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British Railways (BR), later rebranded as British Rail, ran the British railway system from the nationalisation of the 'Big Four' British railway companies in 1948 until its privatisation in stages between 1994 and 1997.

This period saw massive changes in the nature of the railway network: steam traction was eliminated in favour of diesel and electric power, passengers replaced freight as the main source of business, and the network was severely rationalised.

History

Background

The rail transport system in Great Britain developed during the 19th century. After the grouping of 1923 by the Railways Act 1921 there were four large British railway companies, each dominating its own geographic area. These were the Great Western Railway (GWR), the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the Southern Railway (SR).

The London Underground and the Glasgow Subway were independent concerns and a small number of independent light railways and industrial railways, which did not contribute significant mileage to the system, were not included in British Railways, nor were non-railway-owned tramways.

During the Second World War the railways were taken into state control. They were heavily damaged by enemy action and were extremely run down due to lack of capital investment or maintenance in aiding the war effort.

Nationalisation

The Transport Act 1947 made provision for the nationalisation of the network, as part of a policy of nationalising public services by Clement Attlee's Labour Government. British Railways came into existence on 1 January 1948 with the merger of the Big Four as the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission (BTC).

The Northern Counties Committee lines owned by the LMS in Northern Ireland were quickly sold to the Stormont Government, becoming part of the Ulster Transport Authority (UTA) in 1949.

British Railways

The new system was split geographically into six regions along the lines of the Big Four:

These regions formed the basis of the BR business structure until the 1980s. The Eastern and North Eastern Regions were merged to form the Eastern Region in the 1960s, Anglia Region was split off from the Eastern Region in the 1980s. They retained a level of independence, though there was also some centralisation.

1955 Modernisation Plan

After the Second World War, Britain's railways fell behind others in the world. Countries like Japan, USA and France were experimenting with new diesels and electrics. However, Britain was not, and the run down network deteriorated even more because of painfully slow rebuilding. Finally, and late, came the modernisation plan for Britain's railways. It cost the government much more than it should have due to bad timing.

The 1955 Modernisation Plan, detailed in the British Transport Commission's (BTC) Modernisation and Re-equipment of British Railways, argued for spending £1,240 million over a period of 15 years. Services were to be made more attractive to passengers and freight operators, thus recovering traffic which was being lost to the roads. There were three important areas:

including new passenger coach stock
  • Resignalling and track renewal.

A government White Paper was produced in 1956, stating that modernisation would help eliminate BR's financial deficit by 1962.

Although some routes were closed to take account of changing transport patterns (eg, in East Anglia most of the former lines of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway were shut in 1959), the modernisation plan failed to take into account the effect that mass road transport would have upon the traditional role of the railways, and as a result much money was wasted by heavy investment in things like marshalling yards, at a time when small wagon-load traffic was in rapid decline. Much money was also wasted by the rapid introduction of new classes of diesel locomotives into fleet service without an adequate period of prototype testing, which resulted in several classes being scrapped within a very few years of their being built. The failure of the Modernisation Plan led to a distrust of British Rail's financial planning abilities by the Treasury which was to dog BR for the rest of its existence.

The Beeching Axe and the end of steam

In 1963, BR chairman Dr Richard Beeching published the Re-Shaping of British Railways calling for major rationalisation of the system. Many rural routes were unprofitable in the face of increasing competition from road hauliers and the private car. The Beeching Axe fell on most branch lines and some main lines. Some of these lines have since become heritage railways.

The late 1950s to the end of the 1960s saw a massive reduction in Britain's fleet of steam locomotives. Mass withdrawals of older classes started towards the end of the 1950s with many of the pre-grouping companies engines being hard hit. Withdrawals of newer engines started in the early 1960s at a time when British Railways was still producing new 9Fs at Swindon. Steam soldiered on until 1968 when the final Stanier Black 5s, 8Fs and Standard Class 4 4-6-0s were withdrawn from sheds such as Carnforth and Rose Grove. Many were replaced by the abundant new diesel locomotive classes though the cut-backs in railway mileage through the Beeching Plan also hit the steam engine fleet hard.

From 1958 to 1974 the West Coast Main Line was electrified in stages at the French voltage of 25 kV 50Hz AC overhead line electrification. Many commuter lines around London and Glasgow were also electrified, and the Southern Region extended its 750 V DC third rail system to the Kent and Dorset coasts. However electrification never reached system-wide level, as on many other European railways.

British Rail

Steam traction on British Railways ended in August 1968 after the system was rebranded British Rail (see British Rail brand names for a full history). This re-branding introduced the double-arrow logo, still used by National Rail to represent the industry as a whole (some cynics claimed the logo was really called the "arrow of indecision" and meant the railway did not know if it was coming or going); the standardised typeface used for all communications and signs; and the "rail blue" livery, which was applied to nearly all locomotives and rolling stock.

In 1973 the TOPS system for classifying locomotives and multiple units was introduced, and is the basis of the classification system. Hauled rolling stock continued to carry numbers in a separate series. Also during this time, yellow warning panels, characteristic of British railways, were added to the front of diesel and electric locomotives and multiple units in order to increase the safety of track workers.

The major engineering works were split off into a separate company, British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL), in 1970.

Sectorisation

In the 1980s the regions of BR were abolished and the system sectorised into five sectors. The passenger sectors were InterCity (express services), Network SouthEast (London commuter services) and Regional Railways (regional services). Trainload Freight took trainload freight, Railfreight Distribution took non-trainload freight, Freightliner took intermodal traffic and Rail Express Systems took parcels traffic. The maintenance and remaining engineering works were split off into a new company, BRML (British Rail Maintenance Limited). The new sectors were further subdivided into divisions. This ended the "BR blue" period as new liveries were adopted gradually. Infrastructure remained the responsibility of the Regions until the "Organisation for Quality" initiative in 1991, when this too was transferred to the sectors.

Privatisation

On the advice of the Adam Smith Institute, under John Major's Conservative government's Railways Act 1993 British Rail was split up and privatised. This was a continuation of the policy of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government's privatisation of publicly-owned services. The unpopular Conservative government was facing a Labour victory at the May 1997 General Election, and so privatisation was rushed through and was finished in November 1997.

BR was privatised within the business structure that was in place. Passenger services in each sector were franchised out to private companies, mostly bus operators. The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) was created to organise ticketing and market the rail services using the National Rail brand. Freight operations were sold but mostly bought by one company, EWS. Railtrack controlled infrastructure. The Shadow Strategic Rail Authority was created to oversee and advise the government. The British Railways Board remained with some residual functions.

Privatisation has had mixed results. Passenger growth has been stimulated, but this has been at extra cost to the taxpayer and passengers, who have seen steady fare increases since 1997. Freight has also increased; however, there is debate as to whether these increases in passengers and freight have been due to privatisation, or simply to an improved economy which usually results in more travel. Some analysts have pointed out that a similar rise in passenger numbers occurred in the late 1980s when the economy was buoyant, only to fall again in the recession of the early 1990s; however, recent passenger-journey numbers have climbed back to the level last seen in the 1950s.

Railtrack's management proved to be incompetent and the Labour government refused to continue to subsidise the losses of shareholders. It went insolvent, was put into administration and was replaced by a not-for-profit publicly owned Network Rail. Some saw this as the first step towards renationalisation. Given the costs, this is unlikely at present although some studies have recommended this as a cheaper choice than the current subsidies to commercial companies. The Shadow Strategic Rail Authority's power became real when it dropped part of its name, becoming the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA). The SRA was itself abolished after a few years and its functions were transferred to the Department for Transport Rail Group.

There has been some controversy over the decision to withhold subsidies from Railtrack, which forced it to become insolvent. Press reports indicated that the then transport minister Stephen Byers deliberately forced the company to become insolvent, as this would remove any obligation on the government to provide compensation to Railtrack's shareholders, who would lose their investment. However, the High Court ruled that the Department for Transport had not actively sought Railtrack's collapse *.

Preserved steam locomotives can still be seen on the main line throughout the UK at selected times. There are also many preserved steam railways throughout the country that have an old-fashioned feel to them. Steps are also being taken to build a brand new Peppercorn A1 class 'Tornado' steam engine, based on original plans by Arthur Peppercorn of the LNER. Unfortunately none of the Peppercorn A1 class express steam locos remain, hence the idea. It has enlightened the minds of steam enthusiasts right around the world and one would hope that more mainline steam engines are being built again in Britain for future generations to enjoy what was once known as 'real train travel'. For the new engine a 90mph maximum speed running has been granted.

Network

The BR network, with the trunk routes of the West Coast Main Line, East Coast Main Line, Great Western Main Line and Midland Main Line, remains unchanged. The Beeching Axe fell on many branch lines and some other main lines.

Locomotives and rolling stock

Locomotives

Steam locomotives

BR inherited more than 20,000 locomotives from the constituent "Big Four" companies, the vast majority of which were steam locomotives. BR also built 2537 steam locomotives in the period 1948-1960: 1538 were to pre-nationalisation designs, and 999 to its own standard designs. These locomotives were destined to lead short lives, some as little as five years against a design life of over 30 years, because of the end of steam traction on 11 August 1968.

Diesel locomotives

When BR was created, diesel traction was in its infancy in the United Kingdom (though more progress had been made in other countries, whose experience could arguably have been used to a greater degree in informing developments in the UK). Only two main-line diesel (LMS prototype) locomotives was inherited in 1948 (though more were on order) and a handful of diesel shunters of various types.

Initially, BR persisted with the small scale experimentation with diesel traction while continuing to build hundreds of steam locomotives to old and new designs. Even some steam shunters were being built through to the mid-1950s, when standard diesel shunters were already in large scale production. However, it was not until the 1955 Modernisation Plan that more substantial developments in main-line diesel locomotive technology were planned.

The Plan envisaged small numbers of prototype locomotives of varying power types being ordered from a variety of manufacturers. These could be tested and compared against each other before large scale orders were placed. Unfortunately, even before many of the prototypes had been delivered, a combination of the political need to maintain employment in the British locomotive-building industry and over-optimistic assessments of the possibilities offered by new diesel locomotives meant that large scale orders were placed for a wide variety of untested and incompatible designs, many of which proved to be very poor.

By the end of 1968, all the remaining main-line steam locomotives and shunters had been withdrawn - but during the period 1967-71 so were a large number of virtually new diesel locomotives and shunters (some only three years old) as many designs had proved unsuccessful, non-standard, and unnecessary with changed requirements on the railways, e.g. widespread line closures and the decline of wagonload freight traffic. However, some of the diesel shunters withdrawn during this period found further use on industrial railway systems.

After the large-scale production of some 5000 diesel locomotives and shunters in the period 1956-1968, the British locomotive-building industry virtually collapsed. BR needed very few new diesel locomotives from then on; only 285 heavy duty freight locomotives and the 199 High Speed Train power cars were purchased from then until privatisation began in 1994. No diesel locomotives have been built in Britain for the mainline system since 1991; the most recent new types have been imported from Canada and Spain.

Electric locomotives

Electric traction was more advanced than diesel traction at Nationalisation, with a number of isolated electrified networks across the country using a variety of power supplies, though 1500 V dc overhead supply had been accepted as the national standard in the 1930s. Most of these networks used electric multiple units to provide the passenger service, with steam locomotives operating freight trains. Thus, BR inherited only 13 ex-North Eastern and 3 ex-Southern Railway electric locomotives, plus two departmental electric shunters, also ex-Southern Railway.

In the early years of BR, a number of locomotives were built to operate on the newly-refurbished and electrified Woodhead Route using the 1500 V dc overhead system. However, by the time that the next major electrification project, the West Coast Main Line (WCML), was underway, the decision had been taken to adopt 25 kV ac overhead as the standard supply system.

BR decided to test a variety of new 25 kV ac types for the WCML electrification; in all 100 locomotives of five classes were built by different manufacturers. Having learned the lessons from these types, a standard class of a further 100 examples was ordered. This latter type, which was introduced in 1966 is still in service today. The earlier prototypes, though they were mostly pretty successful, succumbed in the 1980s and early 1990s as non-standard following the arrival of new electric locomotives.

Although the purchase of new electric types was carried out in a more successful way than the comparable process for diesel locomotives (see above), the 200-or-so electric locomotive fleet used to operate the WCML from the mid-1960s until the recent introduction of Pendolino trains was still far smaller than that originally envisaged; more than 500 were thought necessary when the initial plans were developed. It was fortunate that changes in the railway's operation had already occurred before mass orders were placed for electric traction.

Coaches

British Railways inherited the rolling stock of the "Big Four" railway companies and also continued to build coaches to their design specifications for many years. In 1951 BR began its own programme of coach construction as detailed in the links below.

Freight wagons and industrial tankers.

Multiple units

See also

External links

Sorted alphabetically

British Rail | Railway companies of the United Kingdom | Former nationalised industries of the United Kingdom

British Rail | British Rail | British Railways | British Rail | British Rail

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "British Rail".

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