by: Dr Matthew Partridge. ; The station fell victim to Dr Beeching's cuts and was closed in the 1960s. The report recommended closing almost all services along the coasts of north Devon, Cornwall and East Anglia aside from Norwich to Great Yarmouth. For Beeching himself, the cuts outlined in 1963 were just the beginning. He says that it used to be possible to get from Galashiels to Edinburgh in 50 minutes by train but now it takes about an hour and 20 minutes by bus and the quality of the journey is much lower. [note 9], Out of 18,000 miles (29,000km) of railway, Beeching recommended that 6,000 miles (9,700km)mostly rural and industrial linesshould be closed entirely, and that some of the remaining lines should be kept open only for freight. The 'Beeching Report' is one of the most notorious government reports of the 20th century. [18] Beeching denied this, pointing out that he had returned early to ICI as he would not have had enough time to undertake an in-depth transport study before the formal end of his secondment. For Dr Beeching, commercial viability was central to railway policy in times of unsustainable and mounting losses. More than 40 years after the closure, some of the Waverley Route is to be revived in the form of the new 300m Borders railway, which, after years of wrangling, is set to be completed by the summer of 2015. The protest against the closure provoked sabotage attacks and night-time blockades by furious locals. Fifty years ago, the Beeching Report was published, spelling the end for thousands of stations and hundreds of branch lines. In opposition to these cuts, the period also witnessed the beginning of a protest movement led by the Railway Development Association, whose most famous member was the poet John Betjeman. He also highlights the Perth-Kinnaber junction (near Montrose) line closure, which left towns such as Coupar Angus and Forfar cut off from the network. [25] Beeching's findings have also been reviewed in two books by his contemporaries: R.H.N (Dick) Hardy: Beeching Champion of the Railway (1989) .mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit;word-wrap:break-word}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"\"""\"""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .citation:target{background-color:rgba(0,127,255,0.133)}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg")right 0.1em center/12px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:none;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#3a3;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}ISBN0-7110-1855-3 and Gerard Fiennes: I Tried to Run a Railway (1967) ISBN0-7110-0447-1. It was quietly shelved in the run up to the 1983 election. Were railway closures simply a conspiracy by those with investment in the road network? I met a famous trainspotter from Sheffield at an event to "celebrate" the 50th anniversary of Beeching's report. [note 2], The first Beeching report, titled The Reshaping of British Railways, was published on 27 March 1963. Beeching was brought into British Railways as a businessman and economist at a time when the British railway system was losing 100 million a year. The reshaping would also involve the shedding of around 70,000 British Railways jobs over three years. On the other hand, Hardy points out Beeching's political navete, and Fiennes notes that because a passenger service was producing a loss did not mean that it would continue to do so in the future. Beeching was recruited by the government from a very successful business career at ICI, to make the railways profitable again. He concludes that three of the 10 worst closures were in Scotland. The fact remains, Beeching and Marples were the architects of the destruction of this country's railway system. He did a traffic survey which found that a quarter of the fare income generated by the railways came from just 34 stations, or 0.5 percent of the total. The second report identified a small number of major routes for significant investment. At that time the government was seeking outside talent to sort out the huge problems of the railway network, and he was confident that he could make the railways pay for themselves, but his salary, at 35 times that of many railway workers, has been described as a "political disaster". The board consisted of senior figures in British businesses, and none of the board had previous knowledge or experience of the railway industry. Had that report come into effect in 1965, Cornwall would have . The Beeching Act of 1963 spelt the closure of over a third of Britain's Railways. As in the passenger model, it was assumed that lorries would pick up goods and transport them to the nearest railhead, where they would be taken across the country by train, unloaded onto another lorry and taken to their destination. His father was Hubert Josiah Beeching, a reporter with the Kent Messenger newspaper, his mother a schoolteacher and his maternal grandfather a dockyard worker. [54], Since the Beeching cuts, road traffic levels have grown significantly and since privatisation in the mid-1990s there have been record levels of passengers on the railways owing to a preference to living in smaller towns and rural areas, and in turn commuting longer distances[56] (although the impact of this is disputed). True to his nature and previous track record he'd had the railways in his sights for a while, He just needed the official excuse and remit to do his thing. On 23 December 1964, Transport Minister Tom Fraser informed the House of Commons that Beeching was to return to ICI in June 1965. He returned after two years to become chairman of ICI Metals Division on the recommendation of Sir Ewart Smith. In 1963, Beeching produced a report entitled 'The Reshaping of British. Dr Beeching wrote two reports proposing cuts to British Railway services. True, he took a clinical, bean-counting approach to the problem. The Times, "I.C.I. Luckily he was sacked after his first butcher's job on the railways and before he could do more damage. [31] The report's infamous "Option A" proposed greatly increasing fares and reducing the rail network to a mere 1,630 miles (2,620km), leaving only 22 miles (35km) of railway in Wales (a section of the South Wales Main Line from the Severn Tunnel to Cardiff Central) and none in Somerset, Devon or Cornwall. RAIL services axed as part of a costing-cutting initiative named after British Rail chief Dr RichardBeeching who proposed it could now be reinstated. After the. The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) were a reduction of route network and restructuring of the railways in Great Britain, according to a plan outlined in two reports, The Reshaping of British Railways (1963) and The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes (1965), written by Dr Richard Beeching and published by the British Railways Board.wikipedia The Times, "The Second Stage of Dr. Beeching's Reorganisation Proposals", 17 February 1965, p. 8. Ian Hislop commented in 2008 that history has been somewhat unkind to "Britain's most hated civil servant", by forgetting that he proposed a much better bus service that ministers never delivered, and that in some ways he was used to do their "dirty work for them". The first report identified 2,363 stations and 5,000 miles (8,000km) of railway line for closure, amounting to 55% of stations, 30% of route miles, and 67,700 British Rail positions,[1] with an objective of stemming the large losses being incurred during a period of increasing competition from road transport and reducing the rail subsidies necessary to keep the network running. Frank Cousins, the Labour Minister of Technology, told the House of Commons in November 1965 that Beeching had been dismissed by Tom Fraser. This was a third of the track network and 55 per cent of stations. Goodness knows what Dr Beeching would make of it all if he were alive today. Plenty to enjoy in this steam railway set comedy as the characters try desperately to keep their little country station open in the 1960s era of Dr Beeching's infamous cuts to British railways. Throughout Britain there is a legacy of political meddling with the rail network. Dr Richard Beeching, in two reports, The Reshaping of British Railways (1963) and The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes (1965), identified that 2,363 stations and 5,000 miles (8,000 km . Vehicle mileage grew at a sustained annual rate of 10% between 1948 and 1964. The Midland Main Line was planned to close, leaving Leicester and Derby without a rail link, while the East Coast Main Line, part of the key London/Edinburgh link, was intended to be cut north of Newcastle. Fast journeys between the cities. Mr Spaven says: "We have to recognise the achievement of getting the railway back to Galashiels and Tweedbank. Beeching's remit was to make the railways pay their way - sorting profitable services from unprofitable services, and finding discrepancies in national railway usage and profits. In 1953 he went to Canada as vice-president of ICI (Canada) Ltd, and was given overall responsibility for a terylene plant in Ontario. [45], The Transport Act 1962 dissolved the British Transport Commission (BTC), which had overseen the railways, canals and road freight transport and established the British Railways Board, which took over on 1 January 1963, with Dr Beeching as its first chairman. It was this kind of rural and little-used stations and lines which were the first to be hit by the Beeching cuts of the mid-1960s. In many cases the replacement bus services were slower and less convenient than the trains they were meant to replace, and so were unpopular. [58] It perpetuated the myth that the Beeching cuts were concerned solely with sleepy rural branch lines, but they actually also concerned well-used "industrial" and commuter lines. [2], In 1938 he married Ella Margaret Tiley, whom he had known since his schooldays. Yorkshire and Humberside Reinstatement of the Beverley to York Rail Line BR ignored this one and they also closed lines not included in part one of his report. More than 3,000 miles disappeared in the 1950s and the government wanted to axe a lot more. [note 11]. 09:17 . The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised railway system in Great Britain. Part of the reason for retaining the Ayr-Stranraer line was a compromise to keep politicians and businessmen in Northern Ireland happy, says Mr Livingston.
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