saved; clearly there were some 'basket cases' and others which should never have been closed, and I wonder is that 1/3 figure about right?

3. A comment from Christiam Wolmar when describing parliamentary services (1d per mile fares)0 and saying how some companies were naughty because they ran the train that met the specification at 6 in the morning to supress demand intentionally. Which town that FGW serves has just two return trips a day even now, with the first of the two setting off towards it at 05:19?

1 Hindsight has 20 20 vision, the railways before the mid 60's were seen principally has freight movers passengers came second in terms of revenue

2 At the time possibly right but the Beeching report set the formula that BR was forced to adopt by the DoT in to the 1980's for closing stations and lines so it had a cascade effect

I think the 1/3 is about right.

Although, why did BR close so many useful lines later on?

*Barnstaple - Illfracombe;

*Bewdley - Stourport - Hartlebury/ Bewdley - Kidderminster;

both are on the BR 1969 map, but were axed soon afterwards.

If only they had survived another 10 - 20 yrs (and the later was still mostly open for freight in the 80s!), they would have been secured, and there would be far fewer traffic jams.

I believe that both would be profitable.

In some ways, the post Beeching closures are worse, as Beeching/ the gov obviously found them worthwhile/ necessary.

Another eg is Oxbridge line.

I would agree with that. Some other closure in the early seventies that would still be very useful branch lines are of course the Minehead branch (1970), Swanage branch (1972) and Alton to Winchester (1973). The latter was killed off by doing the passenger survey at a time when rail replacement buses were in operation. Scandalous.

These lines all survived in part by being late closures, when there was much more interest and will to preserve them. And whilst they all play a significant part in the local economy, I'm sure they would have been more useful as parts of the national railway network. 

Yet more examples of 70s cuts! ::)

Yes, the Bewdley to Kidderminster line is now part of the SVR, and although very beneficial to the area, a mainline service would be of better use to the locals.

Unfortunately, the line through Stourport was ripped away when a nearby power station was demolished and houses were built. >:(

And look at the price tag to rebuild 1/2 of the Oxbridge line! Why couldn't they have kept it open? :'(

Bourne End - High Wycombe, Didcot - Southampton via Newbury

Though DNS closed in 1962, so was a precursor to Beeching rather than happening long after.

Possibly as damaging as the Beeching closures were the BR rationalisations in the 70/80 such as Cotswold line and Salisbury to Exeter and Swindon To Kemble single tracking, fortunately Kemble to Stroud and Glouscester didn't happen.

I would suggest about a third of the Beeching closures should have been kept open, but agree that some of the post Beeching closures were worse such as in my area Bourne End to High Wycombe and the Oxbridge line. Had both been open Bucks could have had a train service connecting Slough (in Bucks to 74?) Maidenhead to High Wycombe, Aylesbury Milton Keynes and Oxford Bicester to Milton Keynes. All teh principle towns of the county. With a facing connection at Claydon an Oxford Bicester Aylesbury (London) service.

That's my one big critism of Beeching was he took the existing train services on lines  which when you looked at them were basically pre grouping services. If it started MR it ended Midland. Little  thought was given to rerouting or possibly putting in spurs to provide a service between staions that had not previously had a through service but which would non the less keep staions open but allow lengths of line to be shut.

I don't know whether anyone can think of another example but the only place I know of where this was done with  passenger service was to put in a link between the R&SB line from Swansea to Treherbert and the GW line from Port Talbot to Abergwynfi line at Cymmer East Junction and Gelli Junction. This enabled a mile of R&SB line to be closed eliminating a tunnel and a viaduct where the lines ran parallel up the same valley.

Of Course Beeching did have good effect on the amazing number of lines in places such as the Nottinghamshire coalfield whereby with building spurs particularly at Shirebrook and the introduction of MGRs BR were able to serve most of the then open collieries with a single branch instead of the two or perhaps three pre-gouping connections most  still had. Unfortunately they all lost their passenger services.

It took the reopening of the link from Annesley to Kirkby in Ashfield to restablish passenger servces to Mansfield. This is interesting in that it used the routes of three pre grouping companies. The Midland, GC and GN although at different levels to the original routes.   

Out of interest, when is the South-West programme repeated, as I am sure I read somewhere it would be repeated soon  ???

BBC4, 20:30, Sunday 30 November - see http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=3826.0

Chris  ;)

Thanks!  ;D

We moderators do have some uses!  ;D ;D ;D

I feel misrepresented here! Clearly I don't! ;D

Erm ... correction: it's on Thursday 27 November, at 20:30, on BBC4 - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fpvr4

 ::)

May be Beeching was brutal, may be his mate and Government boss Marples (of Tarmac fame) had an agenda to build motorways but I suspect that many of the closures would have happened anyway but gradually and while dieing that would have dragged down even the mainlines by drawing on resources.

BR had not real choice even in the 70's and 80's to close stations and line's the DoT gave BR only so much money required efficiencies each year the choice was maintain the major routes and secondary or close bits that lost a lot of money.  I can remember in the Thatcher years whole sale moratoriums on track renewals and other maintenance that lasted for 6 months year after year basically because the DoT reduced the either the budget half way through the year, never gave enough in the first place or there was a major incident that used all the cash up.  Even when BR sold off its land the proceeds when to HMG and BR had to grovel for it back, the HST fleet was paid for by HMG lending (yes lending) land sale money back to BR.

Fortunately the person that Thatcher put in as Beeching Mk2 turned out the be a good freind of the railways, Peter Parker

Apologies for bumping this one up, but I'm sure I would have replied at the time  ;D

The document that paved the way for the post-Beeching closures can be found in the link below.
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BRB_NetworkForDevelopment1967.pdf


In my view, one line which would certainly have benefitted from the above approach would have the Great Central Railway. If a chord from the Great Central to the Nuneaton-Leicester line had been installed in the Whetstone area, this would have enabled GC services to run into the Midland station at Leicester, and potentially continue north from there to Loughborough, Nottingham and beyond, while allowing the original GC route through those places (which would have been seen as a duplication) to be abandoned.

From both a strategic passenger and freight perspective, I believe that a London-Aylesbury-Brackley-Rugby-Lutterworth-Leicester line would have survived comfortably into today's era.

Unfortunately, this didnt happen. For a very good insight into this most controversial of line closures, click on the link below.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nick.willis/history/time/index.html

Could the line still be reinstated, even now? Well, as I'm sure some of you know, the reopening of the line between Aylesbury-Leicester, with new stations at Brackley and the M1/M6 intersection north of Rugby, is included as a "secondary aspiration" (but not, unfortunately, as a cast-iron commitment) in the Chiltern Franchise Agreement (page 379 of the link below.)
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/passenger/publicregister/current/cr/chiltern.pdf

Ruth Kelly even floated the idea in the Commons in January 2008. However, getting the line through Rugby could be nigh on impossible, in the face of likely significant opposition (sparked in part by Central Railway's earlier plans to run lorries on trains on the line close to homes built in recent years), and the fact that some of the route through Rugby forms part of a nature reserve (links below.)
http://www.rugbytoday.co.uk/news/Plans-to-open-historic-rail.3684424.jp

http://www.rugbytoday.co.uk/editors-viewpoint/Editor39s-Comment-Great-Central-line.3684405.jp

http://www.cwn.org.uk/business/a-z/c/chiltern-railways/2000/08/000810-new-central-scheme.htm

http://www.rugby.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=468&pageNumber=37

Indeed, part of the trackbed at the former Rugby Central station is now a pond....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rugby_Central_station_remains.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rugby_Central_station_remains2.jpg

On a related note, the two preserved Great Central Railway organisations have ambitious plans to re-open the original GC route between Nottingham-Leicester, with interchanges with the mainline at Loughborough and trams at Nottingham (link below.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Central_Steam_Railway

Although I am pro nature reserves, the rail link would do more for the environment.

And as for the noise - its a "not in my back yard" argument. I am sure everyone in the UK would embrace less lorries on the roads!

But Chiltern would really need 125 mph trains (plus more track capacity in north London, plus another platform at Marylebone) to run a service quick enough to draw road users off the M1.

I also think this route should be looked at to extend Eurostar to the Midlands ("The Midlands Parkway" station?). The Grand Central route is dead straight - easy to have 200 mph running.

Beeching was, with the benefit of hindsight, wrong to close the GC the rebuild of the WCML would have been oh so much easier but why struggle today, 40 years on, to reopen a route unless it can serve populations en route, a reopening of the line from Aylesbury via Brackley to Rugby might have some merit but realistically how many people will it serve, the better aspiration is to build a new dedicated high speed route, with key interchanges and even new local lines if rquired

Not the Rugby folks, from what I can gather....Central Railway were so taken aback by the scale of opposition that their revised proposal bypassed the town altogether.

Here's an overhead shot of part of the route through Rugby (link below.)
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stations/r/rugby_central/index46.shtml

A good further selection of Rugby Central photos can be found below.
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stations/r/rugby_central/index2.shtml

Dr Beeching gets most of the blame for the radical and in many cases, unnecessary pruning of the network.  However, Ernie Marples, the then Minister of Transport and final arbiter, was firmly in the pocket of the road lobby.  Surely, he too deserves at least some vilification.

In the pocket, I think he was actually the tailor of the pocket if not most of the suit.  G. Uard you are quite right Dr Beeching was brought in to do a task it was ultimately the Government Minister who signed the death warrant.  Marples set up his own company Marples, Ridgeway & Partners, who built ................ yes you guessed it motorways.

They're both as bad as each other.

Yes, Beeching was told to do the survey, but he completely flawed it, and his report was short sighted, and - in some cases - stupid.

I wonder which London gentleman's club they both belonged to ?

Bit of a belated response, but for the sake of accuracy, he was first appointed in 1976 by Jim Callaghan's Labour government and to say he was put in to do a Beeching Mk2 is wrong.

The Thatcher government actually asked Sir David Serpell, a former senior civil servant who claimed to have persuaded Beeching to take the BR job in the 1960s and was on the BR board from 1974-82, to draw up the report on the future shape of BR in 1982.

Parker had long wanted a review of BR, but with the aim of achieving a long-term strategy for developing the network. His final few months in office in 1983 were largely spent ensuring Serpell's report, published that January, was buried.

The Serpell report can be found in the link below.
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_Serpell001.pdf

Whilst I agee some lines proposed in the Beeching Report should not have closed Portishead springs to mind in FGW territory and some of LSWR lines in North Devon and Cornwall notably Okehampton Bere Alston

To be fair to Beeching some lines he did propose for closure weren't closed. Severn Beech, Plymouth Calsock although cut short at Gunnislake. Also St Ives branch and Liskard Looe and even Exmouth was down to close. Reading to Tonbridge via Guildford and Rehill was surprisingly down for all stopping pasenger services to be withdrawn.

Also Beeching proposed the Hope Valley line rather Woodhead between Manchester and Sheffield for closure. But not Derby Manchester via Bakewell.

However, a lot more damaging closures were post Beeching particulary Bourne End High Wycombe and Oxford Cambridge both of which were retained under Beeching.

Also the 70/80s were the height of infrastructure removal for which as other posts show we are still sufferring and in some cases having to reverse at great expense.

I agree that line was not included in Beechings report but I think the DoTp were still using the Beeching cost viability formula well into the 1970's i. e. is there a bus service that can operate more cheaply therefore the DoTp would not give BRB the ^60,000 to keep it open.
The BRB in the 70/80's were given such tight constraints of public finances for new trains and even maintenance the BRB had to show efficiencies to the bean counters if you single a route you halve the costs .............. which of course is not the case therefore BRB made savings which it knew to be a nonsense but the pin stripe bowler hat brigade in Whitehall were happy.

And here (poorish scan) are his 4 options for the South West

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/serp_1.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/serp_2.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/serp_3.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/serp_4.jpg)

Thanks for posting the maps grahame.

I hadn't realised that he had proposed several alternatives.

The press concentrated on map 77 no railway West of Plymouth or Swansea and no Salisbury Exeter or Berks and Hants. Plus no Westbury Weymouth.

The reaction in Devon and Cornwall and Wales (plus other parts of the country) was so hostile that the government quitely buried the report. If he had stuck to 79 or maybe 75 who knows what railways we would still have?

By going over the top with 77 he killed his own report. 

It seems incredible now that anyone was actually considering leaving Plymouth (population around 250,000) without any rail service. But in the 80s such proposals were taken seriously -- I remember there was a group of Tory MPs campaigning to get all the main railway lines turned into roads. When privatisation was going through I thought it might be a way of destroying the railways in order to pave the way for this agenda -- the only flaw in their plan was the fact that ever increasing numbers of people wanted to use them, the train companies started running more trains, and it all seems a long time ago now.  :)

A network that still wouldnt have contained most of the Devon & Cornwall branch lines, or the line to Weymouth. Also, if any of the Serpell Report options had been implemented, then the principle of a contracting network would have been embedded, potentially jeopardising the re-openings of the 80's/90's that followed. The introduction of new rolling stock such as Pacers on several loss-making lines might also have been jeopardised.

It is also interesting to note that Option D was based around retaining services to communities with populations greater than 25,000.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00drtpj


Repeat from 2008

There seems to be a lot of documentaries into the history of the railways on tv recently, whether they are repeated or not!  Folly or otherwise, industrial vandalism or progress, they are always interesting. When you see the Freedom Railway doc / Maree on Tarrant it puts the UK in perspective!

I seem to remember that this Hislop programme was refreshingly balanced.  I was expecting a hatchet job on Beeching, but it was more nuanced than that.  Worth a watch I think.

In the interests of continuity and completeness, I've merged two previous topics on this programme into this topic here. Hope this helps!  ;)

Available to view again until Saturday

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00drtpj/ian-hislop-goes-off-the-rails