Beeching cuts

[whole diary]

[grandsire]

Although with the benefit of hindsight a lot of the 1960s closures look foolish, nevertheless at the time they were, in my opinion, largely inevitable in that BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) was losing huge chunks of money, the government of the day didn't wish to subsidise further and hence BR managers had to look for savings where they could ( and they did try modernisation of lines rather than closing e.g 4 wheel railbuses).   And to be fair to Beeching himself - he was fulfilling the brief set to him by government which was to try and get the railways onto a reasonably good financial footing.

[JayMac]

British Railways was also losing huge chunks of money because it wasn't being managed particularly well. That is, at the very top and in Whitehall. The Modernisation Plan was ill conceived and actioned.

As a sop to the regions, differing ideas as to how best to modernise were allowed rather than the system as a whole working together to find the best solutions. Thus we had Diesel Electrics, developed alongside Diesel Hydraulics and to a lesser extent Gas Turbines. Added to that were far too many types of locomotives developed to replace steam engines. Done mostly on a like for like basis rather than using economies of scale to develop multi-purpose locomotives. We had a plethora of different ideas about electrification, leading to numerous different systems installed across the network. Then there was the costly mistake of building freight marshaling yards at a time when goods traffic was moving away from small wagons toward containerisation.

All that money was wasted before Dr Beeching fetched his axe from the woodshed and got out the whetstone.

A missed opportunity and one that, if better conceived, could well have seen more parts of the network remain viable. That's not to say though that some lines really did need to close. But perhaps if the Modernisation Plan had been better thought out, then Dr Beeching would've only needed his pruning shears rather than his chopper!

[Umberleigh]

The North Devon (Tarka^▸ (Line from Barnstaple to Exeter)) Line had a lucky escape (also the Oke/Meldon line, of course). In the early 60's The Exe bridges at Cowley were on the verge of collapse, with plans in place to provide road transport replacement. The  cost to replace them was ^600k in today's money. Apparently the bean-counters in London considered this to be a gross misuse of public funds and wanted the line shut.

However, the Barnstaple - Taunton line had already been earmarked for closure and it was considered politically unnaceptable to sever the rail link north of Exeter.

Once the decision to keep the line had been taken, the cost of the new bridges 'miraculously' dropped to around ^400k (I'm told) - strange, eh?

I uncovered this tale in the National Archives a couple of years ago and wrote a piece for the Tarka Rail Association newsletter.

In 1965, BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) told the Ministry of Transport that the Cowley Bridges needed replacing at a cost of over ^300k.  They said that although the Barnstaple and Okehampton lines had not been included in the Beeching list, they felt the expenditure could not be justified.

They looked at keeping the Taunton line for Barnstaple and retaining a line to Launceston from Plymouth for the Okehampton catchment area.  Both were felt to be dead losses so they applied for permission to put both the Exeter - Barnstaple and Exeter - Okehampton lines up for closure.

The Government told them (in no uncertain terms) that Barnstaple was not to be left without a rail service and shortly after the BRB^‡(resolve) authorised the ^300k spend on the Cowley Bridges (through very gritted teeth.)  The price for the bridge works didn't miraculously drop.

Barnstaple's rail link was saved in 1965 and when Beeching was still BR Chairman. 

Sitting in the very quiet reading room at the National Archives seeing this story unfold in the papers I was reading was quite something. 

Richard Burningham
Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership
(BR Travel Centre Manager, Barnstaple, 1985 -7)

Hi Richard

Thanks for the correction. Fascinating all the same.

Just goes to show you can't believe everything you're told on a long, dark trip to Barnstaple

Regards

Paul




Edit note: Quote marks fixed. CfN.

[Phil]

In the spirit of the season, a cracker joke for you:

Q. Why did Dr Beeching's Christmas tree look rather pathetic?
A. He'd chopped off half the branches.

[Electric train]

It should be remembered that Beeching's main architect was the Government Minister Ernest Marples who was at one time a director of Marples, Ridgway who won the contract to build the M1 not saying he had a vested interest as he did resign his directorate before being appointed Minister for Transport but his wife still held a lot of shares in Marples, Ridgway.

Since the dawn of the railways in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) the Government have interfered in one way or another, the grouping into the big 4 in 1923 was the way the Government bailed out of having to settle lots of compensation claims due to War Work, even today the Government like to tinker even worse when the colour of the rosette changes

[Chafford1]

 In 1963, the Southern and Western Regions did a survey of the competing routes to the South West of England and found that five times as many West Country passengers used the Paddington route to Exeter and beyond, and that, although the SR^‡(resolve) route was shorter, the WR route was quicker. They also concluded that concentrating expresses on the SR route would either require a new spur at Exeter, or time wasting reversal of all Plymouth and Exeter trains at Exeter St Davids (no HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) or DVTs^‡(resolve) in 1963!). Focusing expresses on the Southern Route would also have resulted in a less attractive direct service from Taunton to London.

Given the arguments above and also that the Southern lines west of Salisbury were losing money heavily from the late 1950s (in 1957, these lines were failing to cover direct costs by ^800,000), the Western Region announced in February 1964 that the WR route would be the trunk route with the SR route restricted to serving a limited number of intermediate stations between Salisbury and Exeter. Over the next 3 years, the WR removed loss making branch lines (e.g. Axminster, Seaton, Sidmouth) and Salisbury - Exeter stopping services, and further cut costs in 1967 by singling the line, leaving the 2 hourly semi-fast service which ran in various iterations until December 2009.

You can argue in retrospect that the WR pruned the services too much, but the cost cutting made sense at the time, and their plan to focus on semi-fast services was, in my opinion, the right one for the long term survival of the line.

[Btline]

I'd agree with most of that, apart from axing the branches to the holiday destinations. It's as if they wanted fewer people on the mainline. They could have been run very cheaply with a singe car DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit), no signals, no station staff just to connect to the 2 hourly trains.

[The Grecian]

i think there was a general view at the times that railways were a Victorian relic and would be limited to a few major routes in due course (as per general beliefs about Beeching II and that all non-trunk routes selected for development would be closed).

That said, the original 1967 singling of the Salisbury-Exeter line was fairly absurd. It was as follows:

Exeter St Davids - Pinhoe - double track (Pinhoe had been closed in 1966, so why create a junction?)
Pinhoe - Honiton - single
Honiton loop
Honiton - Chard Junction - single with a long siding at Seaton Junction (lasted till around 1986)
Chard Junction loop (again Chard Junction station was closed in 1966, so why have a loop there?)
Chard Junction - Sherborne - single. There had been a plan to close Yeovil Junction and make all Yeovil passengers get a bus to/from Sherborne as Junction is some way out of town. Due to major opposition it never happened.
Sherborne - Templecombe - double (again Templecombe closed in 1966 - though the obvious comment that it ceases to be double before the platform does at least have that excuse)
Templecombe - Gillingham - single
Gillingham loop
Gillingham - Wilton South - single (again Wilton closed in 1966)

You have to wonder why 4 different locations were chosen for potential passing when no trains called there at the time - stopping trains in the middle of nowhere can seem a tad odd. You also have to wonder why 2 of the single sections were nearly 20 miles in length for a 2 hourly service - it doesn't give much recovery time. As it happens Yeovil-Sherborne's second track was reinstated later in 1967 because the timetable couldn't cope as it was. (Tisbury loop was added in 1986 - it's outside the station because the other platform had been sold off. Axminster obviously got its loop in 2009).

There was certainly a case for saving on costs, but it does look like there was an air of trying to ensure as quickly as possible the Waterloo route could never compete again.

[RichardB]

I would say that an old boss of mine, an Exonian, John Beer who was SWT^▸ (South West Trains)'s West of England Line Manager said to me in 1994 that he believed the 67 singling saved the line.

I was a bit sceptical then (thinking of fast competing services) but have long since changed my mind.  I was lucky enough to be at Axminster a year ago for the opening of the passing loop - that's the key, clockface hourly services and the route to a perfect division of traffic - Exeter fast and semi-fast to Paddington, Waterloo hourly stoppers.

What would any of the 60s railwaymen/women on the Waterloo line have given for a traditional SR^‡(resolve) clockface service.........

[Chafford1]

i think there was a general view at the times that railways were a Victorian relic and would be limited to a few major routes in due course (as per general beliefs about Beeching II and that all non-trunk routes selected for development would be closed).

That said, the original 1967 singling of the Salisbury-Exeter line was fairly absurd. It was as follows:

Exeter St Davids - Pinhoe - double track (Pinhoe had been closed in 1966, so why create a junction?)
Pinhoe - Honiton - single
Honiton loop
Honiton - Chard Junction - single with a long siding at Seaton Junction (lasted till around 1986)
Chard Junction loop (again Chard Junction station was closed in 1966, so why have a loop there?)
Chard Junction - Sherborne - single. There had been a plan to close Yeovil Junction and make all Yeovil passengers get a bus to/from Sherborne as Junction is some way out of town. Due to major opposition it never happened.
Sherborne - Templecombe - double (again Templecombe closed in 1966 - though the obvious comment that it ceases to be double before the platform does at least have that excuse)
Templecombe - Gillingham - single
Gillingham loop
Gillingham - Wilton South - single (again Wilton closed in 1966)

You have to wonder why 4 different locations were chosen for potential passing when no trains called there at the time - stopping trains in the middle of nowhere can seem a tad odd. You also have to wonder why 2 of the single sections were nearly 20 miles in length for a 2 hourly service - it doesn't give much recovery time. As it happens Yeovil-Sherborne's second track was reinstated later in 1967 because the timetable couldn't cope as it was. (Tisbury loop was added in 1986 - it's outside the station because the other platform had been sold off. Axminster obviously got its loop in 2009).

There was certainly a case for saving on costs, but it does look like there was an air of trying to ensure as quickly as possible the Waterloo route could never compete again.

Reading the contemporary articles from Modern Railways (and this was quite an issue in the mid '60s), it's clear that saving money was the only game in town.

From Modern Railways April 1967:

'Paddington's argument is that what is offered now is better than no railway at all. The Parliamentary mandate to make rail services pay or abandon them has not been rescinded - not yet, at any rate. On its past financial perfomance, the Salisbury- Exeter line was a candidate for extinction, but the WR has rather striven to give it the best possible service consistent with getting its costs and revenue in balance'

On track singling:

'A six mile stretch of double track is being left between Templecombe and Sherborne and the new timetable is framed so that the two hourly expresses each way will pass each other on this section at speed. Honiton, Chard Junction and Gillingham will also have short passing loops; the first of these will see some scheduled passing movements between expresses and other traffic, but the other two are chiefly standbys for an emergency'

[Chafford1]

I would say that an old boss of mine, an Exonian, John Beer who was SWT^▸ (South West Trains)'s West of England Line Manager said to me in 1994 that he believed the 67 singling saved the line.

I was a bit sceptical then (thinking of fast competing services) but have long since changed my mind.  I was lucky enough to be at Axminster a year ago for the opening of the passing loop - that's the key, clockface hourly services and the route to a perfect division of traffic - Exeter fast and semi-fast to Paddington, Waterloo hourly stoppers.

What would any of the 60s railwaymen/women on the Waterloo line have given for a traditional SR^‡(resolve) clockface service.........

There's certainly a good division of services to London, today. However, the intention for the Waterloo route was for a limited stop semi-fast service (still described as 'expresses' in the 1960s articles in Modern Railways and notably still offering full restaurant car services) serving the 6 main centres between Salisbury and Exeter: Gillingham, Sherborne, Yeovil, Crewkerne, Axminster and Honiton (with a few trains stopping at Whimple, and Tisbury). However, today's trains on this line all serve 9 or 10 stations (with Cranbrook still to open), so the potential time advantages for a limited stop semi-fast service have not been realised.

[eightf48544]

To add a bit further to teh singling of teh Slisbury Exter, it is probably little know that in teh early 60s the Southerrn S&T^▸ (Signalling and Telegraph) department was busy putting in colour light distant signals in at most boxes on the line.

I remember because it was part of my job to help the Special A clerk amend the specific signal box instructions for the box when its colour lights were installed.

The change was to include, "During fog and falling snow when single working was in place on the down/up line between  A & B unless fogmen were in place fog working (double block) should be implemented.

The logic behind this instruction which would only be implemented in very unlikely event of both single line working being in operation during fog or falling snow, was that if a train was travelling wrong line past the distant signal because the signal was focussed towards  the right line the driver might miss it (and obviously no AWS^▸ (Automatic Warning System) magnet).

That was how we did safety in the 60s.

The tragedy was that all that investment was ripped out when th line was singled

[Chafford1]

The signalling changes and new track layouts for the 3 stage 1967 singling programme can be found on the Signalling Record Website here:

http://www.s-r-s.org.uk/archivesignals/brwr/1967-s2507.pdf

http://www.s-r-s.org.uk/archivesignals/brwr/1967-s2511.pdf

http://www.s-r-s.org.uk/archivesignals/brwr/1967-s2515.pdf

And when they found that their original plan was flawed, redoubling between Sherborne and Yeovil Junction:


http://www.s-r-s.org.uk/archivesignals/brwr/1967-s2528.pdf


And the January 1965 Waterloo - Exeter timetable is here - note the lack of a through 11am train from Waterloo after the ACE was withdrawn in September 1964:

http://www.timetableworld.com/book_viewer.php?id=12&section_id=12

Modern Railways April,October and November 1964 and April 1967 cover the Waterloo - Exeter changes is some detail. I have PDF versions which I can email, if anyone is interested. They are too large to attach here.
PM me (with your email address) if you would like me to email you the PDFs.

[34104]

In 1963, the Southern and Western Regions did a survey of the competing routes to the South West of England and found that five times as many West Country passengers used the Paddington route to Exeter and beyond, and that, although the SR^‡(resolve) route was shorter, the WR route was quicker. They also concluded that concentrating expresses on the SR route would either require a new spur at Exeter, or time wasting reversal of all Plymouth and Exeter trains at Exeter St Davids (no HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) or DVTs^‡(resolve) in 1963!). Focusing expresses on the Southern Route would also have resulted in a less attractive direct service from Taunton to London.

Given the arguments above and also that the Southern lines west of Salisbury were losing money heavily from the late 1950s (in 1957, these lines were failing to cover direct costs by ^800,000), the Western Region announced in February 1964 that the WR route would be the trunk route with the SR route restricted to serving a limited number of intermediate stations between Salisbury and Exeter. Over the next 3 years, the WR removed loss making branch lines (e.g. Axminster, Seaton, Sidmouth) and Salisbury - Exeter stopping services, and further cut costs in 1967 by singling the line, leaving the 2 hourly semi-fast service which ran in various iterations until December 2009.

You can argue in retrospect that the WR pruned the services too much, but the cost cutting made sense at the time, and their plan to focus on semi-fast services was, in my opinion, the right one for the long term survival of the line.

Why would there have been a need for reversal if trains started at Waterloo?

[Chafford1]

In 1963, the Southern and Western Regions did a survey of the competing routes to the South West of England and found that five times as many West Country passengers used the Paddington route to Exeter and beyond, and that, although the SR^‡(resolve) route was shorter, the WR route was quicker. They also concluded that concentrating expresses on the SR route would either require a new spur at Exeter, or time wasting reversal of all Plymouth and Penzance trains at Exeter St Davids (no HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) or DVTs^‡(resolve) in 1963!). Focusing expresses on the Southern Route would also have resulted in a less attractive direct service from Taunton to London.

Given the arguments above and also that the Southern lines west of Salisbury were losing money heavily from the late 1950s (in 1957, these lines were failing to cover direct costs by ^800,000), the Western Region announced in February 1964 that the WR route would be the trunk route with the SR route restricted to serving a limited number of intermediate stations between Salisbury and Exeter. Over the next 3 years, the WR removed loss making branch lines (e.g. Axminster, Seaton, Sidmouth) and Salisbury - Exeter stopping services, and further cut costs in 1967 by singling the line, leaving the 2 hourly semi-fast service which ran in various iterations until December 2009.

You can argue in retrospect that the WR pruned the services too much, but the cost cutting made sense at the time, and their plan to focus on semi-fast services was, in my opinion, the right one for the long term survival of the line.

Why would there have been a need for reversal if trains started at Waterloo?

Trains travelling from Waterloo enter Exeter St Davids Station from the south whereas trains from Paddington enter the same station from the north. Therefore if Waterloo had been the principal terminus for the South West from 1964 onwards, trains entering St Davids would, if they were to continue to Plymouth and Penzance along the favoured GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) route (rather than the SR's line via Okehampton to Plymouth), have had to have left St Davids from the same end of the station that they entered it. The argument was that this would have been time wasting as it would have required an engine change for every train going beyond Exeter (or at least detaching the engine from one end of the train and attaching it to the other end).  The same changes would have also been necessary for every Waterloo bound train.