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The Beeching Axe was an informal name for the British Government's attempt in the 1960s to control the spiralling cost of running the British railway system by closing what it considered to be little-used and unprofitable railway lines.
It was a reaction to the failed railway modernisation plan of the 1950s, which spent huge amounts of money on buying new equipment, such as new diesel and electric locomotives, without first examining the role of the railway and its requirements, recognising the implications of changing old-fashioned working practices, or tackling the problem of chronic overmanning. The result of which was to plunge the railway system deeply into debt.
Background
In tune with the mood of the early 1960s, Harold Macmillan's Conservative government with pro-road transport minister, and former director of a major road-construction company, Ernest Marples believed that the future of transport lay with roads, and that railways were a relic of the Victorian past with little future.
An advisory group was set up to report on the state of British transport and provide recomendations: the Stedeford Committee, chaired by Sir Ivan Stedeford. Also on the Committee was Dr. Richard Beeching - the Conservative government appointed chairman of British Railways. Stedeford and Beeching clashed on a number of issues connected with the latter's proposals to drastically prune the rail infrastructure. In spite of questions being asked in Parliament, Sir Ivan's report was never published and the proposals for the future of the railways that came to be known as the "Beeching Plan" were adopted by the Government, resulting in the closure of a third of the rail network and the scrapping of a third of a million freight wagons.
Beeching believed the railway system should be run like a business and not a public service, and that if parts of the railway system did not pay their way—like some rural branch lines— they should be eliminated. He reasoned that once these were closed, the remaining core of the system would be restored to profitability.
Beeching made a study of traffic on all the railway lines in the country and concluded that 80% of the traffic was carried on just 20% of the network, with much of the rest of the system carrying little traffic and operating at a loss. In his report "The Reshaping of British Railways" issued on March 27, 1963, he proposed a massive closure programme. The report proposed that 6000 miles (9600 km) of Britain's then 18,000 miles (28 800 km) of railway system be closed (mostly rural branch and cross-country lines) and that many other rail lines should lose their passenger services and be kept open for freight only. In addition, many lesser-used stations would close on lines that were to be kept open. The report was accepted by the Government.
At the time, the highly controversial report was called the "Beeching Bombshell" or the "Beeching Axe" by the press. It sparked an outcry from many communities that would lose their rail services, for many of which (especially in the case of rural communities) were the sole means of public transport.
The government argued that many rail services could be provided more cheaply by buses, and in a policy known as "bustitution", promised that abandoned rail services would have their place taken by a replacement bus services. Although in practice this policy proved unsuccessful.
A significant part of the Beeching Plan also proposed that British Rail electrify some major main lines and adopt containerised freight traffic instead of outdated and uneconomic wagon-load traffic. In general, politicians jumped at the money-saving parts of the plan but were less enthusiastic about the parts which cost money. Some of those plans were adopted, however, such as the electrification of the West Coast Main Line.
Rail closures by year
At its peak in 1950, the mileage of the British railway system was around 21,000 miles (33 800 km) and 6000 stations. By 1975, the system had shrunk to 12,000 miles (19 000 km) of track and 2000 stations, roughly the same size it was in 2003.
Contrary to popular belief, Beeching did not start rail closures, as a number of rail closures had occurred during the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1963, approximately 3000 miles (4800 km) of line had already been closed. After Beeching's report, the process was accelerated and dramatically expanded.
- Pre-Beeching closures
- 1950....150 miles (240 km) closed
- 1951....275 miles (440 km) closed
- 1952....300 miles (480 km) closed
- 1953....275 miles (440 km) closed
- 1954 to 1957....500 miles (800 km) closed
- 1958....150 miles (240 km) closed
- 1959....350 miles (560 km) closed
- 1960....175 miles (280 km) closed
- 1961....150 miles (240 km) closed
- 1962....780 miles (1 250 km) closed
- Post Beeching closures
- 1963....324 miles (521 km) closed
- 1964....1058 miles (1703 km) closed
- 1965....600 miles (965 km) closed
- 1966....750 miles (1 205 km) closed
- 1967....300 miles (480 km) closed
- 1968....400 miles (640 km) closed
- 1969....250 miles (400 km) closed
- 1970....275 miles (440 km) closed
- 1971....23 miles (37 km) closed
- 1972....50 miles (80 km) closed
- 1973....35 miles (56 km) closed
- 1974....0 miles (0 km) closed
Not all of the railway lines listed for closure were closed; some were kept open for a variety of reasons, including political manoeuvring. For example, the railway lines through the Scottish Highlands, although not cost-efficient by Beeching's definition, were kept open in part because of pressure from the powerful Highland lobby. It has been suggested that other lines may have been kept open because they passed through marginal constituencies. In addition, some lines listed for closure were kept open because the local roads were incapable of absorbing the traffic that would be transferred from the railway if it closed. As a result, there are still a fair number of rural railway lines in existence on the British railway system, although far fewer than there were before Beeching.
Overall, 2128 stations were closed on lines that were kept open. As well as minor railway lines, a few major inter-city railway lines were closed, most notably the former Great Central Railway, which linked London to the north of England.
Beeching II
In 1964, Dr. Beeching issued a second, less well-known, report "The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes", widely known as "Beeching II", which went even further than the first report. The report singled out lines that were believed to be worthy of continued large-scale investment, and, although it did not explicitly say so, implied that other lines would eventually be closed.
Essentially, it proposed that all railway lines other than major inter-city routes and important commuter lines around big cities had little future and should eventually close. If the report had been implemented, the railway system would have been cut to just 7000 miles (11 250 km), leaving Britain with little more than a skeletal railway system, with large parts of the country entirely devoid of railways (US railways suffer from this fate).
The report was rejected by the then Labour government and Dr. Beeching resigned in 1965. Although politicians were ultimately responsible for the rail closures, Dr. Beeching's name has become synonymous with them ever since.
Changing attitudes and policies
In 1964, the Labour government was elected under prime minister Harold Wilson. During the election campaign, Labour promised to halt the rail closures if elected. Once elected, however, they quickly backtracked on this promise, and the closures continued, at a faster rate than under the previous administration and until the end of the decade.
In 1965, Barbara Castle was appointed transport minister, and she began to look at the country's transport problems as a whole. Mrs. Castle decided that at least 11,000 route miles (17 700 km) of "basic railway" would be needed for the foreseeable future and that the railway system should be stabilised at around this size.
However, towards the end of the 1960s it became increasingly clear that rail closures were not producing the promised savings or bringing the rail system out of deficit, and were unlikely ever to do so. Mrs. Castle also stipulated that some rail services that could not pay their way but had a valuable social role and so should be subsidised. However, by the time the legislation allowing this was introduced in 1968, many such services and railway lines that would have qualified for subsidies had already been closed or removed, lessening the impact of the legislation. A number of branch lines were nevertheless saved by this legislation.
Overview
The closures failed in their central purpose of restoring the railways to profitability, with the promised savings failing to materialise. By abolishing a third of the rail network, Beeching managed to achieve a saving of just £7 million whilst overall losses were in excess of £100 million. The losses were mainly because the branch lines acted as feeders to the main lines, and this feeder traffic was lost when the branches closed—in turn meaning less traffic for and worsening the finances of the main lines. The assumption at the time was that car owners would drive to the nearest railhead (which was usually the junction where the closed branch line would otherwise have taken them) and journey onwards by train, but in practice having once left home in their cars, they used them for the whole journey.
The "bustitution" policy of replacing rail services with buses also failed. Most of the replacement bus services were far slower and less convenient than the train services they replaced, and they proved unpopular with the public. Most of the replacement bus services only lasted a few years before being scrapped owing to lack of usage, effectively leaving large parts of the country without any means of public transport.
The closures were brought to a halt in the early 1970s when it became apparent that they were not useful, that the benefit of the small amount of money saved by closing railways was outweighed by the pollution and congestion caused by increasing reliance on cars which followed, and by the general public's hatred of the cuts.
The last major railway closure was of the 80-mile-long (130 km) Waverley Route main line between Carlisle and Edinburgh, in 1969; plans have since been made to re-open this line. Today, Britain's railways, like nearly every other railway system in the world, still run at a deficit.
Many commentators now agree that the Beeching plan went much too far and with hindsight many of the cuts have been viewed as foolish and short-sighted. Although supporters of Beeching claim that some of the closures were a necessary emergency response to save the railway network from financial disaster, and that if they had not occurred, a far larger programme of cuts would have been later necessary.
One of the major criticisms made of the Beeching report was that it failed to take into account future trends such as population growth and greater demand for travel. The population of many of the towns which had their railways closed in the 1960s has grown significantly since, leaving the towns more in need of public transport. However, the trackbeds of many closed railways have been built over and they would be prohibitively expensive to re-open.
In the early 1980s, under the government of Margaret Thatcher, the possibility of more Beeching-style cuts was raised again briefly. In 1983 Sir David Serpell, a civil servant who had worked with Dr Beeching, compiled what became known as "The Serpell Report" which called for more rail closures. The report was met with fierce resistance from many quarters, and it was quickly abandoned.
Reopenings
Since the Beeching era, a modest number of the closures have been reversed. Notable amongst these is the Robin Hood Line in Nottinghamshire, between Nottingham and Worksop via Mansfield, which reopened in the early 1990s. Previously Mansfield had been the largest town in Britain to have no rail link.
In the West Midlands a new Birmingham Snow Hill station was opened in 1987 to replace the earlier Snow Hill station, which had been closed and demolished in the early 1970s. The tunnel underneath Birmingham city centre that served the station was also reopened, along with the line towards Kidderminster and Worcester. The former line from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton has been reopened as the Midland Metro tram system. The line from Coventry to Nuneaton was reopened to passengers in 1988.
In Newcastle upon Tyne, most of the railways north of the river Tyne have been reopened and some new sections added: Shiremoor to Chillingham Road via North Shields, South Gosforth to Newcastle Central station and Kingston Park to Bank Foot. South of the River Tyne, the Newcastle Central station to South Shields section via Gateshead and Tyne Dock has in some parts followed the route of the old line, and in some been completely new. These lines opened as part of the Tyne and Wear Metro; the routes were originally run by the North Eastern Railway (UK)
Beeching saw South Wales as a declining industrial region. As a result, it lost the majority of its network. Since 1983 it has experienced a major rail revival, with 32 new stations, and three lines reopened within 20 miles (32 km) of each other: Abercynon–Aberdare, Barry–Bridgend, and Bridgend–Maesteg.
In Scotland, a 35-mile (56 km) stretch of the former Waverley Route between Edinburgh and Galashiels may well be reopened by 2011 if funding is approved. The closure of the line in 1969 left the Scottish Borders area without any rail links. The Edinburgh-Bathgate line, reopening in 1985, was the first success of a new policy introduced by the Thatcher government of experimental reopenings that would become permanent only if well-used. It was and did. Plans are now in hand to reopen the section between Bathgate and Drumgelloch. *. More recently, a four-mile (6.4 km) section of the Argyle Line was reopened in December 2005, serving Chatelherault, Merryton and Larkhall for the first time since 1968.
In addition a number of closed stations have reopened, and passenger services been restored on lines where they had been removed. Several lines have also reopened as heritage railways; see List of British heritage and private railways. Although in most instances it would be impossible for the stations closed by the Beeching Axe to be reopened; many embankments have been filled in and built on (for example around Cowley) and some station buildings have been sold and are now private homes. Where suitable re-routeings were unavailable, the land could be subject to a Compulsory Purchase Order, just as it would be for a new motorway or building project. Existing trackbeds of closed railway routes would also have to be protected by law from development to allow for a future reopening. One positive way of preserving a closed railway route is utilising it as a Cycle/Walking Path, thereby giving the land a use until it were needed.
Notwithstanding the positive environmental implications of a reopening, many of the areas along these routes have expanded and grown over the last 40 years. Where some lines would never have been profitable in 1963 they could well be profitable now, and could even have a major impact on reducing road congestion in those areas.
References
- Forgotten Railways: by H.P. White (1986). ISBN 0946537135
- The Great Railway Conspiracy: by David Henshaw (1994). ISBN 0948135484
External links
"Beeching Axe"