Is Beeching To Blame?
I remember the railways in the 1950s and 1960s well. Some will look upon that period as a golden age. But in truth trains and stations were terrible, with some of the diesel multiple units, like these Class 105, seemingly designed to remove the fillings from your teeth. Living in London, you used the Underground, where you could, rather than put up with the dirty local trains and stations. This was all before the Beeching reports, and it showed how bad our railways were. Very few people, who didn’t have to for commuting or work, used the trains and everybody preferred their new-found freedom given by a car.
Something had to be done, especially to cut costs and improve standard. The cuts are outlined here in Wikipedia.
When I was travelling up and down to Liverpool University in the 1960s, the trains were starting to get better, as electrification of the line was added. But still, it wasn’t anywhere near as clean, comfortable and reliable as it is now!
Generally, I believe Beeching was right to recommend closing many of the lines he proposed. They weren’t being used and the country couldn’t afford to fund a white elephant.
But it was the way that politicians and management did the downsizing of the railways, that is to blame for some of our railway problems today.
The way that line closures was done in a sometimes unthinking way, is illustrated by the problems of trying to restablish a rail route from Oxford to Cambridge. The original route was called the Varsity Line, and Wikipedia says this about its closure.
Services were withdrawn from the Oxford – Bletchley and Bedford – Cambridge sections at the end of 1967, even though the line had not been listed for closure as part of the Beeching Axe in 1963.
Although parts could still be reinstated, some parts are blocked by housing and other developments, and the Cambridge University Radio Telescope. The status of the line is described here.
So did an overzealous accountant or politician see the short term gain and lost sight of the future. As Beeching felt the line should stay, they must have thought, they had very good reasons to effectively close it for ever.
But now the government has stated that an East-West Rail Link should be built and they have funded the first part from Oxford to Bedford to open in 2017. The proposals for the link from Bedford to Cambridge are detailed here. Whatever happens, it looks like finding an acceptable route will be difficult.
In some places in the UK, rail closures were done, so that they could be reinstated. Scotland has recently recreated some of these lines and is currently rebuilding some of the Waverley Route.
Did the Scots have the vision, did managers and politicians not have a destroy policy or was it just luck?
London had a different policy. Both the Overground and the Docklands Light Railway were created out of the remains of old forgotten train lines. But then London was lucky, in that roads that could have used the space, were off the agenda and no-one had any decent vision on how to reuse the lines. So they were saved for their renaissance!
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