Ian Hislop & Beeching Report Anniversary - BBC4 Thursday 28/03/13 2100hrs

[whole diary]

[G.Uard]

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.

[Electric train]

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.

[Btline]

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.

[Electric train]

They're both as bad as each other.

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

[willc]

Fortunately the person that Thatcher put in as Beeching Mk2^▸ (Mark 2 coach) turned out the be a good freind of the railways, Peter Parker

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^▸ (British Rail(ways)) 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.

[Lee]

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

[eightf48544]

Whilst I agee some lines proposed in the Beeching Report should not have closed Portishead springs to mind in FGW^▸ (First Great Western) territory and some of LSWR^▸ (London South Western Railway) 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.

[Electric train]

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

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^‡(resolve) the ^60,000 to keep it open.

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.

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.

[grahame]

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

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

[eightf48544]

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. 

[bemmy]

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^▸ (Member of Parliament) 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. 

[Lee]

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?

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.

[ChrisB]

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

Duration: 1 hour

Ian Hislop brings his customary humour, analysis and wit to the notorious Beeching Report of 1963, which led to the closure of a third of the nation's railway lines and stations and forced tens of thousands of people into the car and onto the road.

Was author Dr Richard Beeching little more than Genghis Khan with a slide rule, ruthlessly hacking away at Britain's rail network in a misguided quest for profitability, or was he the fall guy for short-sighted government policies that favoured the car over the train?

Ian also investigates the fallout of Beeching's plan, discovering what was lost to the British landscape, communities and ways of life when the railway map shrank, and recalls the halcyon days of train travel, celebrated by John Betjeman.

Ian travels from Cornwall to the Scottish borders, meeting those responsible and those affected and questioning whether such brutal measures could be justified. Knowing what we know now, with trains far more energy efficient and environmentally sound than cars, perhaps Beeching's plan was the biggest folly of the 1960s?

Repeat from 2008

[quakers yard]

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^▸ (United Kingdom) in perspective!

[trainer]

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.