It's true. Beeching only wanted to mothball the railways after closing them down, keeping the tracks in place so that they could be brought back into service if seen as profitable again (like we're seeing with so many railway lines now). It was Marples' idea to tear them all up and pave over them with new roads. A transport minister who just so happens to be the chairman of a road construction company? Absolutely no conflict of interest there!
@@presfieldgoalie very true. What a set of plonkers. Now it is regrettable but was plainly ill thought out and short sighted from the outset what took place back then.
A wealthy landowner in Cornwall had a sub contracting company who took on people with a couple of days “training” and sent them off for a 8-10 hour van trip, which they slept in, to work on the potentially lethal 3rd rail system on the southern region. I wonder how much this was happening elsewhere.
I was on the the recieving end of that sort of thing literally hundreds of times! We would travel from Cornwall up to places like Salisbury, Wimbledon, Bristol, Twikenham to name just a few for a Saturday night shift and drive home after 12 hours on site., get home dinner time on Sunday. You were only ever paid for the time on site so it worked out about £3 PH if you factored in the time you were away from home! Im talking late 90's here. It was a nitemare, looking back I wonder how I stuck it but we did as we were desperate for the money. The Salisbury job was 2 , 12 hour days shifts, we actually slept in a hay barn on the Saturday night to save money on B&B. Often pitched up tents in fields back in those days, lived like tramps. The agency I worked for would threaten you with no work mid-week if you wanted a weekend off too. It was tough!!
What a right royal cock up. Some things are too important to be left to the whims of the private sector. P.S. People tend to think stuff like British Rail was government owned. It was actually public property. It was owned collectively by every UK citizen and its upkeep was one of the things we expected in return for paying our taxes, i.e., we were not getting something for nothing. When they flogged it off the government did not pay every citizen out, i.e., the actual owners were not compensated. It was a robbery on a massive scale. Much the same goes for all the other privatizations. For the most part it was not the government's property to sell. It was ours.
Some lovely footage of Ashford at the end there and the cheeky train ferry footage! They had to come off the train side by side so they didn't unsettle the ferry
Don't think my Dad ever forgave Railtrack, he'd been with BR for decades, rising from a train guard up to a network controller. Once Railtrack came along he was offered a "voluntary redundancy", don't think there was anything voluntary about it
Worst thing that ever happened was privatising the rail network. All because various governments didn't want to fix the railway network. used to go around the Hatfield bend alot.
02:47 that locomotive was the original design that Yugoslavian Railways manufactured under licence in the 1950s onwards, some still in use in Serbia and further afield. That orange livery is iconic!
In 19 Minutes of fabulous video, I can see a minimum of 28 places where the track would not be acceptable here in Switzerland. Everything from run down rails to bouncing sleepers and worn out points.
British infrastructure and logistics and power generation should all be controlled by government. Make it a private enterprise, it has one aim, and that is to make profit. Thatcher did not understand this.
Thatcher's Tenure set a Precedent for Mismanagement and indifference to Safety requirements. All that mattered was Dividends to be paid to shareholders...
True. And this didn't just apply to railways. Take the Zebrugge ferry disaster, and Townsend Thoresen's sloppy approach to safety, and general culture of complacency. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister at that time; but didn't see that it was her or her government's responsibility to insist on improvements to safety...but those of the ferry industry itself. Later, she and her (then) government were forced to act, and implement new safety procedures; but only after public outrage. Initially she simply wasn't bothered. That tells you everything.
Railways start from the trackbed up. If the track infrastructure isn't fit for purpose, neither is it fit to run trains on. Visual inspection and routine maintenance cannot be missed or overlooked, for fear of disastrous consequences if anything should fail in service. No room for sloppiness, or cavalier complacency. Lessons to be taken seriously as can be seen from the wrecks of previous occasions.
What makes it worse they knew about many of the track faults and chose to ignore them , wouldn't even put speed restrictions on for fear of cost from train operators
If the brits where to be succesfull with this then they should have kept the tracks as the ownership the state. Then operators could bid for certain areas...
Overreliance on contractors and their sub-contractors, not a good idea when it comes to critical infrastructure maintenance of any type (railroad, structural, aviation, maritime, etc.).
If the company was in administration, which is the same thing as bankruptcy, how was there any value at all to the equity? And any debt should've been paid off at a sharp discount. I would expect a Third World country to have done a better job of managing their rail system
Privatizing government owned assests doesnt work but contracting workers to a hit targets or face dismissal works generaly saves money and stops strikes imagine if every western countries still owned their airlines train services and other industries making money for government
This process of separating the operation called 'railway', has a really bad taste to it. The title alone smells of imminent failure and chaos. Why did Britain never ever look for ideas in the two countries that have trains that actually work: Japan and Switzerland. You can smoke everything else.
The government can be a major investor in a non profit. Or industry operators who bennefit from the bennefit from the work it does, usually being an independent facilitator. And it needs commercial financing to invest into the infrastructure it can then rent out to train operators. Pretty standard stuff..
@rogerk6180 Seem to have some loose usage of terminology here. Generally in economics and business investing implies inputting assets/money in a venture thru "direct ownership" (stock) with intention to recieve returns/dividends/profits or investing in "indirect ownership" (such as bonding) also implies returns in such as interest/profits. Both come with some degree of ownership control of the operation. Since by usual definition of a "non-profit" it cannot benefit any of its members/components by distributing its excess revenue above such as simple wages or purchase of goods and services but must put the extra revenues back into its own infrastructure therefore a non-profit in usually accepted economic terminology cannot have investors--only such as subsidies, donations, or gifts with NO "strings attached". The exception here would be a simple loan with perhaps some interest (to cover such as transfer/handling costs) involved in the repayment but no ownership or control involved.
Always made me laugh when the unions blamed privatisation for causing Hatfield, Potters Bar and Ladbroke Grove accidents whilst forgetting Clapham Junction and all the other accidents under a nationalised BR.
Clapham Junction crash brought about the Hidden report governing working hours / days , BR learned from their mistake's , then along came rail track ignoring all lessons learned just for profit . Union's were totally correct to blame rail track , the company was a disorganized shambles driven by profit and ignoring safety . I know first hand as worked through the Rail track times on the railway , inept privatization still erodes safety on our railways
Capitalist crap. I was a big user of BR and it was fine. No country has a perfect railway system. It was all part of the tory plan to mess up anything connected to Socialism, making things like BR look bad by underfunding them as they have done with the NHS also. BR's modernisation plan was not a failure as far as I could see. You talk a lot of biased and inflexible journalistic baloney at times. Everywhere privatisation is a ghastly mess. We now have no real rail industry like we have no car industry mainly due to lousy governments and inept management. Nationalised or privatised, if the people running the industries are incompetant idiots then it will constantly fail proving competition is divisive and confused and nowhere near as productive as collaboration/cooperation.
Far more cash (Tax payers ) goes into the privatized railway (adjusted for inflation ) makes you wonder what BR would be like now with the same investment as TOCs get now
I'm retired at 27, went from Grass to Grace. This video here reminds me of my transformation from a nobody to good home, honest wife, $35k biweekly and a good daughter full of ❤️ I’m forever grateful Rose M Elaine
1:43 This British Rail InterCity 125 High Speed Diesel Electric Express Passenger Train Is A Bit Like The Japanese Bullet Train In Japan. Thanks Mate. XXxxx ❤😂😅😂😅😂😅😂😅😂😅😂🚅🇬🇧🇯🇪🇦🇺🇨🇳🇺🇲
It wasnt Beeching, he was a Scapegoat it was Marples the transport minister who had vested interest in transport companies.
It's true. Beeching only wanted to mothball the railways after closing them down, keeping the tracks in place so that they could be brought back into service if seen as profitable again (like we're seeing with so many railway lines now).
It was Marples' idea to tear them all up and pave over them with new roads.
A transport minister who just so happens to be the chairman of a road construction company? Absolutely no conflict of interest there!
@@presfieldgoalie very true.
What a set of plonkers.
Now it is regrettable but was plainly ill thought out and short sighted from the outset what took place back then.
A yoeman's work as always, sir. These rework videos are great - brings a lovely shine to stuff that some of us didn't see from early on. Love it!
A wealthy landowner in Cornwall had a sub contracting company who took on people with a couple of days “training” and sent them off for a 8-10 hour van trip, which they slept in, to work on the potentially lethal 3rd rail system on the southern region. I wonder how much this was happening elsewhere.
I was on the the recieving end of that sort of thing literally hundreds of times! We would travel from Cornwall up to places like Salisbury, Wimbledon, Bristol, Twikenham to name just a few for a Saturday night shift and drive home after 12 hours on site., get home dinner time on Sunday. You were only ever paid for the time on site so it worked out about £3 PH if you factored in the time you were away from home! Im talking late 90's here. It was a nitemare, looking back I wonder how I stuck it but we did as we were desperate for the money. The Salisbury job was 2 , 12 hour days shifts, we actually slept in a hay barn on the Saturday night to save money on B&B. Often pitched up tents in fields back in those days, lived like tramps. The agency I worked for would threaten you with no work mid-week if you wanted a weekend off too. It was tough!!
People should have gone to prison over Hatfield, Potters Bar etc. Life is cheap in the UK.
Yes, I agree completely.
The world's gone woke. Why don't you just send every minor criminal to prison
Great Heck too but he got a slap on the wrist
@tangiers365: ‘woke’ 😂
“Corporate manslaughter” is probably the least exercised criminal offense ever.
Well done, Ruairidh, a good and well-deserved hatchet-job!
Currently live in Hatfield myself. I always take the time to pay my respects at the memorial on Great North Road
What a right royal cock up. Some things are too important to be left to the whims of the private sector.
P.S. People tend to think stuff like British Rail was government owned. It was actually public property. It was owned collectively by every UK citizen and its upkeep was one of the things we expected in return for paying our taxes, i.e., we were not getting something for nothing. When they flogged it off the government did not pay every citizen out, i.e., the actual owners were not compensated. It was a robbery on a massive scale. Much the same goes for all the other privatizations. For the most part it was not the government's property to sell. It was ours.
100%
Never trust a Tory. Especially when they offer to hold your wallet and wrist watch for you
Too many are easily fooled, take brexit as a prime example.
Some lovely footage of Ashford at the end there and the cheeky train ferry footage! They had to come off the train side by side so they didn't unsettle the ferry
I don't think Railtrack EVER had anything other than bad publicity.
I love how you’re doing remasters of your older videos
A video on my birthday? Well, now you're flattering me😅 Thanks, Rory!
I want my taxes and my train fare to go towards Infrastructure, not share-holder margin.
Don't think my Dad ever forgave Railtrack, he'd been with BR for decades, rising from a train guard up to a network controller. Once Railtrack came along he was offered a "voluntary redundancy", don't think there was anything voluntary about it
Imagine how different our railways would be if British Rail still existed... hopefully I can change that one day.
The Uk railway network has perhaps one of the most fascinating and ups to downs history in the entire world ❤🚄
Worst thing that ever happened was privatising the rail network. All because various governments didn't want to fix the railway network. used to go around the Hatfield bend alot.
02:47 that locomotive was the original design that Yugoslavian Railways manufactured under licence in the 1950s onwards, some still in use in Serbia and further afield. That orange livery is iconic!
Whoa! Are you saying things get so much worse once they are privatized?! Well I never would have guessed
Incredible they were even allowed to oversee the network with all the things mentioned😢
In 19 Minutes of fabulous video, I can see a minimum of 28 places where the track would not be acceptable here in Switzerland. Everything from run down rails to bouncing sleepers and worn out points.
These issues must have been remedied as a quick Google search says the UK has one of the safest railway networks in Europe.
British infrastructure and logistics and power generation should all be controlled by government.
Make it a private enterprise, it has one aim, and that is to make profit.
Thatcher did not understand this.
Oh no, I think she understood it perfectly.
What I don't think she understood was that making a profit isn't the sole meaning of life.
There was a period of time during the nineties when there seemed to be a rail accident every few weeks. Horrible.
Thatcher's Tenure set a Precedent for Mismanagement and indifference to Safety requirements.
All that mattered was Dividends to be paid to shareholders...
True. And this didn't just apply to railways. Take the Zebrugge ferry disaster, and Townsend Thoresen's sloppy approach to safety, and general culture of complacency.
Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister at that time; but didn't see that it was her or her government's responsibility to insist on improvements to safety...but those of the ferry industry itself.
Later, she and her (then) government were forced to act, and implement new safety procedures; but only after public outrage. Initially she simply wasn't bothered. That tells you everything.
as usual,the Govt decision makers walk away from any responsibility
Railways start from the trackbed up.
If the track infrastructure isn't fit for purpose, neither is it fit to run trains on.
Visual inspection and routine maintenance cannot be missed or overlooked, for fear of disastrous consequences if anything should fail in service.
No room for sloppiness, or cavalier complacency.
Lessons to be taken seriously as can be seen from the wrecks of previous occasions.
There is no room for privatisation and greedy shareholders.
What makes it worse they knew about many of the track faults and chose to ignore them , wouldn't even put speed restrictions on for fear of cost from train operators
Every time I see Balfour Beatty now on the side of a van I cringe at it. Fascinating how incredibly poorly the railways were handled.
@ 1:11 is that train running on Jacobs Bogies? Looks like the coach layout would suopport that sensible decision?
If the brits where to be succesfull with this then they should have kept the tracks as the ownership the state.
Then operators could bid for certain areas...
Awesome video as always 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Hopefully the lives lost wearent for nothing , that we have globaly learned from it....
We had / have the same nonsense in Denmark except for the accidents.
Overreliance on contractors and their sub-contractors, not a good idea when it comes to critical infrastructure maintenance of any type (railroad, structural, aviation, maritime, etc.).
If the company was in administration, which is the same thing as bankruptcy, how was there any value at all to the equity? And any debt should've been paid off at a sharp discount. I would expect a Third World country to have done a better job of managing their rail system
The great Buddliea and infrastructure neglect campaign
RIP the ppl that lost their lives.
What an utter shit show.
Looking forward to your video on Royal Mail and its ongoing demise
Privatizing government owned assests doesnt work but contracting workers to a hit targets or face dismissal works generaly saves money and stops strikes imagine if every western countries still owned their airlines train services and other industries making money for government
This process of separating the operation called 'railway', has a really bad taste to it. The title alone smells of imminent failure and chaos. Why did Britain never ever look for ideas in the two countries that have trains that actually work: Japan and Switzerland. You can smoke everything else.
how can a non-profit have investors? and why would Network rail get comercial financing!? this is so baffling
The government can be a major investor in a non profit. Or industry operators who bennefit from the bennefit from the work it does, usually being an independent facilitator.
And it needs commercial financing to invest into the infrastructure it can then rent out to train operators.
Pretty standard stuff..
@rogerk6180 Seem to have some loose usage of terminology here. Generally in economics and business investing implies inputting assets/money in a venture thru "direct ownership" (stock) with intention to recieve returns/dividends/profits or investing in "indirect ownership" (such as bonding) also implies returns in such as interest/profits. Both come with some degree of ownership control of the operation.
Since by usual definition of a "non-profit" it cannot benefit any of its members/components by distributing its excess revenue above such as simple wages or purchase of goods and services but must put the extra revenues back into its own infrastructure therefore a non-profit in usually accepted economic terminology cannot have investors--only such as subsidies, donations, or gifts with NO "strings attached". The exception here would be a simple loan with perhaps some interest (to cover such as transfer/handling costs) involved in the repayment but no ownership or control involved.
The privatisation came with obligatory disasters, thanks Tories!
See Germany if you want to know what happens if you continue your lack of investment.
Always made me laugh when the unions blamed privatisation for causing Hatfield, Potters Bar and Ladbroke Grove accidents whilst forgetting Clapham Junction and all the other accidents under a nationalised BR.
Accidents happen, but Hatfield & Potters Bar were a direct result of poor maintenance, caused by private companies putting profit before safety.
Clapham Junction crash brought about the Hidden report governing working hours / days , BR learned from their mistake's , then along came rail track ignoring all lessons learned just for profit . Union's were totally correct to blame rail track , the company was a disorganized shambles driven by profit and ignoring safety . I know first hand as worked through the Rail track times on the railway , inept privatization still erodes safety on our railways
What an absolute mess... Railtrack not your video of course 😂
Trackage honestly.
Capitalist crap. I was a big user of BR and it was fine. No country has a perfect railway system. It was all part of the tory plan to mess up anything connected to Socialism, making things like BR look bad by underfunding them as they have done with the NHS also. BR's modernisation plan was not a failure as far as I could see. You talk a lot of biased and inflexible journalistic baloney at times. Everywhere privatisation is a ghastly mess. We now have no real rail industry like we have no car industry mainly due to lousy governments and inept management. Nationalised or privatised, if the people running the industries are incompetant idiots then it will constantly fail proving competition is divisive and confused and nowhere near as productive as collaboration/cooperation.
Agreed!
Far more cash (Tax payers ) goes into the privatized railway (adjusted for inflation ) makes you wonder what BR would be like now with the same investment as TOCs get now
I wonder, is it supposed to be "Railway Station" or "Train Station"? Does it matter? I feel "Train Station" is likely to American.
I'm retired at 27, went from Grass to Grace. This video here reminds me of my transformation from a nobody to good home, honest wife, $35k biweekly and a good daughter full of ❤️ I’m forever grateful Rose M Elaine
Wow 😱I know her too
Miss Rose M Elaine is a remarkable individual whom has brought immense positivity and inspiration into my life.......
I started with a miserly $1500. The results have been mind blowing I must say TBH!........
How can someone get connection to that Woman y'all speaking bout !!!?
How can someone get connection to that Woman y'all speaking bout !!!?......
🇺🇸+𝟏𝟒𝟓𝟖
By ‘reworked’ you seem to mean ‘renarrated, only now I sound like an absolute tw@.’
1:43 This British Rail InterCity 125 High Speed Diesel Electric Express Passenger Train Is A Bit Like The Japanese Bullet Train In Japan. Thanks Mate. XXxxx ❤😂😅😂😅😂😅😂😅😂😅😂🚅🇬🇧🇯🇪🇦🇺🇨🇳🇺🇲