Just watched this programme very interesting i must say.

Now i don't know about anyone else but i found him so arrogant and self righteous pil…ck. Sorry but i did.

I mean we go on about fat cats off today spooning off large sums of money and then going on to mess things up, well what about him. He was one back then. I mean he comes from ICI and takes this job at the same time demanding he gets his £24,000 salary per year that he was getting at ICI or he will quit. The last guy who did this job was only on £10,000 per year. So was he a future Fat Cat milking the profits before he cocked up. Now forgive me but he was put there because the railways was losing money, so why give him this large salary, beggar's belief.

He sat there in the interview as thou he was not responsible for anything he did, hello earth call Beeching. He ruined the transport system, cut of rural ares from the main towns, took rail freight away from certain areas and gave it to the road transport and he still maintains that was the way forward. He destroyed all those Loco's, lost thousand's of jobs but did he lose sleep over it, i don't think so somehow.

What shocked me was the exstent he cut the railway, i knew he did but wow the amount of rail Wale's lost, all most cut off. They only have 3 main lines, top of the country, middle and bottom.


Anyhow interesting viewing and some lovely shots of the steam trains, oh and some diesel ones thrown in as well as a shot of the first 125 hpt trains.

Am i wrong in having this opinion, do you guys think he was correct or do you think he was wrong in what he did?. Am i wrong in the way i think of what he did, answers on a postcard please .

Phill

 

Agree 100% Phil.
It was interesting to hear in Ian Hislops programe that Earnest Marples was a road building magnate!

So don't try and tel me there was no conspiracy 'cos I just won't believe it.

Beeching is/was a transport vandal.  I apply the same label to the elected cretins who have dismantled Victoria's (Aust) rail system.

[user=25]Boilermaker69[/user] wrote:

Beeching is/was a transport vandal. I apply the same label to the elected cretins who have dismantled Victoria's (Aust) rail system.

And the same for South Aust's railway network as well.

I'd really like to have seen this programme.

I reckon some cuts would have been neccessary however He probably went too far.

 

In the last Hornby mag there was an article about a similar study doen under Maggie.  This would have left no railways in Scotland and a single line to Cardiff.  Nothing in the South west at all.  Even Maggie baulked at that.

I think he did some sort of deal with the transport side because he reckoned the rail could not handle the freight to certain area,s. Sorry but we had goods sheds for the wagons to unload and Lorry's to take them away, worked for years so why suddenly scrap this, old saying but MONEY TALKS, not saying it talked to him but i smell a rat somewhere here.

It was the way he sat there all smug and would not admit he may of cut too much, infact he more or less said he would of done more :shock:, blimey glad he left.

Think this was first aired back in 1974 when i was a sparkle in my dads eyes :roll:

He virtually knackered Wales rail transport system, poor Jeff no wonder he is cut of where he lives and is in love with GWR, must of sent his mind mad :thumbs

Phill.

Ps i taped the 9pm programme, so look forward to that one.

Ernest Marples was not known as Motorway Marples for nothing!

The report in Maggie's day was the Serpell report, written by a guy who was the director of a company set up to convert railways into roads.

Jobs for the boys, just like in Yes Minister!

I have not actually seen it yet but have all of last night's railway programs recorded to watch when I get chance.

There is no doubt that some of the cuts where needed but it was taken way too far and let us not forget that both main political parties were involved which is why neither of them really talk much about transport as they both have really poor records…

[user=200]Christrerise[/user] wrote:

There is no doubt that some of the cuts where needed but it was taken way too far and let us not forget that both main political parties were involved which is why neither of them really talk much about transport as they both have really poor records…

Well how right you are, Harold Wilson promised the Labour Government would put all ruel areas back on and what happened he got in but never did what he promised he would. Same as today, promise you this and that to get votes, get in and then its sod you all.

Just watched the Beeching report, what a ar…. hey, he definitely destroyed the railway in my eyes. Someone said that when they where discussing cuts and saying Wales still had too  many lines hardly used, a Welsh Minister stood up and said,

 "PM you can not do that to Wales".

"Why" the PM asked.

"because they go through too many of our safe voting seats", (used a different word but cant spell it, somat like Constituentcy, see said i cant spel it )

Phill

Im sure somebody has said or i have read that although beeching went to far if he had not done something drastic the railways would have gone kapputt and apparently he implemented a great deal of the modernisation

Am i right or have i misread something?

cheers Brian.W

Beeching was one example of what was going on in many places in the world - the battle between the railways on the one hand, and the car manufacturers (hand in hand with big oil interests) on the other.  I was thinking about this today as I walked a short section of the old roadbed of the Old Colony Railroad here on the Outer Cape.  This was a line that was closed before Dr. Beeching had his day, but the political arguments were identical - and so were the lobby groups.  (The Ford Motor Company led the field)

There is nothing new under the sun!

[user=52]henryparrot[/user] wrote:

Im sure somebody has said or i have read that although beeching went to far if he had not done something drastic the railways would have gone kapputt and apparently he implemented a great deal of the modernisation

Am i right or have i misread something?

cheers Brian.W

I am sure your right Brian but in many ways he went too far. I mean he did a 7 say survey before he decided on what to axe. Now a survey on the scale of the railways back then in 7 days is no where near enough. Also as some x rail staff said they came when it was not busy, so the reports where not correct.

He cut off many areas in the country side without even thinking of the aftermath. Yes the railway did need sorting out but as he was best buddy's with the guy who financed the roads and built them was in many ways a right stitch up from the start and deemed that the road transport would take over the railways very soon.

So in my opinion yes the railways needed some TLC but not in the way he did it, a much better and indeed a longer survey was needed.

Phill

The railways did need some drastic changes but the flaw with Beeching is that he only saw cost cutting and an no effort at all of how to increase ridership or revenue.  In the hindsight interview (which is now 27 years old!) he was still arguing that electrification was a waste of time and that there was no need for two routes to Scotland.  Look how many people travel on both of these routes and you can only wonder if how he could be so wrong and not see it.  Can you imagine York with no trains to London!

It is a shame that none of the programs showed why the UK railways were in trouble.  It seems to be just accepted that they had been losing money but failed to say that it was the wars that ruined them.  Twice the railways were taken over by the government and then worked into the ground during the war efforts.  They were then handed back to the private companies virtually worn out and the compensation provided by the government was woefully inadequate.

There are many routes that undoubtedly had to go but some of the reasons were very shaky.  Devon and Cornwall lost most of their branches to the resorts on the north coast because it could not be justified to retain them "just for the summer traffic".  That summer traffic was huge and they then spent 30 years building more and more roads to cope with the summer rush.  So it is fine to provide roads for a few months use but not railways.

Beeching's biggest flaw is that you can analyse individual trains and routes and cut them out with the remaining services then running more profitably.  Trouble is if you take that to conclusion you end up running trains for a fewer hours per day and each time those hours reduce more people give up travelling as it becomes less attractive.

As an example Thameslink was a profitable route and paid the government about £10million a year.  Yet we still ran trains right through the night even though they only had a few people on them as it was part of the overall package that meant you knew whatever time you turned up there would always be a train to take you onwards.

The other problem with freight services is that the railway was by law a "common carrier".  This meant that they were required to publish a fixed tariff for every possible type of goods imaginable.  Road hauliers were not constrained by the same rules so if somebody turned up at their office with a hat stand they wanted to send from Cornwall to their aunt in Elgin, they could just say no thanks.  The railway not only had to carry it but had to have a rate published that could not be varied.  By the time that act was repealed in the 1960s most of the profitable traffic had already been lost…

I haven't had chance to see the programme yet - it's on tape - but I think the general consensus (taking emotions out of the equasion) is that cuts really were necessary, and fairly hefty ones at that.  Railways were costing the country an absolute fortune and, unlike mainland Europe, we didn't have the finances to rebuild and modernise after the war.  Most of the cash injected for rebuilding war-torn Europe by USA went to the mainland - in fact, UK, being seen as a "trade competitor" was specifically cut out.   I'm sure those of us ancient enough to remember the late 40's and early 50's will remember how little we actually had in the way of "treats" and "luxuries".

Europe had modern diesels / electrics but we had old, in the main, exhausted steam locos and pre-war stock.  Something had to be done and Beeching was chosen to do it because of his record at ICI.  Phill - your comments about him being a "fat cat" are not entirely correct - he was good at his job (at ICI) and drove a very hard bargain - the government employed him, he didn't beg them to do so.  If you could demand double your current wages, would you not take it ?

He did go way too far and, as is usually the case, he looked merely at economics and not at the "social" value of the railways.  With the benefit of hindsight, we could be rather synical and come up with the following:

        1. Railways were loosing cash

        2. We were close to being bankrupt after WW2

        3. The country needed revenue not expenditure

        4. Quick Fix - Remove the railways thus forcing the public into cars - save a fortune in subsidies whilst gathering the purchase tax from the sale of cars, gather the corporation tax from the rapidly expanding motor manufacturers at the same time create jobs (more "income tax"), then, having got there, spend the next 50 years or so nailing the motorist to the wall until either the country grinds to a halt through over crowding or the globe runs out of oil - either way, the tax revenue is absolutely massive !!

Sorry guys, but this is a bit of a "hobby-horse" of mine !! :oops::oops:

Petermac,some hobbyhorse to ride ! but well put just the same
have to agree with your synopsis,i think you have it about right.
thumbs:cool:

I might be off the point but i did hear that when a full audit was done on the railway system that on some lines it would have been cheaper for the railways to buy their passengers a new car or provide taxi s for them.

Beeching did do good introduced liner trains etc, while it might not out weigh the bad things that he did implement he still did do quite a few things.

The other point that i would like to make is that hindsight is great, back then there was a big movement away from the railways in both passenger and freight which sadly was a world wide problem, How was he supposed to predict the movement of passengers back to the railway in the 1990's and 2000's?

Id say if we did manage to build a time machine and when t back to this time and told him that in the 1990's and in the first decade of this century that we would be building new railways the men in the white coats would be called.

Now don t get me wrong on the above i am definetly not anti railway and it saddens me when i see the local railways closing but isn t the real crime occuring now when lines are allowed to fall into disrepair even though they are supposed to be keeping them up to operational standards.

Now thats my two pence worth on this issue don t get me started on a certain Irish gent or is it grim repear

There is no doubt that many branch lines did not pay and should never have been built.

However there was not much of an effort to reduce costs on other more borderline examples and they were just shut instead.  For instance the Helston railway was shut with three stations each having a full complement of 12 staff, as well as three signal boxes with 8 staff and each train formed of loco driver, 2nd man and guard.

Under the basic railway concept this line could have operated with a driver and guard only in a DMU - quite a substantial saving.  I have not included PW staff as they would still be needed, although with a DMU shuttle on a single line the costs of maintenance would be drastically reduced.

Even ignoring these more borderline cases in the hindsight program which was filmed in the early 1970s he was still arguing that the east coast main line should be shut as it duplicated the west coast main line to Scotland, but that would of course leave places like York with no train services to London!

There is no doubt that Beeching was blinkered in the only solution being to shut routes entirely.

In today's terms you could liken it to the Royal Mail.  It loses money and they keep shutting bits of it but at the moment the coverage of the entire country is complete.  At some point though they will probably start suggesting that extremities are withdrawn and bit by bit it will become less of a complete coverage and less attractive, but it will still lose money.

The problem with public services is that they cannot make any money.  If they could somebody would already be doing it as a business!

Here is a final thought for you - the railway in Britain today is costing the tax payer about 4 times what it did when it was good old British Rail…

Absolutely agree Chris - well, almost !!

When the good old GWR built lines into Cornwall, was it so that the Corns could get out or the Angles could get in ?

Your comments about public services showing a profit or not are very, very valid and something that, I think, our Lords and Masters ought to study carefully !!

Giving a public service is exactly that - no more and no less.  If it breaks even, great, if it makes a profit, prices should be reduced (after allowing for capital expenditure and reapirs & maintenance naturally) and, if it loses money that's just the way it is.  They are provided as public services they are not businesses in the private business sense and it's what our taxes should be for - not propping up greedy bankers !!

When they privatised the rail network (for example), they said "Private enterprise would make a better job of it".  In other words, the government couldn't run a railway efficiently - and we ask them to run a whole country for us ????? :shock::shock::shock::shock:  If they worked for me, I'd clear the lot out within a week !!!!

I wonder how many people would rather have a clean, efficient, punctual and universal public transport system than a new Cabinet Office or re-decorate 10 Downing Street - for the umpteenth time ? 

France subsidises it's railways very heavily - it costs the tax payer but we have excellent trains (in the main), they're pretty punctual, fast and universal.  The well known TGV cost a fortune but my word, are the French proud of it ?  You bet !!!! 

Interesting discussions but on a lighter note I remember seeing (it is still there I think) on a railway bridge in Lancashire, daubed in 2ft high letters "Dont close our station - lynch Beechams". What's in a name eh?:hmm

Les

 

What i can t get my head around is why sell assets then years later spend millions buying them back? Its happened quite a lot over here in the last few years and quess what its still happening.

Beeching looked in great detail at British Railways from a business point of view, part of the reason why he got such a big salary is that he made a bad company into a successful one in his previous job. Up till this stage it was unheard of a non railway man to get such a high position and because of this he wasn t bothered about whether it was ex LNER, LMS, GWR or Southern he just looked at the black print ie whether it made profit or made a loss.

 Up to this stage the railways were still a labour intensive industry and still essentually run as a victorian organisation but paying post war wages and salaries. Also the senior management were conservative and not really willing to change. During the war the railways were the veins and arteries of the ability to wage war, troops to and from barracks, munitions to/from depots,workers to/from factories and lets face it was knackered by the end of the war. THe railway needed huge investment thats why BR was formed? So why would the goverment waste a limited amount of both money and resources on the line that couldn t cover its own upkeep, ok yes it could be argued that for socio economic reasons the line should be kept open but would we as taxpayers be too happy if we found out that millions was spent on something when the alternative would only cost a small fraction of that. I think not. Now as a railway enthusiast it does bother me that rural lines were closed but i rather see some railways than none at all.

 

I remember seeing another interview done by Beeching's PR man re the cuts. Besides stating that they didn't get up to any dirty tricks re the survey (open to debate) he also stated that Beeching stood by his report on the basis that he was told to come up with a plan to make the railways pay. From his point of view all Beeching could see was that branch lines and some main lines particularly were draining the system of finances and recommended their closure accordingly. However, Beeching also said in a later interview that if he'd been asked to consider a plan for the railways from a different point of view ie the public service aspect and the impact on employment, then he would have reached a different conclusion. He wasn't against subsidised railways as such, it would seem, it just wasn't in the brief he was given by the government of the day. Given that the man he was reporting to was a road contractor ie Ernie Marples, it is not that surprising he wasn't allowed to look at the wider aspects. It was also made clear to him that the government weren't going to spend any money if they could help it, nor would they increase taxes. We're lucky they didn't implement all his reccomendations so even then some things were considered either politically or socially unacceptable. If there was a silver lining from that period then it appears without those cuts we would not have had the thriving heritage lines we have today. Interestingly, in the late 70s when BR was considering closing the line from Haltwhistle to Alston in Northumberland (now sadly gone) they also gave figures to show that it would be cheaper to buy everyone who used the railway on a daily basis their own car, and pay for the petrol. The line was only kept open because Alston was regularly snowed in due to the exposed nature of the road. As soon as the new road was built then the line was closed. The maintenance bill for communications now falls on the county council.