Can anyone ID this?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Question (competiton style) in header



And when you have, what can we learn from it?

[Timmer]

Beeching report?

[grahame]

Beeching report?

Correct ... and showing what by the different types of lines? 

[eightf48544]

Jjust relooked at my set of Beeching maps.

Beeching Map No.2 showing density of freight  traffic.

Compared withMap 1 passenger traffic it's the split at Thingley Junction between 10,00 & 50,000 tons a week from Swindon and 5000 to 10000 on each branch which is the give away.

[grahame]

Correct (after the edit).  I was interested in it showing (ballpark) the same amount of traffic going each way at Thingley ... and also the relative traffic on lines to Weymouth, the Didcot to Winchester line and the Somerset and Dorset.

[eightf48544]

Weymouth quayside line was still in use, early tomatoes, Jersey Royals etc still offloaded to rail.

My first job at Waterloo was filing accident reports under Weymouth it was. Car (Reg No) hit by train (date). At least once a week during the summer. We used to think that the shunters had a sweep on who could hit the most cars in a season. Not many people realise how far a Mark 1 swings out on a bend and even though there were striped lines, drivers still thought we were joking being that far out from the rail.

Didcot Winchester was carrying a lot of Fawley oil traffic at that time keeping it off the mainlines to Basingstoke and Reading to Didcot. Including 9Fs.

S&D^▸ (Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway) was coal from collieries near Radstock the line was open to Mangotsfield until a spur was put in near Radstock onto Frome line.

[Lee]

Of course, there is the question of whether the traffic surveys were accurate :

Here is a letter from former Transport Minister Derek Twigg regarding the Melksham/TransWilts issue, followed by an analysis by grahame (link below.)
http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/melkshamrailway/145_Letter_from_Derek_Twigg.html

Quote from the above link :

"I has seen the statistics quoted by the Department for Transport at the time of the original franchise specification, and noted they were taken over a relatively short period (8 days) which he suspects might have included the Easter weekend. As someone with a University Degree which included a major statistics element, I can assure the minister that a sample of this size is insufficient to be statistically significant - he would need the statistics from around 15 to 20 days, chosen at random throughout the year, to be able to read anything into the figuures that could relate to overall usage on a service which may well have a seasonal element."

Quote from the Beeching Report :

"The traffic surveys, which were made in great detail, extended over only one week, the week ending on 23rd April, 1961, because it was impossible to continue the massive recording effort involved for a longer period. It was realised, therefore, that conclusions about some streams of traffic and about some parts of the system which are affected by seasonal changes could not be based firmly on the traffic surveys alone. Subject to this limitation, however, there can be little doubt about the general reliability of the picture revealed."