What I think is an interesting and relevant story. In 1971, I was going to Oxford, aged 18, for my first university term. I took a very large suitcase to Coulsdon South station for separate transmission to the college. I was told that the station did not handle freight. I said it was not freight, it was “Luggage in Advance”, which all manned stations must handle. After a long argument, I made the chap look up his book of regulations, and I was right. Having paid and handed over the suitcase, I then booked my ticket thence to Oxford. He offered me a ticket via London Victoria, the Underground, London Paddington, and Reading. I refused, saying I did not want to bugger about on the Underground with hand luggage. He told me I had to, there was no alternative. I insisted there was, I wanted a ticket via Redhill and Reading (thus avoiding London and transferring between termini). No more changes required, just moving platforms at the same station. Far easier. After another long argument, I made him get out his universal booking guide, and, indeed, I could get a ticket using this route, and it was, moreover, cheaper than the ticket he had said I was obliged to purchase. 50p cheaper: then, that was two pints of lager at a pub! A second story, much on the same lines (pun intended). In 1977 I arrived at Gatwick Airport, and asked for a railway ticket to Huddersfield. The same story: Gatwick-Victoria-Kings Cross-Wakefield-Huddersfield. No, I said, Gatwick-Stockport-Stalybridge-Huddersfield. No farting about with luggage on the bloody Underground (which is certainly, even now, not fit for that purpose). No: it isn't possible. I pointed out that it certainly was, in fact, there was such a train in twenty minutes, and he had better sell me a bloody ticket pronto. Look up the universal guide. He did, I got the ticket, and it was cheaper than the one he tried to sell me, this time by pounds. These stories show, that after Beeching not only did everything seem to be centred on London, with all other connections in the network cut, even the ones that still existed were deliberately ignored, in order that, in due course, they could be shut down too, as “uneconomic”. It is unsurprising they became uneconomic if the bloody staff were trained to lie to the passengers about their existence!
Good on you. I’ve suffered with luggage on the Tube a few times, indeed once making a transfer at Bank 😱, I don’t blame you one bit for looking up your options beforehand. Thankfully by the time I started travelling all over by the railway in the 00s the tickets were valid for any route I chose to take, although some stipulated not via London and those were usually cheaper. Though even then some ticket machines would default to the via London ticket at a higher price and you had to manually select to show all fares and pick the lowest one! In a way I suppose that’s the exact thing you describe doing - except instead of arguing with some bloke to get out his book, I was silently pressing the button to decline the “suggestion” and demand the machine consult its own “book”. But the open-endedness also gave me the option of taking the scenic route if I pleased, and not having to make that decision hours beforehand either. Sometimes the ladies checking the tickets on the trains would question why I was out that way, and I’d explain the connections I’d been on and was going to take before they stamped it (or notched a circle out of it).
Great story, and I have to say that modern online systems are no better. I know someone who goes regularly between Coventry and Swindon. Even a 2 second look at the map shows that the shortest route is via Oxford and Didcot, but the system will insist on sending her via Birmingham and Gloucester.
The sad thing was that the track bed was not protected for these closed routes. So, this stops reinstatement for many lost lines where there is a desire 😔
Realistically, British Rail, as any other business, could not be expected to just leave redundant assets indefinitely on the off chance they may be useful decades in the future. Even though the lines could have been mothballed, they would still need to be maintained (such as keeping bridges over roads from collapse). It wouldn't have made financial sense then, particularly in light of BR haemorrhaging money.
It was never realistically going to happen. The Watford to Croxley rail link was a track bed not build on that was still in use up to early 1990s. I haven't checked the actual date. All it needed was about 400 metres to join to the Metroplitan Line. Cost at cancellation believed to be £220 million pounds. For a mile of existing trackbed and 400 metres new?????
I read somewhere that some of the compulsory purchase orders in the 1900s for railways companies to acquire land had a clause which stated that if the land was no longer needed for a railway it had to be offered for sale to the original family (or descendants of that family) so some of the track bed land had to be sold off whether the railway company or government liked it or not.
Sorry to go political but Beeching's boss was E. Marples who owned a civil engineering company that built Hammersmith flyover among many other road projects . The loss of railways was his gain. To comply with Parliament rules he eventually sold his shares to his wife on the proviso he could buy them back at original price. The Tories have kept their noses in the public money trough for ever.
Yes, Marples was a director in Marples Ridgeway (MR), but in Oct 1951 when he was made a junior cabinet minister, he was required to resign his directorship and provide proof to the standards committee of that time. This would also be registered at Companies House, and the Company Secretary of MR would need to alter the articles of association and recruit another director, if needed. Marples was required to do as Parliamentary law specifies this and as cabinet ministers and above are required to do do today. From that point on he had no involvement in the day to day running of his former firm, nor was he involved in any face to face contract negotiations. He was also required by that same parliamentary law to dispose of this shares in his former company. This he did not do and it was revealed in the papers in 1960 that was the case. He stated in Hansard in 1960 that "perhaps I should sell the shares to my wife (sic)." She denied having received any shares in two newspaper interviews at that time, in spite of being harassed and harangued by reporters. To date no reliable evidence or proof has been forth coming as to where his shares went. It is thought that his shares went into an overseas trust as he had business interests in Lichtenstein, or they went into a Blind trust as is used today. Beside this, you do not sell shares to your wife you transfer them, and that depends if she was a Director in MR, and what the prevailing rules on share ownership were at the time. It should be remembered, but people conveniently, ignore the fact that the same arguments could be applied to Marples as he was a junior cabinet minister in Housing, before he became the Minister of Transport in 1959.
Marples is as much the villain of the piece as Beeching, because he commissioned Beeching (a leading businessman) and gave him his economically-focussed remit - hence the lack of strategic thinking or consideration of non-economic benefits of retaining parts of the railway network.
There are many, but one stand-out example is the Great Central Railway, which was the last trunk line constructed in Britain (at the end of the 19th century) before HS1 to the Kent Coast. It provided an alternative North-South route capable of taking express passenger & freight trains and was designed to accommodate the Continental loading guage. Had the route been preserved it might have provided the additional capacity which HS2 is intended to release on the West Coast Main Line; and perhaps allow through trains from Europe to run as far as the North of England.
One of Beeching's biggest mistakes was the closure of the Edinburgh - Carlisle line. But things are looking good. Already the line has been re-opened down to Tweedbank. The beautiful preserved station at Melrose, just beyond, will be worth waiting for.
South of Hawick nobody main any money on the line not even the NBR for whom it was built. Part of the board of directors wanted to sell off the line within a few years of it opening. Funny how people forgot things.
Great to hear. the closure of that line was a significant social loss, especially on the Carlisle end where the local economy was devastated by this loss of connectivity. Reopening that line would mean a lot for the people of Carlisle.
Even now, under a Tory government, it was underfunded and underengineered. Overbridges have been built for single track only. A proper efficient survey of demand and predicted use would have dictated double track. Singling lines was yet another anti-rail strategy designed to compromise the reliability and potential frequency of services. Thatcher hated railways of course, but we do have to recognise the negative contribution of Barbara Castle and in my opinion John Prescott underplayed his hand when he could have pushed harder for reinvigorating the network.
Beeching could have made massive cost savings by de staffing stations. Our closest station (now closed but heritage line still runs through) was fantastic, with waiting rooms, buffet etc and several staff but it served just a few hundred residents living locally. In my opinion a platform with a shelter would have works for a fraction of the cost.
Yes, I use that re-opened line to Exeter now and it has already generated more than double the number of passengers anticipated. But it does go to a city with mainline connections and a reasonably good city bus network. They recently opened a new station on a major trading estate there too. It would appear that it is commuter traffic alone rather than strategic or social arguments which can lead to old lines coming back into service. I remember back in the 1960's how they removed the track on many of the closed branch lines with indecent haste, probably so that an incoming government of a different political hue could never afford to restore the system.
2:19 In Paul I hope you mention Mc Alpine who had bought 1000's of lorries from the War Department! Beeching had his name on the Document but there were forces acting behind him. I'll carry on now.
Before HS2 though there was the proposal for the Central Railway. Rather than taking express passenger trains off existing lines to free up space for stoppers and freight, it was intended to remove the freight to a different line. It was looked into at some length, but didn't get Government support because (ironically given HS2's cost over runs) they were worried that the commercial backers (banks and SNCF from what I can remember) might fold part way through the £8bn construction and the Government would be left to stump up the cash to finish it. The Central Railway's argument was that linking the Channel Tunnel and feeds from the southern ports to a north-south freight line would also remove lots of HGVs from roads, so not only free up space on the railway but reduce motorway congestion and maintenance costs. Sadly not to be though.
Speaking of the Channel tunnel. The original plan was to massively upgrade the West Coast Main Line and lay some new track to have high speed trains going up to Manchester too. They even built the depot for it, which is now used for the Metrolink trams. Central government decided nah. The same time they also pulled out their funding for said tram network so Manchester and Bury had to fund it themselves, while Rochdale pulled out. As a result, Manchester and Bury saw a massive boom in the local economies while Rochdale pretty much died a death.
HS2 was completely unjustified from the very get-go and has become an economic and environmental catastrophe, ruining England and Wales in their entirety whilst plunging millions of households into absolute poverty. Unjustified and bigoted destruction of ecologically-important sites has also unleashed a plethora of botanic diseases that are predicted to eradicate 80% of Britain's tree cover, making it the worst ecological meltdown since the arrival of Dutch elm disease in 1978. Ash trees are being particularly hard hit and are now at risk of extinction. In 2023, the cost of HS2 for taxpayers has reached £15,000,000,000. At the same cost we could have bought back our entire network, reopened 70% of lost lines and modernised our existing lines to near-Chinese standards, with enough money left over to preserve our beautifully ancient roads and give them a sustainability makeover. If you know anything about Italy you can appreciate the value of lavish, meandering lanes lined with trees over the miserable, polluting highways slopped up with concrete that since WW2 have become way too prevalent in this country. Yet despite everything our idiot electorate lap up every single lie that is spoon-fed to them, like an estranged cohort of ignorant little babies. I'm done with this horrible country, I have no faith in anyone or anything and fiercely dislike god for making me get born here. I genuinely believe I was Al Capone or Alvin Carpavics in my previous life having to live on this pathetic boulder, the Alcatraz of Europe.
@@garethhenshaw The same people who see nothing wrong with the existence of those ugly, damp-infested, rat-harboring postwar tower blocks despite the health and safety disaster they created. The same people who see nothing wrong with the increasing rate of Barratt homes suburban sprawl ruining biodiversity because "ThEre'S a hOuSiNG cRisiS" despite the US being catastrophically damaged by suburbanisation. The same people who oppose the concept of high-rise contemporary apartments despite the desperate need for more urban density and uncontrollable migrant flows from the channel. I understand precisely who you refer to, those piggy-English working class bigots who wish to remain peasants. The type who voted Thatcher to make us all infinitely poorer. Even the EU was too good for us, as black Wednesday had proven.
One of the most impressive operations was the milk collecting operation run on the Somerset & Dorset. All up and down the line, farmers would fill the tanks which were picked up and shunted into Templecombe lower goods with more congregation at Wincanton and Radstock. The tankers would swiftly be marshalled and taken up to Templecombe's upper large yard awaiting express engines which whisked them to Vauxhall where they were emptied by a series of spigots on the westermost platforms direct into the dairy below. This massive organised operation ran 24/7 night and day with engines being turned round at Nine Elms works or Stewarts Lane works whilst readied engines would pick up the empties to be taken back to Templecombe upper yard and back up and down the S&D after washing out. When the S&D was still there all along it was thriving, Radstock had a huge margarine factory at St Ivel, Shepton Mallet the Babycham factory plus other industries, Wincanton grew from a village into a thriving town, go look at them today... all decayed with little industry, high unemployment and little prospect with Wincanton the most run down. They did try to reopen Radstock to Frome but oh no, the property maggots soon buried that huge idea especially as the railway was just mothballed from the quarry junction, putting Radstock back on the main line would have reignited its growth and may well have been an impetus to look again at running from Bath to Bournemouth but sadly not.
The greatest act of shortsightedness in railway history? Especially when you consider that routes weren't safeguarded and now reopening lines is difficult and expensive, you just have to look at the new planned sections of EWR that have to take into account the fact that houses have since been built on the route.
It's devastating what happened to your railway network. In germany, a lot of lines were also closed (of course) but not to such an extent and it was limited almost entirely on the small, unimportant branch lines.
A lot of these railway were "Kaputtgespart" (aka saving money and thereby break it). Trains ran something like 3 times a day, no wonder these railways were barely used. This lack of usage then gave DB an excuse to close the railway
the second mistake here in the UK was to allow landowners have the trackbed. I suspect, that in Germany, same as France (I heard) - lines remained even if lifted. Just in case. Ours were sold off, parcelled off, infrastructure dynamited. Vultures picked at the carcass til nothing much was left.
Ian Hislop did a documentary about the Beeching review which you would find very informative and interesting. It was originally on the BBC and can be found floating around on some Freeview channels. Basically the figures were a bit dodgy. The line to Richmond survived because Beeching and other important people used it daily apparently.
Beeching didn't have the ticket data we have today so their way of calculating whether a line was busy or not was suspect. Survey a line at its least busy time. It was the lack of public outcry that destroyed our railways. Beeching wasn't the only one to close lines.
@@hairyairey Beeching didn't try to get accurate data, he tried to get data which gave the result he wanted. So he had numbers collected on a couple of days out of season, allowing him to completely ignore holiday traffic and gut Cornwall and similar places. He was a vandal and a liar working for Marples. It always amazes me when people talk about Beeching's "mistakes" as if it wasn't all intentional.
@@nagoranerides3150 Good old Ernie. "His involvement in the road construction business Marples Ridgway, of which he had been managing director, led to concerns regarding possible conflict of interest. In later life, Marples was elevated to the peerage before fleeing to Monaco at very short notice to avoid prosecution for tax fraud."
A few lines and stations which were closed after the Beeching Report have reopened, my local line Rugeley to Walsall was closed in 1965 as part of the Beeching cuts but was kept for freight thanks to Rugeley Power Station for coal traffic and for diversions/Empty coaching stock but did reopen in stages, The Borders Railway in Scotland, which was the old Waverley Route, closed in the late 60s and part of the line has reopened even know there a few tweaks from the original route that they had to do but it is great to see these lines reopen as passenger lines like the upcoming Northumberland line and Leven, Great video.
Greatly told story. Also very calm (and calmingly) talking about the bad decisions over time, not falling into complainining, whining or anting. Very appealing and pleasant to watch. However, re Beeching: You did point out that Mr Beeching was the executor of the PM at the time - and his remarks regarding the railways, what should be a public service, as something that needed to make a profit are abominable. But let's not forget the Transport Secretary at the time, Mr Marples, who was - I think - the real crook. As much as you can hate on Mr Beeching, his axe, as it were, was merely the tool of an ideology greater than himself, coming from his principal(s)/employer(s). Nevertheless, a great video!
@@hairyairey "Exactly right, the highways don't make a profit either!" Oh, they do, many times over. Vehicle tax alone brings in over three times what is spent on the roads. If you include all the fuel taxes as well, you're into them making many times the amount spent on them.
Excellent production, great script, lovely camera work and editing. I think the calm way you spoke worked nicely with the peacefulness of the route. Thank you.
To a certain extent, London-centric thinking still pervades railway planning now: HS2 was conceived as London to Birmingham initially, with later extensions to Manchester and Leeds (the latter having now been pruned to an "East Midlands Hub", and I wouldn't be surprised if the former gets pruned to Crewe or earlier), while HS3 was initially upgraded to a longer East-West route, renamed "Northern Powerhouse Rail", then also deemed too expensive and demoted to a few short sections of new track but largely travelling along existing lines; while when Kenilworth Station was planned for rebuilding, it was intended the line wound be double tracked (again) and electrified (the overbridges having been raised in the 1980s in anticipation), but both have now been mothballed, so what would have been the down platform was built as a stub to support the existing footpath bridge. There's often suspicion that when railway funding is distributed, London gets the bulk (at least partially because it is so dense and wealthy that even ridiculously expensive new lines can generate a decent ROI), while the rest of the country has to fight over the remaining scraps. Even light rail now struggles to attract funding: whereas funding was available in previous decades for Manchester, Edinburgh, Croydon and others to get entire tram networks, after the initial West Midlands Metro line was built (mainly along a disused railway trackbed, only branching off at the Wolverhampton end), subsequent development has been limited to three short extensions through the city centre (the central section of the first chunk having to be dug up and replaced after only 5 years due to inadequacies in the original) - and while one new line and a branch are under construction, the branch isn't expected to open for another 6-7 years, while the tail end of the new line (connecting to Merry Hill Shopping Centre) was nearly mothballed until extra funding was made available.
Even in London funding for rail is starting to disappear. Following Covid and crossrail, there seems to be no willingness from the government to give TFL money for projects like the Bakerloo extension, sutton tramlink, Crossrail 2 etc. Which are now all indefinitely halted. At the same time fares are skyrocketing as the gov cuts more and more TFL funding, trying to force them into turning a profit.
@@_CaptainCookie The idea that railways need to turn a profit has always somewhat baffled me. Why should public goods which are obviously highly beneficial to society need to make money. We don't make the same argument for roads so it seems strange governments of past and present are obsessed with applying this idea to railways.
I find interesting that rail enthusiasts in the UK have this singular boogeyman in the form of Beeching. In the States it was mish-mash of boardrooms, regulators, politicians, and plain old market forces that brought about the removal of over a third of our railway network. We just don’t have the advantage of having a single face for the dartboard.
Well, there is Robert Moses in NYC who wanted to turn the place into one massive spaghetti junction with urban renewal meatballs. In L.A. it was William Mulholland and his water. Every big city has infamous villains and at least momentarily famous heroes. And most of the richest robber barons owned and wielded railroads to enrich themselves and harm others. Nothing to do with market forces, to drop your prices until the opposition goes bankrupt and then raising prices until you destroy everyone else, before moving on to the next heinous act. In the Dakotas, the man who used the railroads so frequently they named a town after his son, Murdo, because of his multinational cattle corporation based in Scotland, went on to fight that very same railroad that was making farmers go broke trying to ship cattle and other ag products to market, thereby creating a political party based on Populism, in case you think all ag states are born conservative. What ended the passenger rail in SD was the very normal rise of a newer technology, in the form of semis and the interstate, just as rail had driven out canal boats almost immediately after the boom from the building of the Erie Canal. The states near there were soon littered with unfinished canals.
The closing of railway lines started in Germany around the same time I suppose. The line that went through the village I live in was closed for passenger transport in 1992 and for goods it went on until 2016. But then they had to close it down due to tracks being not suitable for using any more. This line was once the most used railway line in the German Reich before WW1. Interesting to see what influence a single politician can have on a matter he has no idea about. I totally did not know that such things exists...
What is never mentioned is a comment I once heard pruning the branches will kill the trunk. Some lines may not be profitable but they should have been kept open for the wider picture of serving the community. How many use the car for the full journey rather than get to the next nearest station?
Interesting to hear Beeching's comment that the railways will never pay for themselves. And yet the expanded and upgraded automobile road network that replaced the railways has never "paid for itself"... The subsidization of critical transportation that provides a public good and supports a thriving economy has always been a fact of life. One wonders what lobbying pressures were behind Beechings recommendations...
Macro-level route (lack of) planning blighted the railways from the word “go” - a point made here - Beeching had to make a business case for a national railway that arose from a myriad of business cases for individual routes (many of which had already failed)
Maybe roads don't pay for themselves, roads DO generate COMMERCE, DO move the GOODS... Simply put, no lorries, no food at supermarkets... And while rail advocates do not like to hear this, COMMERCE trumps delivering passengers a few minutes quicker... Recently Tesla is building tracks to a UP mainline a few miles to a new assembly plant near Austin, Texas that is presently under construction... Not the government...
Its a great sad loss when the railways were broken up. But in these times of large cksts of running your own car and so many parking and access restrictions today we could do with all the railways back.
My grandfather was a very well known train driver for GWR after ww2. As a young man I remember when he heard Dr Beechings name he would go ballistic for the things he did to the railway system.
You know building things is the most un green thing you can do. You never reclaim the damage that's done whilst the massive logical nightmare goes on. Imagine all the work, diesel lorrys, factories used to do this. It would make things worse rather than better.
@@brumsgrub8633There is a concept of payback time. The emissions of building a railway are repaid by transferring travel and freight to a greener method.
I do agree more thought should go into when to build though. Modern architects like to tout their green credentials while building out of high emission concrete and glass.
That would never be logistically possible because modern planners and architects are stupid. We can't even stop ourselves from wasting money for Christ's sake.
Maybe we should quit believing that suburban sprawl will have any positive impact on the housing crisis in the first place, witnessing firsthand the devastating impact this is having on American society, and increase the proportion of tower blocks or townhouse apartments in the inner-cities instead. This would also provide an economic excuse to modernise housing in such areas, two solutions for the price of one. Anyone remotely opposed to this has no common sense.
Politicians thought in terms of profit for railways instead of a community service, The railways also suffered by being legislated as a common carrier meaning there wasn't any freight they could refuse at standard price. The road companies didn't have this imposition and the minister was not going to change that when he had a interest in road transport.
Another remarkable aspect is just how many lines were saved from closure because they were needed to transport freight, and especially coal. The Coventry to Leamington line is one example - used to transport coal from Coventry Colliery to Didcot Power Station. It closed to passengers in 1965 and reopened relatively soon afterwards, in 1977. Now running hourly passenger trains from Southampton to Manchester Piccadilly. The Vale of Glamorgan line, between Barry/Cardiff and Bridgend, isn't even the only line between those two places, but is a valuable asset if you happen to live in Rhoose or Llantwit. Closed to passengers in 1964, only used for traffic to the power station and cement works at Aberthaw for over 40 years, reopened in 2005.
Yep, the branch line they filmed the Titford Thunderbolt was closed before filming, a decade before the Beeching cuts... Not by the government either, but by the GWR...
03:19 - the moment everybody loves as you dive into the woods to find an abandoned station platform! Seriously good production this, and nicely explains things for a lot of people.Great video to refer back to.
Adrian Vaughan in his book Signalman’s Morning writes of speaking to an old porter who gave him a riddle to solve. He said we “Swindle it, chisel it, og it, marl it, save it, graft it, coll it, ludg it, wey it and anditover. What were we doing?” He was of course referring to parcels traffic between Swindon and Andover on the M&SWJ Railway. Or the old Milk and Soda Water as they called it.
A very interesting line of thought. Beeching was the hatchet man - the mood at the time was that railways should be profitable. However we now know that railways bestow a benefit that can’t be recouped by fares alone - a line that looses money can be of use. In the light of this, lines such as that to Okehampton or to Galashiels and Tweedbank have reopened and more are planned. Umpteen stations have reopened. This suggests that the policy of trying to make the railways pay was flawed and it did a great deal of damage.
Yeah its terrible that the welsh can not get from south to north wales without going through england embarrassing..carmarthen to llandudno have to go all way round ahha
@@RotGoblin with train all companies only care about london train everywhere else get 2 or 3 carraiage on train from 1980s whilst london to just slough get 8 coaches ahha
Another excellent production, nicely explained things that were going on around me at that time. Me in November 63 I discovered Dr Who and in December 64 discovered Girls, so a little distracted. :o)
A very informative and realistic explanation of the past mistakes made by the early developers of the railways. Thank you for the video, Paul. Very straightforward with the views i think are correct. Hello to Rebecca and see you on they next! Enjoy the week ahead. ❤❤😊😊
Greetings Paul and Rebecca my name is Jeff Evans. I live in Melbourne Australia. I’m sitting here on a cold wet Monday afternoon in the suburb of Rosebud, which is south of Melbourne, which is on Port Philip Bay over the last four years. I have been watching your TH-cam on disused railway stations, canals, Roman Roads, and all that type of stuff keep up the good work Paul the absolutely brilliant you’re got a wealth of information and you’re doing well And say hello to that lovely wife of yours and if it’s not too personal, what job do you do yours Jeff Melbourne Australia
I used to live near Reading, and visit my parents in North Wales. I was normally taking my bicycle with me ,but to take a train direct from Reading to Crewe, the entire journey would take 5 hours to go to North Wales ,and 6 hours to go back. To do the journey through London was a lot quicker, as London to Llandudno was 3 hours. The problem with this route was the extra £100 that it would cost. The times that I tried to go to Cambridge, the only journey that I could buy a ticket for, was through London. I have been told that there were trains going that way, but I think the person who said that, saw it before Beeching.
I wish the High Wycombe to Bourne End branch hadn't been closed or at least had been made into a tramway. From High Wycombe we now have to travel into London Marylebone and then round to Paddington to get on the GWR to go west. Real pain when we could have just changed at Maidenhead or Reading to go to the West Country.
When going to London, it is also less expensive to drive from HW to Amersham than travel from HW! When I was doing the journey, even including parking and petrol, it cost less. At the time, the cost per mile for the small extra distance from HW to Marylebone was far more than a typical taxi rate.
I attended a talk at Flackwell Heath library on the history this line which was really interesting. It could still be open, all it needed was £30,000 or so and someone to go to parliament and contest the closure. The feeling was, at the time people weren't in the mindset of today. Where people would organise to save it like you see with village pubs, as it (the line) will always be there. Would have made my commute to work in Wycombe and college in Langley easier if it was there.
I like to think that we could build a railroad now that needs less maintenance. I get the feeling that with just spending 50% extra you could get a system that needs 80% less maintenance costs.
I used to live in a small town at the end of the Victoria live in East Sussex and work in West Sussex in a tiny village. When I went for the interview I was able to make the journey by a rickety bus, but it turned out that the earliest bus service would take me there after the start of a day shift and the last bus would leave before I would get off. We didn’t own a car at the time but eventually got one. It was an eleven mile ride each way. Good job I love cycling! Also, cycling would beat the bus time wise had there been a service that could actually service me. So what’s the problem? For one thing, it hampers the job market. If commuting by public transit were more available, more employers could find the right employees and vice versa.
And a propos fourteen stations in London: at one point we went to Sweden to visit family. We flew with Ryanair so we landed at Luton. From there we took a train to some station in North London and to get to Victoria Station we had to make two underground trips, only it worked out to three because there was work being done on weekend nights. And then the train from London didn’t go all the way to our terminus, so we had to get off at some halt in the lesser known parts of Kent and wait for at least half an hour but I think it was more like forever in the dead of night, before finally getting the last train to our little town. From the station we had a mile uphill to our house. We also had three primary school children and luggage. I’ve never been happier to pay for a taxi.
The fact that in 2019, the number of passengers using the railways are at its highest despite just under half of the railway network being closed and the network barely expanded then. This means that some level crossings had to close due to the rail traffic getting heavier and faster.
Sawbridgeworth crossing is a joke. You often have to wait over 10 minutes, whilst they send through 4 trains in a row (2 locals and 2 Stanstead Express trains). Sometimes, the gates allow less than 5 cars through, which can be quite dangerous after everyone has got impatient from the wait...
I'm from where it all started - Darlington - and I still live there. Beeching's Axe wasn't as severe here, because there were fewer stations & lines, but it has had just as severe an effect as elsewhere, and the original line to Stockton has had a road built on it.
The fact that Teesside doesn't have a light-rail-Metro network is shocking frankly. One can argue "Well buses do it just as well" - except when stuck moving between towns & yes, there's OK-just-about local trains *but* with a light-rail network, those local trains could be better trains (not just 156 stoppers).
Paul the reason for most railways was the carrying of freight or mineral items and when we changed the way that things like Iron & Steal were made then the need for these lines ceased. Living south of Northampton we have so many cross country lines that served the Iron Stone mining industry, connecting to the Midland Mainline or down to the GWR. So our locally quarried Iron Stone travelled down to the blast furnaces of the North Midlands or South Wales. If your add in the coal, clay and limestone you have a complex web of lines. Now when we started importing higher grades of Iron ore from Australia we no longer needed to quarry Iron Stone and these lines were not as profitable with just passengers. Other examples include the Hemel Hempstead to Luton line that supplied straw to the Luton Straw hat makers or the Metropolitan's extension to Verney Junction through which milk was transported to London (Express Dairies). They now form some lovely cross country paths. Finally as a PS you forgot to mention the current reinstatement of the East West Line (Oxford to Cambridge) offering new travel links and direct container links between Felixstowe and Southampton (but don't mention the rail freight part).
A great video Paul. Your analysis of Beeching was good. This kind of thing, and previous vids you've done on HS2, Stonehenge, railway bridges being filled in are deserving of a wider audience. That is TV. Keep up the good work😊
Beeching wanted to close the North London Line which became Silverlink Metro (National Express) when privatised and then became London Overground (Arriva With TFL) in 2007 and is the most heavily used National rail line in the country both by passengers and freight. It is so heavily used that it was normal for the 4 car trains to be completely full under Silverlink and people had to wait for the next one or use another route. The then mayor of London Ken Livingstone and TFL took control of the line and gave the contract to run the service to Arriva Rail London using new longer trains and more frequently and it runs every 5 to 10 minutes Richmond to Stratford and every 15 to 30 minutes Clapham Junction to Stratford. The trains are always full so he was wrong about this. Other lines joined the London Overground network, such as London Underground's East London Line, it was taken over by Network Rail from London Underground and completely rebuilt as part of the National Rail network with an extension from Whitechapel to Dalston Junction meeting the North London line and connecting with the National Rail network at New cross to connect with a line to Croydon and Clapham Junction so it is now a circular route Rather than closing down things, private investment as well as new initiatives like this need to be implemented because closing down something completely is simply wasting infrastructure. Until the establishment of London Overground, fare evasion was rife on Silverlink and even worse when it was British Rail. The stations were also dark, unsafe at night and people genuinely felt unsafe prefering to use the 2 hour commute across London.
Lord Beeching was tasked with producing a report setting out proposals for making the railway system fit for the future. He did not close lines or stations; he only made recommendations. The statutory closure procedure was a matter for the government. Some closure recommendations were not accepted such as the lines west of Plymouth. .
Re Plate layers hut , that's a standard Southern Railway concrete version . Probably made at their main Exmouth works for all things concrete . Great video , love the Midland and South West junction Railway .
I really appreciate the amount of time and effort you put into these videos. This was a thoughtful, well constructed and beautifully edited broadcast. Thank you.
@@pwhitewick I loved the video. I have moved to garforth just outside leeds and ironically it still has 2 stations within 400 yards of each other. However rothwell not to far away where I moved from lost its station in 69 and was supposed to be on the new mainline which didn't happen. It lost its station, colliery and some other businesses. The town is better now once the M1 extended in the 90s.
Nice film Paul, and Rebecca.. Our railways are really and example of the old adage: if I was going there I wouldn’t start from here. Many of the lines and routes created in the 19th century was built not to provide a service but to prevent the company’s rivals from entering their territory and affecting profitability. But without this often insane competition, no railways would have been built. The dead hand of government is hopeless at pushing new ideas and technology so the private sector had to do the building and financing so where they go and who they served was a matter of trade and profit. Without profit there is nothing to invest so unprofitable lines would naturally wither and die. Nationalisation effectively removed the basic requirement for a line to pay its way so Beeching had to occur.
Beaching might have been right closing the lines. The crime was selling off the land, so they could not easily be re-laid. Hence, we are now spending 4 billion pounds reopening East West Rail, most of the cost rerouting the eastern section. HS2 is now costing tens of billions digging a new route from London to Birmingham, often digging through the track bed of the former Great Central Railway.
@@PaulCanniff Part of the Great Central Railway is straight. That's the bit of land that is being reused by HS2. But they are still building new trackbed. The bit of the Great Central near London is still in use and also goes to Marylebone Station (which has one Underground line and no escalators to it) so is a pretty useless terminal station. That line also has the Metropolitan Line on it, which is a very crowded commuter railway, so they break off from the Great Central Route and go to Euston another way. The bit near Biirmingham was no good, so they have gone for a better route, ending up using the approach to the disused Curzon Street Station. It is a shame that, they are building HS2 to Euston, instead of tunnelling through London and connecting HS2 to HS1 with a through statiion at a place like Farringdon. And it's a shame that the new Curzon Street Statiion wasn't a box deep in the ground, that would allow for trains to go straight through Birmingham.
At least the part of the trackbed used for Thameslink wasn't worth seeling at the time of the closure of Snow Hill Station and it only got redelvoped after the opening of Thameslink with the closure of Holborn Viaduct station.
Thanks to Beeching the devizes branch line was closed. The town suffered from the closure before the road links were grown. As a young boy I travelled every day to school in trowbridge by the steam train.
Leeds Ripon Northallerton line was closed by Beeching despite huge opposition. It would regularly take huge traffic between Lancashire and North East. This would now be an invaluable addition to the network if still existed.
My local Station, Kings Norton, was originally set for closure by Beeching, but was reprieved with much reduced service. In 1978 the service was rescued by West Midlands Passenger Passenger Transport Executive, and new stations built. It became my primary means of commuting to Birmingham University for many years (it is now my primary means of commuting to hospital appointments!). The West Midlands Cross City line has been a great success story, so much so that they are currently reopening another route from Kings Norton to Brum along the Camp Hill line.
One consequence of the cuts was the main lines immediately started losing money. Seems one of the important thing about those local lines that weren't profitable was that they fed local passenger to the main lines. Why drive part way to wherever to catch a train, just drive all the way.
One slight problem is that the proposal to close the Midland and South Western Junction Line was taken before 6th March 1961. There is a copy of the proposal notice on swindonsotherrailway. This is about 2 years before the Beeching Report. If you wanted to travel from Swindon Town station to Andover Junction station it would take about 1 hour 30 minutes in 1961 (details on swidonsotherrailway). They also have the details of a traffic survey for the week ending 19th November 1960 with some stations having no one boarding or alighting during the entire week. Not one station had more than 100 passengers boarding or alighting that week, the closest was Marlborough at 89 boarding and alighting (the majority were school children) . A total of 212 journeys Monday to Saturday and 4 on Sunday were made by BTC staff to carry out the survey work. They even considered the levels of usage of the buses and future developments along the route. They even looked at the records held by the GWR fir this line. I bet if we could find the other closure proposal documentation for the rest of the closed routes we'd find similar details.
But... remember the M&SWJR was built to take freight from the Midlands to Southampton docks. Passengers something of an extra. Though a lot of both freight and passengers in both World Wars when that (and the two other north-south railways) had a lot of use for the military - avoiding London was strategically important.
I remember a film of Betjeman riding to Burnham or Highbridge in Somerset, in the guard's van after passenger services where lost. He lamented at the busy state of the roads then. In the 60s. Sure, the road infrastructure wasn't created then that we have now, but when I'm on the motorway, and haulage trucks are there aplenty, I keep thinking - but if we'd just found a way to keep MORE branches and strip them down as needed, and then built small transport hubs - could that have worked better? BR did "use" the report to close lines that weren't even on the list - making sure inspectors turned up when the line was known to be less busy (witham priory to yatton, taking the railways away from some of the biggest tourist honeypots locally). It's a complex discussion but as Phill says in the next comment - the road lobbying seems to have been the real end of things - plus, in the 60s people wanted change. They believed the change would be good. But in a heartbeat I wish the main roads weren't quite so clogged with lorries. The pollution, noise, the way everyone drives.... it's too much. But railways, same as a lot of things, were political footballs, left & right of the spectrum. We had an opportunity in the 60s and indeed, as you so clearly highlight, much earlier still.
Had that line still existed, I would have been going to school and work on those trains.. instead I spent hours as a kid on busses to school and back everyday.. and even more hours playing along the old line, going on adventures with our friends..
What Beeching could never know was this: Closing the lines between a village and a town could save money, but when those small towns themselves were cut off from the larger towns/cities then the small towns would be devastated (or certainly limited in some ways for visitors). Northumberland is a case in point, Alnwick doesn't even have a Stourbridge style railcar link from Alnmouth. There may well be a new passenger service from Newcastle to Blyth and Ashington, but there won't be - so far as I'm aware - a way of getting to the ECML for transfers. Bristol and the South-west is another case in point e.g. the Henbury loop closures and the lack of trains along the south-shore of the Severn thence to Weston-super-Mare to add some network density. But what really stinks is that whilst HSTs were good, there was no high-speed rail investment in the 1960s such as Japan was doing then the French were doing etc. We might be better than the US & Canada in some respects for fast trains but realistically, we could have had dedicated, bonafide high-speed rail by now.
Paul: you're a great presenter, storyteller and VT editor. Thank you for such a fascinating social history lesson about the railways - all contextualised on a walk along your old railway track!
The plate layers hut Paul refers to is a standard 1930's built Southern Railway hut built in pre cast concrete sections made at Exmouth Jn Concrete Works & put together at the site where it was required.
Like most of your video's. I thought this one was full of stimulating ideas. The Government appointed Beeching to stem BR's losses. It was seemingly a short-term Treasury-inspired fix, largely reliant (as always) on drastic pruning. Beeching retained most of the main arteries, radiating in and out of London. But, many routes linking sizeable population centres outside London, were cut. And vast numbers of rural branch lines were decimated. The BR 'problem' was framed in terms of an outmoded, financial albatross, unable to adapt and compete with expanding post-war forms of transport, most notably the private car and road transport. The same logic however, does not appear to have been followed in the case of motorways or bypasses, outside London. Some half-hearted attempts at railway 'modernization' were undetaken, but the kind of long-term strategic thinking, planning and major investment needed to develop a railway network able to meet changing economic and social needs, was largely absent - most certainly in the Dept. of Transport. However, I don't think BR should be seen in isolation. Much of Britain's industrial infrastructure hit the buffers in the following decades. Some other countries though, handled things differently, and viewed railways as a strategic industry, not in isolation, but as serving wider social and economic objectives. There are signs that railways are beginning to be looked at in similar ways this side of the Channel. But, as always, there are mixed signals, which can so quickly revert to red!
HS2 doesn’t represent joined up thinking arguably the opposite, it will create a bottleneck on the WCML wherever it joins be that a Lichfield with stage 1 or Crewe later on. And exists without consideration of how the network runs or is used. There’s little chance of many of the fast trains being taken off the WCML south of that because Coventry rugby and Milton Keynes are large conurbations that will strongly object to losing their fast trains. A joined up approach would have been to engage in smaller projects like dual track from Crewe to alsager and electrical infill projects.
Go ride Settle to Carlisle just for fun. Glad that stayed open, but bear in mind we'd never have the amazing super fast natiional cycle network without Beeching. Try cycling your route, you might be pleasantly surprised
What is not often mentioned was the decision to keep stream in 1945 when most of the world was moving to diesel. Cheaper at the time but more manpower intensive and less cost effective, so the realisation that diesel was the way to go lead to the Beeching Report. Of course only in the UK could a report be entrusted to someone who knew nothing about railways, but knew the decision he was expected to come to!!
Interesting video as so often on your channel! It's not just the fact that the railways - like many other things - are London-centric, it is also the fact that even road routes are north/south biased, as opposed to east/west. There actually is a train between Liverpool and Norwich - via Cambridge, of all places! - but to do it by road is awful. You can use the M62, if you want, to start with, but after that nothing decent east of the M1. The A17 is appalling and mostly single lane with many farm vehicles. Try Shrewsbury to Boston, or maybe stoke to Grimsby, by road, and there's a nightmare waiting for you... but probably less of one that the railways. And when you do get a decent line north/south, like, perhaps, Sheffield to Bedford or Luton, you find that trains don't stop there... to get to Luton airport, I suppose, travellers must watch it go past the window on their way to London and then have to get a local train back. Yes it's insane, and probably won't change unless we do what the Europeans do and take pride in an efficient national rail network.
Several aspects to this. I’m in a similar situation to your example at the start….no train. There was once…but it got axed. Now got to travel to get to a train. The bus services here are fine east-west, but very poor to the south (1 mini bus every couple of days)…and zero bus routes to the north. As things stand, with the exception of the east-west bus route, there is zero chance of being able to use public transport instead of a car. And that bus route closes at just after 10pm. Devizes wanted a replacement station but didn’t happen. Even Corsham which actually sits on the main line from Chippenham no longer has its station. Those where stations, track beds, & bridges were destroyed have zero chance of getting local rail back due to costs….irrespective of being private or publicly owned. We are trillions in debt and about to spend another 1.5 trillion on net zero madness…so there’s certainly no hope for local rail. Ironically HS2 is going ahead…tho no longer the full route, but that’s of no use to most of us. I would have invested that money in local rail instead. Not glamorous tho.
It's what I have been saying for too long. We badly need a holistic approach to public transport. I was with Jim Blake, a transport historian by anyone's reckoning. We walked the Parkland Walk from Finsbury Park, up through Stroud Green, Crouch End and Highgate and along the Alexandra Palace branch as far as the Mossy Well pub at Muswell Hill. He's a real fascinating guy to chat with, and his depth of knowledge on London's own transport systems is colossal. The Parkland Walk follows the alignment of the old steam operated line which LT took ownership of in around 1935. LT electrified the line, modified or rebuilt some of the old stations and it was almost ready for opening to the Public when WWII broke out. After the war LT was in a parlous state, the line languished little used (and still by steam or early diesels) until 1954 when it was closed. It's final used was for stock transfer between Highgate depot and Finsbury Park. Both the tunnels at Highgate are now bat sanctuaries and are, thus, closed to the Public. Several buildings were built upon the route. The Northern Heights branch, as it was known, would have given a direct Underground link to this part of North London, many of who's residents travel by bus into the city each day. If they want to catch the Underground or into town they must travel to Highgate (Northern Line) or Archway or bus to Finsbury Park and transfer, or out to Edgware, Mill Hill or Barnet for a surface rail station.
The mass closure of lines was inevitable as soon as the Railways were nationalised in 1948. Since the companies before were competing with one another, but when BR took over it had stations in the same place that were just loss making. Beeching had little idea of what he was doing. He failed to took into account that the small lines fed passengers into the smaller stations. The railways also were not allowed to compete with the road lobby. Prices were fixed, the road lobby undercut them. Who has ever heard of roads being closed because they don't make money? As for the future the private companies were not like the companies of the old days. They don't own the trains, they don't own the track or the stations. They can't set fares, they can't compete with the road services, they can't operate road services at the same time and they are being subsides more than what British Rail was. Now there's a new organisation called Great British Rail, which at the moment seems to be running pointless adds on TV about how good the railways are. When they are not, with trains being cancelled all the time, because private banks and funds don't want to pay staff the wages they should get.
Well done Paul, great production and thought provoking. Very enjoyable to watch. A couple if great finds in the depths of the woods as well!! Have a great week
Excellent video and valid points made! Further to other comments, the M&SWJR that you used as a key example with old footage was closed in 1961 - before the Beeching Report of 1963. British Railways had been closing various minor lines during the 1950s; Beeching was enacting government policy by increasing the scope and rate of closures.
What I think is an interesting and relevant story. In 1971, I was going to Oxford, aged 18, for my first university term. I took a very large suitcase to Coulsdon South station for separate transmission to the college. I was told that the station did not handle freight. I said it was not freight, it was “Luggage in Advance”, which all manned stations must handle. After a long argument, I made the chap look up his book of regulations, and I was right. Having paid and handed over the suitcase, I then booked my ticket thence to Oxford. He offered me a ticket via London Victoria, the Underground, London Paddington, and Reading. I refused, saying I did not want to bugger about on the Underground with hand luggage. He told me I had to, there was no alternative. I insisted there was, I wanted a ticket via Redhill and Reading (thus avoiding London and transferring between termini). No more changes required, just moving platforms at the same station. Far easier. After another long argument, I made him get out his universal booking guide, and, indeed, I could get a ticket using this route, and it was, moreover, cheaper than the ticket he had said I was obliged to purchase. 50p cheaper: then, that was two pints of lager at a pub!
A second story, much on the same lines (pun intended). In 1977 I arrived at Gatwick Airport, and asked for a railway ticket to Huddersfield. The same story: Gatwick-Victoria-Kings Cross-Wakefield-Huddersfield. No, I said, Gatwick-Stockport-Stalybridge-Huddersfield. No farting about with luggage on the bloody Underground (which is certainly, even now, not fit for that purpose). No: it isn't possible. I pointed out that it certainly was, in fact, there was such a train in twenty minutes, and he had better sell me a bloody ticket pronto. Look up the universal guide. He did, I got the ticket, and it was cheaper than the one he tried to sell me, this time by pounds.
These stories show, that after Beeching not only did everything seem to be centred on London, with all other connections in the network cut, even the ones that still existed were deliberately ignored, in order that, in due course, they could be shut down too, as “uneconomic”. It is unsurprising they became uneconomic if the bloody staff were trained to lie to the passengers about their existence!
Good on you. I’ve suffered with luggage on the Tube a few times, indeed once making a transfer at Bank 😱, I don’t blame you one bit for looking up your options beforehand.
Thankfully by the time I started travelling all over by the railway in the 00s the tickets were valid for any route I chose to take, although some stipulated not via London and those were usually cheaper.
Though even then some ticket machines would default to the via London ticket at a higher price and you had to manually select to show all fares and pick the lowest one! In a way I suppose that’s the exact thing you describe doing - except instead of arguing with some bloke to get out his book, I was silently pressing the button to decline the “suggestion” and demand the machine consult its own “book”.
But the open-endedness also gave me the option of taking the scenic route if I pleased, and not having to make that decision hours beforehand either. Sometimes the ladies checking the tickets on the trains would question why I was out that way, and I’d explain the connections I’d been on and was going to take before they stamped it (or notched a circle out of it).
Great story, and I have to say that modern online systems are no better. I know someone who goes regularly between Coventry and Swindon. Even a 2 second look at the map shows that the shortest route is via Oxford and Didcot, but the system will insist on sending her via Birmingham and Gloucester.
That IS NOT why the railways withered to being just trunk routes. Road Travel is the reason and you know that really.
Couldn't help mentioning you went to Oxford
@@omgski Integral part of the story.
The sad thing was that the track bed was not protected for these closed routes. So, this stops reinstatement for many lost lines where there is a desire 😔
Yup, exactly that.
Realistically, British Rail, as any other business, could not be expected to just leave redundant assets indefinitely on the off chance they may be useful decades in the future. Even though the lines could have been mothballed, they would still need to be maintained (such as keeping bridges over roads from collapse). It wouldn't have made financial sense then, particularly in light of BR haemorrhaging money.
spot on
It was never realistically going to happen. The Watford to Croxley rail link was a track bed not build on that was still in use up to early 1990s. I haven't checked the actual date. All it needed was about 400 metres to join to the Metroplitan Line. Cost at cancellation believed to be £220 million pounds. For a mile of existing trackbed and 400 metres new?????
I read somewhere that some of the compulsory purchase orders in the 1900s for railways companies to acquire land had a clause which stated that if the land was no longer needed for a railway it had to be offered for sale to the original family (or descendants of that family) so some of the track bed land had to be sold off whether the railway company or government liked it or not.
Sorry to go political but Beeching's boss was E. Marples who owned a civil engineering company that built Hammersmith flyover among many other road projects . The loss of railways was his gain. To comply with Parliament rules he eventually sold his shares to his wife on the proviso he could buy them back at original price. The Tories have kept their noses in the public money trough for ever.
Yes, Marples was a director in Marples Ridgeway (MR), but in Oct 1951 when he was made a junior cabinet minister, he was required to resign his directorship and provide proof to the standards committee of that time. This would also be registered at Companies House, and the Company Secretary of MR would need to alter the articles of association and recruit another director, if needed. Marples was required to do as Parliamentary law specifies this and as cabinet ministers and above are required to do do today. From that point on he had no involvement in the day to day running of his former firm, nor was he involved in any face to face contract negotiations. He was also required by that same parliamentary law to dispose of this shares in his former company. This he did not do and it was revealed in the papers in 1960 that was the case. He stated in Hansard in 1960 that "perhaps I should sell the shares to my wife (sic)." She denied having received any shares in two newspaper interviews at that time, in spite of being harassed and harangued by reporters. To date no reliable evidence or proof has been forth coming as to where his shares went. It is thought that his shares went into an overseas trust as he had business interests in Lichtenstein, or they went into a Blind trust as is used today. Beside this, you do not sell shares to your wife you transfer them, and that depends if she was a Director in MR, and what the prevailing rules on share ownership were at the time. It should be remembered, but people conveniently, ignore the fact that the same arguments could be applied to Marples as he was a junior cabinet minister in Housing, before he became the Minister of Transport in 1959.
Marples is as much the villain of the piece as Beeching, because he commissioned Beeching (a leading businessman) and gave him his economically-focussed remit - hence the lack of strategic thinking or consideration of non-economic benefits of retaining parts of the railway network.
all big parties do this
@@cleanerben9636For example?
There are many, but one stand-out example is the Great Central Railway, which was the last trunk line constructed in Britain (at the end of the 19th century) before HS1 to the Kent Coast. It provided an alternative North-South route capable of taking express passenger & freight trains and was designed to accommodate the Continental loading guage. Had the route been preserved it might have provided the additional capacity which HS2 is intended to release on the West Coast Main Line; and perhaps allow through trains from Europe to run as far as the North of England.
One of Beeching's biggest mistakes was the closure of the Edinburgh - Carlisle line. But things are looking good. Already the line has been re-opened down to Tweedbank. The beautiful preserved station at Melrose, just beyond, will be worth waiting for.
South of Hawick nobody main any money on the line not even the NBR for whom it was built. Part of the board of directors wanted to sell off the line within a few years of it opening. Funny how people forgot things.
@jemimallah2591 Indeed. But the bypass could be re-routed.
Great to hear. the closure of that line was a significant social loss, especially on the Carlisle end where the local economy was devastated by this loss of connectivity. Reopening that line would mean a lot for the people of Carlisle.
Even now, under a Tory government, it was underfunded and underengineered. Overbridges have been built for single track only. A proper efficient survey of demand and predicted use would have dictated double track. Singling lines was yet another anti-rail strategy designed to compromise the reliability and potential frequency of services. Thatcher hated railways of course, but we do have to recognise the negative contribution of Barbara Castle and in my opinion John Prescott underplayed his hand when he could have pushed harder for reinvigorating the network.
Beeching could have made massive cost savings by de staffing stations. Our closest station (now closed but heritage line still runs through) was fantastic, with waiting rooms, buffet etc and several staff but it served just a few hundred residents living locally. In my opinion a platform with a shelter would have works for a fraction of the cost.
We've had the Okehampton to Exeter reopened in the last 18 months, so nice not having to worry about parking 👍
Yes, I use that re-opened line to Exeter now and it has already generated more than double the number of passengers anticipated. But it does go to a city with mainline connections and a reasonably good city bus network. They recently opened a new station on a major trading estate there too. It would appear that it is commuter traffic alone rather than strategic or social arguments which can lead to old lines coming back into service. I remember back in the 1960's how they removed the track on many of the closed branch lines with indecent haste, probably so that an incoming government of a different political hue could never afford to restore the system.
There is also one in Scotland where the railway reopened in 2015
Okehampton proved a excellent departure to London, with a good sized car park..
today Okehampton tomorrow Bude..
hmmm more in hope than expectation..
2:19 In Paul I hope you mention Mc Alpine who had bought 1000's of lorries from the War Department!
Beeching had his name on the Document but there were forces acting behind him. I'll carry on now.
Before HS2 though there was the proposal for the Central Railway. Rather than taking express passenger trains off existing lines to free up space for stoppers and freight, it was intended to remove the freight to a different line. It was looked into at some length, but didn't get Government support because (ironically given HS2's cost over runs) they were worried that the commercial backers (banks and SNCF from what I can remember) might fold part way through the £8bn construction and the Government would be left to stump up the cash to finish it. The Central Railway's argument was that linking the Channel Tunnel and feeds from the southern ports to a north-south freight line would also remove lots of HGVs from roads, so not only free up space on the railway but reduce motorway congestion and maintenance costs. Sadly not to be though.
Speaking of the Channel tunnel. The original plan was to massively upgrade the West Coast Main Line and lay some new track to have high speed trains going up to Manchester too. They even built the depot for it, which is now used for the Metrolink trams. Central government decided nah. The same time they also pulled out their funding for said tram network so Manchester and Bury had to fund it themselves, while Rochdale pulled out. As a result, Manchester and Bury saw a massive boom in the local economies while Rochdale pretty much died a death.
The key thing about the central railway plan is most of the infrastructure is still in place so it would've been significantly cheaper.
Nationalisation killed the railways.
HS2 was completely unjustified from the very get-go and has become an economic and environmental catastrophe, ruining England and Wales in their entirety whilst plunging millions of households into absolute poverty. Unjustified and bigoted destruction of ecologically-important sites has also unleashed a plethora of botanic diseases that are predicted to eradicate 80% of Britain's tree cover, making it the worst ecological meltdown since the arrival of Dutch elm disease in 1978. Ash trees are being particularly hard hit and are now at risk of extinction. In 2023, the cost of HS2 for taxpayers has reached £15,000,000,000. At the same cost we could have bought back our entire network, reopened 70% of lost lines and modernised our existing lines to near-Chinese standards, with enough money left over to preserve our beautifully ancient roads and give them a sustainability makeover. If you know anything about Italy you can appreciate the value of lavish, meandering lanes lined with trees over the miserable, polluting highways slopped up with concrete that since WW2 have become way too prevalent in this country. Yet despite everything our idiot electorate lap up every single lie that is spoon-fed to them, like an estranged cohort of ignorant little babies. I'm done with this horrible country, I have no faith in anyone or anything and fiercely dislike god for making me get born here. I genuinely believe I was Al Capone or Alvin Carpavics in my previous life having to live on this pathetic boulder, the Alcatraz of Europe.
@@garethhenshaw The same people who see nothing wrong with the existence of those ugly, damp-infested, rat-harboring postwar tower blocks despite the health and safety disaster they created. The same people who see nothing wrong with the increasing rate of Barratt homes suburban sprawl ruining biodiversity because "ThEre'S a hOuSiNG cRisiS" despite the US being catastrophically damaged by suburbanisation. The same people who oppose the concept of high-rise contemporary apartments despite the desperate need for more urban density and uncontrollable migrant flows from the channel. I understand precisely who you refer to, those piggy-English working class bigots who wish to remain peasants. The type who voted Thatcher to make us all infinitely poorer. Even the EU was too good for us, as black Wednesday had proven.
One of the most impressive operations was the milk collecting operation run on the Somerset & Dorset. All up and down the line, farmers would fill the tanks which were picked up and shunted into Templecombe lower goods with more congregation at Wincanton and Radstock. The tankers would swiftly be marshalled and taken up to Templecombe's upper large yard awaiting express engines which whisked them to Vauxhall where they were emptied by a series of spigots on the westermost platforms direct into the dairy below. This massive organised operation ran 24/7 night and day with engines being turned round at Nine Elms works or Stewarts Lane works whilst readied engines would pick up the empties to be taken back to Templecombe upper yard and back up and down the S&D after washing out. When the S&D was still there all along it was thriving, Radstock had a huge margarine factory at St Ivel, Shepton Mallet the Babycham factory plus other industries, Wincanton grew from a village into a thriving town, go look at them today... all decayed with little industry, high unemployment and little prospect with Wincanton the most run down. They did try to reopen Radstock to Frome but oh no, the property maggots soon buried that huge idea especially as the railway was just mothballed from the quarry junction, putting Radstock back on the main line would have reignited its growth and may well have been an impetus to look again at running from Bath to Bournemouth but sadly not.
The greatest act of shortsightedness in railway history? Especially when you consider that routes weren't safeguarded and now reopening lines is difficult and expensive, you just have to look at the new planned sections of EWR that have to take into account the fact that houses have since been built on the route.
It's devastating what happened to your railway network. In germany, a lot of lines were also closed (of course) but not to such an extent and it was limited almost entirely on the small, unimportant branch lines.
I have seen current reactivation proposal by Federal Government, it doesn't seem like those lines were of only local importance.
A lot of these railway were "Kaputtgespart" (aka saving money and thereby break it). Trains ran something like 3 times a day, no wonder these railways were barely used.
This lack of usage then gave DB an excuse to close the railway
the second mistake here in the UK was to allow landowners have the trackbed. I suspect, that in Germany, same as France (I heard) - lines remained even if lifted. Just in case. Ours were sold off, parcelled off, infrastructure dynamited. Vultures picked at the carcass til nothing much was left.
@@LordoftheBadgers
Tories picking at a carcass
You don't say 🤔
Does anything ever change?
@@stephenchappell7512 indeed.
Ian Hislop did a documentary about the Beeching review which you would find very informative and interesting. It was originally on the BBC and can be found floating around on some Freeview channels. Basically the figures were a bit dodgy. The line to Richmond survived because Beeching and other important people used it daily apparently.
Beeching didn't have the ticket data we have today so their way of calculating whether a line was busy or not was suspect. Survey a line at its least busy time. It was the lack of public outcry that destroyed our railways. Beeching wasn't the only one to close lines.
th-cam.com/video/t4cGRpOspkk/w-d-xo.html
@@hairyairey Beeching didn't try to get accurate data, he tried to get data which gave the result he wanted. So he had numbers collected on a couple of days out of season, allowing him to completely ignore holiday traffic and gut Cornwall and similar places. He was a vandal and a liar working for Marples. It always amazes me when people talk about Beeching's "mistakes" as if it wasn't all intentional.
@@nagoranerides3150 Good old Ernie. "His involvement in the road construction business Marples Ridgway, of which he had been managing director, led to concerns regarding possible conflict of interest. In later life, Marples was elevated to the peerage before fleeing to Monaco at very short notice to avoid prosecution for tax fraud."
I’m sure he was very unbiased.
A few lines and stations which were closed after the Beeching Report have reopened, my local line Rugeley to Walsall was closed in 1965 as part of the Beeching cuts but was kept for freight thanks to Rugeley Power Station for coal traffic and for diversions/Empty coaching stock but did reopen in stages, The Borders Railway in Scotland, which was the old Waverley Route, closed in the late 60s and part of the line has reopened even know there a few tweaks from the original route that they had to do but it is great to see these lines reopen as passenger lines like the upcoming Northumberland line and Leven, Great video.
Greatly told story. Also very calm (and calmingly) talking about the bad decisions over time, not falling into complainining, whining or anting. Very appealing and pleasant to watch.
However, re Beeching: You did point out that Mr Beeching was the executor of the PM at the time - and his remarks regarding the railways, what should be a public service, as something that needed to make a profit are abominable. But let's not forget the Transport Secretary at the time, Mr Marples, who was - I think - the real crook. As much as you can hate on Mr Beeching, his axe, as it were, was merely the tool of an ideology greater than himself, coming from his principal(s)/employer(s).
Nevertheless, a great video!
Exactly right, the highways don't make a profit either!
What's so odd about people who use the service paying for it. Nobody has been falling over themselves putting these railway lines back.
@@superted6960 who pays for the roads? Do they make a profit?
@@superted6960 Nuneaton to Coventry line - closed under Beeching now reopened and with extra stations. May even be electrified.
@@hairyairey "Exactly right, the highways don't make a profit either!" Oh, they do, many times over. Vehicle tax alone brings in over three times what is spent on the roads. If you include all the fuel taxes as well, you're into them making many times the amount spent on them.
I know all tube stations lead to Mornington Crescent!
Excellent production, great script, lovely camera work and editing. I think the calm way you spoke worked nicely with the peacefulness of the route. Thank you.
To a certain extent, London-centric thinking still pervades railway planning now: HS2 was conceived as London to Birmingham initially, with later extensions to Manchester and Leeds (the latter having now been pruned to an "East Midlands Hub", and I wouldn't be surprised if the former gets pruned to Crewe or earlier), while HS3 was initially upgraded to a longer East-West route, renamed "Northern Powerhouse Rail", then also deemed too expensive and demoted to a few short sections of new track but largely travelling along existing lines; while when Kenilworth Station was planned for rebuilding, it was intended the line wound be double tracked (again) and electrified (the overbridges having been raised in the 1980s in anticipation), but both have now been mothballed, so what would have been the down platform was built as a stub to support the existing footpath bridge.
There's often suspicion that when railway funding is distributed, London gets the bulk (at least partially because it is so dense and wealthy that even ridiculously expensive new lines can generate a decent ROI), while the rest of the country has to fight over the remaining scraps.
Even light rail now struggles to attract funding: whereas funding was available in previous decades for Manchester, Edinburgh, Croydon and others to get entire tram networks, after the initial West Midlands Metro line was built (mainly along a disused railway trackbed, only branching off at the Wolverhampton end), subsequent development has been limited to three short extensions through the city centre (the central section of the first chunk having to be dug up and replaced after only 5 years due to inadequacies in the original) - and while one new line and a branch are under construction, the branch isn't expected to open for another 6-7 years, while the tail end of the new line (connecting to Merry Hill Shopping Centre) was nearly mothballed until extra funding was made available.
As someone who uses Kenilworth station regularly to travel, it's shocking how it's only 1 train per hour
Even in London funding for rail is starting to disappear. Following Covid and crossrail, there seems to be no willingness from the government to give TFL money for projects like the Bakerloo extension, sutton tramlink, Crossrail 2 etc. Which are now all indefinitely halted.
At the same time fares are skyrocketing as the gov cuts more and more TFL funding, trying to force them into turning a profit.
@@_CaptainCookie The idea that railways need to turn a profit has always somewhat baffled me. Why should public goods which are obviously highly beneficial to society need to make money. We don't make the same argument for roads so it seems strange governments of past and present are obsessed with applying this idea to railways.
I find interesting that rail enthusiasts in the UK have this singular boogeyman in the form of Beeching. In the States it was mish-mash of boardrooms, regulators, politicians, and plain old market forces that brought about the removal of over a third of our railway network. We just don’t have the advantage of having a single face for the dartboard.
Well, there is Robert Moses in NYC who wanted to turn the place into one massive spaghetti junction with urban renewal meatballs. In L.A. it was William Mulholland and his water. Every big city has infamous villains and at least momentarily famous heroes. And most of the richest robber barons owned and wielded railroads to enrich themselves and harm others. Nothing to do with market forces, to drop your prices until the opposition goes bankrupt and then raising prices until you destroy everyone else, before moving on to the next heinous act. In the Dakotas, the man who used the railroads so frequently they named a town after his son, Murdo, because of his multinational cattle corporation based in Scotland, went on to fight that very same railroad that was making farmers go broke trying to ship cattle and other ag products to market, thereby creating a political party based on Populism, in case you think all ag states are born conservative. What ended the passenger rail in SD was the very normal rise of a newer technology, in the form of semis and the interstate, just as rail had driven out canal boats almost immediately after the boom from the building of the Erie Canal. The states near there were soon littered with unfinished canals.
The closing of railway lines started in Germany around the same time I suppose. The line that went through the village I live in was closed for passenger transport in 1992 and for goods it went on until 2016. But then they had to close it down due to tracks being not suitable for using any more. This line was once the most used railway line in the German Reich before WW1.
Interesting to see what influence a single politician can have on a matter he has no idea about. I totally did not know that such things exists...
What is never mentioned is a comment I once heard pruning the branches will kill the trunk. Some lines may not be profitable but they should have been kept open for the wider picture of serving the community.
How many use the car for the full journey rather than get to the next nearest station?
I'm watching from Ottawa Canada.
This is fascinating in a geeky kind of way.
All hail to men like you who keep history alive.
❤
Same. Loving the LRT and Via ? I'm not
Interesting to hear Beeching's comment that the railways will never pay for themselves.
And yet the expanded and upgraded automobile road network that replaced the railways has never "paid for itself"...
The subsidization of critical transportation that provides a public good and supports a thriving economy has always been a fact of life.
One wonders what lobbying pressures were behind Beechings recommendations...
Macro-level route (lack of) planning blighted the railways from the word “go” - a point made here - Beeching had to make a business case for a national railway that arose from a myriad of business cases for individual routes (many of which had already failed)
Many rural stations were nowhere near the communities they “served”
Maybe roads don't pay for themselves, roads DO generate COMMERCE, DO move the GOODS... Simply put, no lorries, no food at supermarkets... And while rail advocates do not like to hear this, COMMERCE trumps delivering passengers a few minutes quicker... Recently Tesla is building tracks to a UP mainline a few miles to a new assembly plant near Austin, Texas that is presently under construction... Not the government...
Marples !!
Its a great sad loss when the railways were broken up. But in these times of large cksts of running your own car and so many parking and access restrictions today we could do with all the railways back.
My grandfather was a very well known train driver for GWR after ww2.
As a young man I remember when he heard Dr Beechings name he would go ballistic for the things he did to the railway system.
Just imagine, in a greener society we re-open the routes that are essentially still there and create links to all these random new housing projects?
You know building things is the most un green thing you can do. You never reclaim the damage that's done whilst the massive logical nightmare goes on. Imagine all the work, diesel lorrys, factories used to do this. It would make things worse rather than better.
@@brumsgrub8633There is a concept of payback time. The emissions of building a railway are repaid by transferring travel and freight to a greener method.
I do agree more thought should go into when to build though. Modern architects like to tout their green credentials while building out of high emission concrete and glass.
That would never be logistically possible because modern planners and architects are stupid. We can't even stop ourselves from wasting money for Christ's sake.
Maybe we should quit believing that suburban sprawl will have any positive impact on the housing crisis in the first place, witnessing firsthand the devastating impact this is having on American society, and increase the proportion of tower blocks or townhouse apartments in the inner-cities instead. This would also provide an economic excuse to modernise housing in such areas, two solutions for the price of one. Anyone remotely opposed to this has no common sense.
Nice one yet again Paul!
Thanks Paul from rural Lincolnshire, where our Station Horncastle closed 70 years ago thanks to competition of the bus
Politicians thought in terms of profit for railways instead of a community service, The railways also suffered by being legislated as a common carrier meaning there wasn't any freight they could refuse at standard price. The road companies didn't have this imposition and the minister was not going to change that when he had a interest in road transport.
Another remarkable aspect is just how many lines were saved from closure because they were needed to transport freight, and especially coal. The Coventry to Leamington line is one example - used to transport coal from Coventry Colliery to Didcot Power Station. It closed to passengers in 1965 and reopened relatively soon afterwards, in 1977. Now running hourly passenger trains from Southampton to Manchester Piccadilly. The Vale of Glamorgan line, between Barry/Cardiff and Bridgend, isn't even the only line between those two places, but is a valuable asset if you happen to live in Rhoose or Llantwit. Closed to passengers in 1964, only used for traffic to the power station and cement works at Aberthaw for over 40 years, reopened in 2005.
Lines and stations were closing before beeching, he just saw further ahead closed them before hand , “reshaping the railway “ was good to watch
Cheers Rusty
Yep, the branch line they filmed the Titford Thunderbolt was closed before filming, a decade before the Beeching cuts... Not by the government either, but by the GWR...
03:19 - the moment everybody loves as you dive into the woods to find an abandoned station platform! Seriously good production this, and nicely explains things for a lot of people.Great video to refer back to.
Should be one dive per video
In the US there are many bike paths on old rail right of ways. I enjoy those but wish we had the trains.
Excellent video - gives food for thought. Thanks Paul
Adrian Vaughan in his book Signalman’s Morning writes of speaking to an old porter who gave him a riddle to solve. He said we “Swindle it, chisel it, og it, marl it, save it, graft it, coll it, ludg it, wey it and anditover. What were we doing?” He was of course referring to parcels traffic between Swindon and Andover on the M&SWJ Railway. Or the old Milk and Soda Water as they called it.
A very interesting line of thought. Beeching was the hatchet man - the mood at the time was that railways should be profitable. However we now know that railways bestow a benefit that can’t be recouped by fares alone - a line that looses money can be of use. In the light of this, lines such as that to Okehampton or to Galashiels and Tweedbank have reopened and more are planned. Umpteen stations have reopened. This suggests that the policy of trying to make the railways pay was flawed and it did a great deal of damage.
Maybe do both at Fullerton? Leave most of the flora but clear off just a portion of that raised platform with a heritage sign?
I'd looove to
South and West Wales was absolutely destroyed by the closing of all the railways, and the communities still feel that loss today.
Yeah its terrible that the welsh can not get from south to north wales without going through england embarrassing..carmarthen to llandudno have to go all way round ahha
@@jacobepicmay And that North/South divide can very much be felt unfortunately.
@@RotGoblin with train all companies only care about london train everywhere else get 2 or 3 carraiage on train from 1980s whilst london to just slough get 8 coaches ahha
Really enjoyed this.. live in Dorset and its fascinating seeing old railway bridges in some areas which remind us of the pre Beeching past!
Another excellent production, nicely explained things that were going on around me at that time. Me in November 63 I discovered Dr Who and in December 64 discovered Girls, so a little distracted. :o)
Thanks Paul, good detail passed here.
Regards sent from further up North.
A very informative and realistic explanation of the past mistakes made by the early developers of the railways. Thank you for the video, Paul. Very straightforward with the views i think are correct. Hello to Rebecca and see you on they next! Enjoy the week ahead. ❤❤😊😊
esp as Swindon say has been expanded as a residential area
What Beeching left us with was a network that shafted pretty much anywhere outside London.
next thing you know, Beeching will have been paid heftily by car manufacturers...
Or road haulage magnates.
@@pacman1386 or both
@@AmauryJacquot agreed!
Greetings Paul and Rebecca my name is Jeff Evans. I live in Melbourne Australia. I’m sitting here on a cold wet Monday afternoon in the suburb of Rosebud, which is south of Melbourne, which is on Port Philip Bay over the last four years. I have been watching your TH-cam on disused railway stations, canals, Roman Roads, and all that type of stuff keep up the good work Paul the absolutely brilliant you’re got a wealth of information and you’re doing well And say hello to that lovely wife of yours and if it’s not too personal, what job do you do yours Jeff Melbourne Australia
I used to live near Reading, and visit my parents in North Wales. I was normally taking my bicycle with me ,but to take a train direct from Reading to Crewe, the entire journey would take 5 hours to go to North Wales ,and 6 hours to go back.
To do the journey through London was a lot quicker, as London to Llandudno was 3 hours. The problem with this route was the extra £100 that it would cost.
The times that I tried to go to Cambridge, the only journey that I could buy a ticket for, was through London. I have been told that there were trains going that way, but I think the person who said that, saw it before Beeching.
Part of that journey would involve a stretch of single track between Coventry and Leamington Spa. What a joke!!!!!
I wish the High Wycombe to Bourne End branch hadn't been closed or at least had been made into a tramway. From High Wycombe we now have to travel into London Marylebone and then round to Paddington to get on the GWR to go west. Real pain when we could have just changed at Maidenhead or Reading to go to the West Country.
When going to London, it is also less expensive to drive from HW to Amersham than travel from HW! When I was doing the journey, even including parking and petrol, it cost less.
At the time, the cost per mile for the small extra distance from HW to Marylebone was far more than a typical taxi rate.
I attended a talk at Flackwell Heath library on the history this line which was really interesting. It could still be open, all it needed was £30,000 or so and someone to go to parliament and contest the closure. The feeling was, at the time people weren't in the mindset of today. Where people would organise to save it like you see with village pubs, as it (the line) will always be there. Would have made my commute to work in Wycombe and college in Langley easier if it was there.
Excellent video, oh what could have been, with, as you say, some joined up thinking.
I live in Leicestershire and we have the LONGEST active steam railway in the entire country 🎉😊😊
Interesting video and a good analysis of the issues
I like to think that we could build a railroad now that needs less maintenance. I get the feeling that with just spending 50% extra you could get a system that needs 80% less maintenance costs.
I used to live in a small town at the end of the Victoria live in East Sussex and work in West Sussex in a tiny village. When I went for the interview I was able to make the journey by a rickety bus, but it turned out that the earliest bus service would take me there after the start of a day shift and the last bus would leave before I would get off. We didn’t own a car at the time but eventually got one. It was an eleven mile ride each way. Good job I love cycling! Also, cycling would beat the bus time wise had there been a service that could actually service me. So what’s the problem? For one thing, it hampers the job market. If commuting by public transit were more available, more employers could find the right employees and vice versa.
And a propos fourteen stations in London: at one point we went to Sweden to visit family. We flew with Ryanair so we landed at Luton. From there we took a train to some station in North London and to get to Victoria Station we had to make two underground trips, only it worked out to three because there was work being done on weekend nights. And then the train from London didn’t go all the way to our terminus, so we had to get off at some halt in the lesser known parts of Kent and wait for at least half an hour but I think it was more like forever in the dead of night, before finally getting the last train to our little town. From the station we had a mile uphill to our house. We also had three primary school children and luggage. I’ve never been happier to pay for a taxi.
Public transport is an important democratic right besides school and healthcare.
@@migrantfamily ? where did you have to get to. Normally Thameslink will get you to Blackfriars or London Bridge as a starting point
The fact that in 2019, the number of passengers using the railways are at its highest despite just under half of the railway network being closed and the network barely expanded then. This means that some level crossings had to close due to the rail traffic getting heavier and faster.
Sawbridgeworth crossing is a joke. You often have to wait over 10 minutes, whilst they send through 4 trains in a row (2 locals and 2 Stanstead Express trains). Sometimes, the gates allow less than 5 cars through, which can be quite dangerous after everyone has got impatient from the wait...
I'm from where it all started - Darlington - and I still live there. Beeching's Axe wasn't as severe here, because there were fewer stations & lines, but it has had just as severe an effect as elsewhere, and the original line to Stockton has had a road built on it.
The fact that Teesside doesn't have a light-rail-Metro network is shocking frankly.
One can argue "Well buses do it just as well" - except when stuck moving between towns & yes, there's OK-just-about local trains *but* with a light-rail network, those local trains could be better trains (not just 156 stoppers).
Paul the reason for most railways was the carrying of freight or mineral items and when we changed the way that things like Iron & Steal were made then the need for these lines ceased.
Living south of Northampton we have so many cross country lines that served the Iron Stone mining industry, connecting to the Midland Mainline or down to the GWR. So our locally quarried Iron Stone travelled down to the blast furnaces of the North Midlands or South Wales. If your add in the coal, clay and limestone you have a complex web of lines.
Now when we started importing higher grades of Iron ore from Australia we no longer needed to quarry Iron Stone and these lines were not as profitable with just passengers. Other examples include the Hemel Hempstead to Luton line that supplied straw to the Luton Straw hat makers or the Metropolitan's extension to Verney Junction through which milk was transported to London (Express Dairies).
They now form some lovely cross country paths.
Finally as a PS you forgot to mention the current reinstatement of the East West Line (Oxford to Cambridge) offering new travel links and direct container links between Felixstowe and Southampton (but don't mention the rail freight part).
Top video yet again from you Paul. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it
A great video Paul. Your analysis of Beeching was good. This kind of thing, and previous vids you've done on HS2, Stonehenge, railway bridges being filled in are deserving of a wider audience. That is TV. Keep up the good work😊
Thanks for another really interesting video
Beeching wanted to close the North London Line which became Silverlink Metro (National Express) when privatised and then became London Overground (Arriva With TFL) in 2007 and is the most heavily used National rail line in the country both by passengers and freight. It is so heavily used that it was normal for the 4 car trains to be completely full under Silverlink and people had to wait for the next one or use another route. The then mayor of London Ken Livingstone and TFL took control of the line and gave the contract to run the service to Arriva Rail London using new longer trains and more frequently and it runs every 5 to 10 minutes Richmond to Stratford and every 15 to 30 minutes Clapham Junction to Stratford. The trains are always full so he was wrong about this. Other lines joined the London Overground network, such as London Underground's East London Line, it was taken over by Network Rail from London Underground and completely rebuilt as part of the National Rail network with an extension from Whitechapel to Dalston Junction meeting the North London line and connecting with the National Rail network at New cross to connect with a line to Croydon and Clapham Junction so it is now a circular route
Rather than closing down things, private investment as well as new initiatives like this need to be implemented because closing down something completely is simply wasting infrastructure.
Until the establishment of London Overground, fare evasion was rife on Silverlink and even worse when it was British Rail. The stations were also dark, unsafe at night and people genuinely felt unsafe prefering to use the 2 hour commute across London.
Lord Beeching was tasked with producing a report setting out proposals for making the railway system fit for the future. He did not close lines or stations; he only made recommendations. The statutory closure procedure was a matter for the government. Some closure recommendations were not accepted such as the lines west of Plymouth.
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Re Plate layers hut , that's a standard Southern Railway concrete version . Probably made at their main Exmouth works for all things concrete . Great video , love the Midland and South West junction Railway .
I really appreciate the amount of time and effort you put into these videos. This was a thoughtful, well constructed and beautifully edited broadcast. Thank you.
Thank you very much!
@@pwhitewick I loved the video. I have moved to garforth just outside leeds and ironically it still has 2 stations within 400 yards of each other.
However rothwell not to far away where I moved from lost its station in 69 and was supposed to be on the new mainline which didn't happen. It lost its station, colliery and some other businesses. The town is better now once the M1 extended in the 90s.
Nice film Paul, and Rebecca..
Our railways are really and example of the old adage: if I was going there I wouldn’t start from here.
Many of the lines and routes created in the 19th century was built not to provide a service but to prevent the company’s rivals from entering their territory and affecting profitability.
But without this often insane competition, no railways would have been built.
The dead hand of government is hopeless at pushing new ideas and technology so the private sector had to do the building and financing so where they go and who they served was a matter of trade and profit. Without profit there is nothing to invest so unprofitable lines would naturally wither and die.
Nationalisation effectively removed the basic requirement for a line to pay its way so Beeching had to occur.
Beaching might have been right closing the lines. The crime was selling off the land, so they could not easily be re-laid. Hence, we are now spending 4 billion pounds reopening East West Rail, most of the cost rerouting the eastern section.
HS2 is now costing tens of billions digging a new route from London to Birmingham, often digging through the track bed of the former Great Central Railway.
It may seem a crime with hindsight, but I think they just wanted to recoup some of their losses.
Would the old right of way worked for high speed? My understanding is that the curves would not suit.
@@PaulCanniff Part of the Great Central Railway is straight. That's the bit of land that is being reused by HS2. But they are still building new trackbed.
The bit of the Great Central near London is still in use and also goes to Marylebone Station (which has one Underground line and no escalators to it) so is a pretty useless terminal station. That line also has the Metropolitan Line on it, which is a very crowded commuter railway, so they break off from the Great Central Route and go to Euston another way.
The bit near Biirmingham was no good, so they have gone for a better route, ending up using the approach to the disused Curzon Street Station.
It is a shame that, they are building HS2 to Euston, instead of tunnelling through London and connecting HS2 to HS1 with a through statiion at a place like Farringdon.
And it's a shame that the new Curzon Street Statiion wasn't a box deep in the ground, that would allow for trains to go straight through Birmingham.
At least the part of the trackbed used for Thameslink wasn't worth seeling at the time of the closure of Snow Hill Station and it only got redelvoped after the opening of Thameslink with the closure of Holborn Viaduct station.
@@DavidShepheard Clearly there was no "joined-up thinking" when it came to HS2 and HS1. So close, yet so far away!
Bonus comment. Beeching closed the Somerset and Dorset railway. Affectionally known by the locals as the Slow and Dirty.
That final few minutes of your summation was so right!
Thanks to Beeching the devizes branch line was closed. The town suffered from the closure before the road links were grown. As a young boy I travelled every day to school in trowbridge by the steam train.
5:14 It is interesting seeing Abergele down for closure, as Abergele & Pensarn (AGL) is active today (with a grand signal box).
Leeds Ripon Northallerton line was closed by Beeching despite huge opposition. It would regularly take huge traffic between Lancashire and North East. This would now be an invaluable addition to the network if still existed.
Thanks, a very good insight into rail history and why today the things are as they are
My local Station, Kings Norton, was originally set for closure by Beeching, but was reprieved with much reduced service.
In 1978 the service was rescued by West Midlands Passenger Passenger Transport Executive, and new stations built. It became my primary means of commuting to Birmingham University for many years (it is now my primary means of commuting to hospital appointments!). The West Midlands Cross City line has been a great success story, so much so that they are currently reopening another route from Kings Norton to Brum along the Camp Hill line.
One consequence of the cuts was the main lines immediately started losing money. Seems one of the important thing about those local lines that weren't profitable was that they fed local passenger to the main lines. Why drive part way to wherever to catch a train, just drive all the way.
One slight problem is that the proposal to close the Midland and South Western Junction Line was taken before 6th March 1961. There is a copy of the proposal notice on swindonsotherrailway. This is about 2 years before the Beeching Report.
If you wanted to travel from Swindon Town station to Andover Junction station it would take about 1 hour 30 minutes in 1961 (details on swidonsotherrailway). They also have the details of a traffic survey for the week ending 19th November 1960 with some stations having no one boarding or alighting during the entire week. Not one station had more than 100 passengers boarding or alighting that week, the closest was Marlborough at 89 boarding and alighting (the majority were school children) . A total of 212 journeys Monday to Saturday and 4 on Sunday were made by BTC staff to carry out the survey work. They even considered the levels of usage of the buses and future developments along the route. They even looked at the records held by the GWR fir this line.
I bet if we could find the other closure proposal documentation for the rest of the closed routes we'd find similar details.
But... remember the M&SWJR was built to take freight from the Midlands to Southampton docks. Passengers something of an extra. Though a lot of both freight and passengers in both World Wars when that (and the two other north-south railways) had a lot of use for the military - avoiding London was strategically important.
@@paulbivand9210 and by the 1960s there was plenty of capacity on other lines due to falling traffic levels as traffic shifted to the roads.
Beeching is basically a shorthand/bogeyman for all the closures BR made between 1948 and 1988.
@@sihollett never a true word said.
@@neiloflongbeck5705Beeching didn't close any lines, all closed by Transport Minister's.
Thank you Paul for all your hard work researching this one very much appreciated.😊😊
I remember a film of Betjeman riding to Burnham or Highbridge in Somerset, in the guard's van after passenger services where lost. He lamented at the busy state of the roads then. In the 60s. Sure, the road infrastructure wasn't created then that we have now, but when I'm on the motorway, and haulage trucks are there aplenty, I keep thinking - but if we'd just found a way to keep MORE branches and strip them down as needed, and then built small transport hubs - could that have worked better? BR did "use" the report to close lines that weren't even on the list - making sure inspectors turned up when the line was known to be less busy (witham priory to yatton, taking the railways away from some of the biggest tourist honeypots locally). It's a complex discussion but as Phill says in the next comment - the road lobbying seems to have been the real end of things - plus, in the 60s people wanted change. They believed the change would be good. But in a heartbeat I wish the main roads weren't quite so clogged with lorries. The pollution, noise, the way everyone drives.... it's too much. But railways, same as a lot of things, were political footballs, left & right of the spectrum. We had an opportunity in the 60s and indeed, as you so clearly highlight, much earlier still.
also, much seemed purely punitive, and of course, very london centric. Wales & Scotland really suffered under Beeching.
Had that line still existed, I would have been going to school and work on those trains.. instead I spent hours as a kid on busses to school and back everyday.. and even more hours playing along the old line, going on adventures with our friends..
Great video as usual. Recognisable scenes. Thanks, Paul.
I am now a Patreon member. I thought that it was about time.
Welcome aboard and thank you.
What Beeching could never know was this: Closing the lines between a village and a town could save money, but when those small towns themselves were cut off from the larger towns/cities then the small towns would be devastated (or certainly limited in some ways for visitors).
Northumberland is a case in point, Alnwick doesn't even have a Stourbridge style railcar link from Alnmouth. There may well be a new passenger service from Newcastle to Blyth and Ashington, but there won't be - so far as I'm aware - a way of getting to the ECML for transfers.
Bristol and the South-west is another case in point e.g. the Henbury loop closures and the lack of trains along the south-shore of the Severn thence to Weston-super-Mare to add some network density.
But what really stinks is that whilst HSTs were good, there was no high-speed rail investment in the 1960s such as Japan was doing then the French were doing etc. We might be better than the US & Canada in some respects for fast trains but realistically, we could have had dedicated, bonafide high-speed rail by now.
Excellent video..👍👍
Paul: you're a great presenter, storyteller and VT editor. Thank you for such a fascinating social history lesson about the railways - all contextualised on a walk along your old railway track!
The plate layers hut Paul refers to is a standard 1930's built Southern Railway hut built in pre cast concrete sections made at Exmouth Jn Concrete Works & put together at the site where it was required.
Really enjoyed that thanks Paul. Loving railway history. Thanks for share. Please take care
Like most of your video's. I thought this one was full of stimulating ideas. The Government appointed Beeching to stem BR's losses. It was seemingly a short-term Treasury-inspired fix, largely reliant (as always) on drastic pruning. Beeching retained most of the main arteries, radiating in and out of London. But, many routes linking sizeable population centres outside London, were cut. And vast numbers of rural branch lines were decimated. The BR 'problem' was framed in terms of an outmoded, financial albatross, unable to adapt and compete with expanding post-war forms of transport, most notably the private car and road transport. The same logic however, does not appear to have been followed in the case of motorways or bypasses, outside London. Some half-hearted attempts at railway 'modernization' were undetaken, but the kind of long-term strategic thinking, planning and major investment needed to develop a railway network able to meet changing economic and social needs, was largely absent - most certainly in the Dept. of Transport. However, I don't think BR should be seen in isolation. Much of Britain's industrial infrastructure hit the buffers in the following decades. Some other countries though, handled things differently, and viewed railways as a strategic industry, not in isolation, but as serving wider social and economic objectives. There are signs that railways are beginning to be looked at in similar ways this side of the Channel. But, as always, there are mixed signals, which can so quickly revert to red!
HS2 doesn’t represent joined up thinking arguably the opposite, it will create a bottleneck on the WCML wherever it joins be that a Lichfield with stage 1 or Crewe later on. And exists without consideration of how the network runs or is used. There’s little chance of many of the fast trains being taken off the WCML south of that because Coventry rugby and Milton Keynes are large conurbations that will strongly object to losing their fast trains. A joined up approach would have been to engage in smaller projects like dual track from Crewe to alsager and electrical infill projects.
Thanks Paul.🚂🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃👍👍👍👍
Go ride Settle to Carlisle just for fun. Glad that stayed open, but bear in mind we'd never have the amazing super fast natiional cycle network without Beeching. Try cycling your route, you might be pleasantly surprised
Wonderful to see how nature can come back...sorry to see many of the lines go ... but nature coming back is beautiful
Production Quality has definitely gone up a notch 👍
A well presented and enjoyable video Paul, thank you.
Bill Bryson book notes from a small island Had some good info on the beeching report
What is not often mentioned was the decision to keep stream in 1945 when most of the world was moving to diesel. Cheaper at the time but more manpower intensive and less cost effective, so the realisation that diesel was the way to go lead to the Beeching Report. Of course only in the UK could a report be entrusted to someone who knew nothing about railways, but knew the decision he was expected to come to!!
Very informative and entertaining
Thanks for the Credit for the Royal Commission map.
🙏
Interesting video as so often on your channel! It's not just the fact that the railways - like many other things - are London-centric, it is also the fact that even road routes are north/south biased, as opposed to east/west. There actually is a train between Liverpool and Norwich - via Cambridge, of all places! - but to do it by road is awful. You can use the M62, if you want, to start with, but after that nothing decent east of the M1. The A17 is appalling and mostly single lane with many farm vehicles.
Try Shrewsbury to Boston, or maybe stoke to Grimsby, by road, and there's a nightmare waiting for you... but probably less of one that the railways.
And when you do get a decent line north/south, like, perhaps, Sheffield to Bedford or Luton, you find that trains don't stop there... to get to Luton airport, I suppose, travellers must watch it go past the window on their way to London and then have to get a local train back. Yes it's insane, and probably won't change unless we do what the Europeans do and take pride in an efficient national rail network.
Several aspects to this.
I’m in a similar situation to your example at the start….no train. There was once…but it got axed. Now got to travel to get to a train.
The bus services here are fine east-west, but very poor to the south (1 mini bus every couple of days)…and zero bus routes to the north. As things stand, with the exception of the east-west bus route, there is zero chance of being able to use public transport instead of a car. And that bus route closes at just after 10pm.
Devizes wanted a replacement station but didn’t happen.
Even Corsham which actually sits on the main line from Chippenham no longer has its station.
Those where stations, track beds, & bridges were destroyed have zero chance of getting local rail back due to costs….irrespective of being private or publicly owned. We are trillions in debt and about to spend another 1.5 trillion on net zero madness…so there’s certainly no hope for local rail. Ironically HS2 is going ahead…tho no longer the full route, but that’s of no use to most of us. I would have invested that money in local rail instead. Not glamorous tho.
We got lots of abandoned railway routes around East Riding of Yorkshire
Fantastic video, one of my favourite subjects to cover.
It's what I have been saying for too long. We badly need a holistic approach to public transport. I was with Jim Blake, a transport historian by anyone's reckoning. We walked the Parkland Walk from Finsbury Park, up through Stroud Green, Crouch End and Highgate and along the Alexandra Palace branch as far as the Mossy Well pub at Muswell Hill. He's a real fascinating guy to chat with, and his depth of knowledge on London's own transport systems is colossal. The Parkland Walk follows the alignment of the old steam operated line which LT took ownership of in around 1935. LT electrified the line, modified or rebuilt some of the old stations and it was almost ready for opening to the Public when WWII broke out. After the war LT was in a parlous state, the line languished little used (and still by steam or early diesels) until 1954 when it was closed. It's final used was for stock transfer between Highgate depot and Finsbury Park. Both the tunnels at Highgate are now bat sanctuaries and are, thus, closed to the Public. Several buildings were built upon the route. The Northern Heights branch, as it was known, would have given a direct Underground link to this part of North London, many of who's residents travel by bus into the city each day. If they want to catch the Underground or into town they must travel to Highgate (Northern Line) or Archway or bus to Finsbury Park and transfer, or out to Edgware, Mill Hill or Barnet for a surface rail station.
great video again Paul and Rebecca , very interesting , well done and thank you 😊
The mass closure of lines was inevitable as soon as the Railways were nationalised in 1948. Since the companies before were competing with one another, but when BR took over it had stations in the same place that were just loss making. Beeching had little idea of what he was doing. He failed to took into account that the small lines fed passengers into the smaller stations. The railways also were not allowed to compete with the road lobby. Prices were fixed, the road lobby undercut them. Who has ever heard of roads being closed because they don't make money? As for the future the private companies were not like the companies of the old days. They don't own the trains, they don't own the track or the stations. They can't set fares, they can't compete with the road services, they can't operate road services at the same time and they are being subsides more than what British Rail was. Now there's a new organisation called Great British Rail, which at the moment seems to be running pointless adds on TV about how good the railways are. When they are not, with trains being cancelled all the time, because private banks and funds don't want to pay staff the wages they should get.
Well done Paul, great production and thought provoking. Very enjoyable to watch. A couple if great finds in the depths of the woods as well!!
Have a great week
Excellent video and valid points made! Further to other comments, the M&SWJR that you used as a key example with old footage was closed in 1961 - before the Beeching Report of 1963. British Railways had been closing various minor lines during the 1950s; Beeching was enacting government policy by increasing the scope and rate of closures.
Great Content! as always Paul "Thank you"👍