Hislop & Beeching

<Mrandrewperkins@> wrote in message
news:6605a222-7335-4205-85e6-d402799dc992@f63g2000hsf..com...
> Having watched the programme, I find myself wondering if anybody since
> has done a *thorough* study, a "what if" exercise, with the raw data
> Beeching used (and whatever else there was), using more advanced/
> modern computer modelling, to see if Beechings assumptions were
> accurate.
>
> I mean, I understand he worked from raw head-counts. But theres an
> arguement that all the obscure rail lines provide a variety of
> destination which drives traffic on the core network - which might not
> be reflected by simple entrance/exit headcounts - you don't know where
> the people have come from, after all. I just wonder whether his
> conclusions were accurate in spite of his methods, or whether he
> seriously misjudged some routes.
>
I heard the loadings for the Bodmin/Wadebridge/Padstow line were taken in
the middle of winter when the kids were on school holiday.

Mortimer wrote:

> Beeching probably did a lot of good with his recommended improvements to
> working practice (eg containerisation and using rail for long-distance
> rather then local freight).

Like the 'Condor' London - Glasgow container service of
1959? Beeching as still at ICI then.

> But I wonder if he properly explored all the
> less invasive cost-cutting measures for passenger lines (eg unstaffed
> stations, fewer trains, trains with lower running costs) before deciding to
> permanently close the unprofitable lines.

If he did, he would have been told by senior rail
managers and rail trade unions alike that they were not
practical. Except possibly on the ER under Mr Fiennes
whose name crops up here a lot, there was no particular
wish within the railway to save lines.

Banbury to Buckingham was still losing money, so that
proved such ideas wouldn't work. The 4-wheel railbuses
lost money - not surprising since nobody even imagined
running without a guard, so that idea was no good
either. And so on. And anyway, people with big cars
said, what's wrong with a bus?

And, of course, these measures would never have led to
a profit except with a subsidy. I suspect Beeching
intended that publication of his his lists would lead
to offers of subsidy, especially for suburban lines,
but these offers were not forthcoming.

Charlie

"Charlie Hulme" <info@davenportstation.org.uk> wrote
>
> Convinced that Stockport - Buxton and the Hope Valley
> Line should have been closed? No, I don't really think
> I would be. Would you?
>
While you have local knowledge, which I don't, I'm not sure that I'd have
minded if these two had been closed, provided Chinley - Matlock (including
the Buxton branch) and Hadfield - Sheffield (with a new spur to Midland) had
remained open.

Peter

ziggy wrote:

> If it wasn't for beeching, we wouldn't have these preserved railways today.

We'd still have some, such as the Bluebell. Others,
such as the Severn Valley, would be providing a useful
service today if they had been kept - and still are, to
some degree. The possibilities are still there.

Charlie

On Oct 4, 4:56 pm, "Mortimer" <m...@> wrote:

> I wonder if Beeching's team asked questions like "what
> happens if so many people travel by car that the roads can't cope and people
> start to travel by train again?".

No, very few people considered that. Those that did tended to reach
the Marples conclusion that more road building is THE solution. This
was the prevailing view until as recently as 1994, when the "SACTRA
report – Trunk Roads and the Generation of Traffic" finally confirmed
what many already knew about induced traffic.

Even today there are people, not least on this group, who insist that
all rail reopenings will be doomed to failure. DfT economists, and at
least one notorious contributor to uk.railway, believe that NATA fuel
duty calculations are a rational way to appraise new rail projects!

> Beeching was also not asked to what extent he considered keeping lines open
> but cutting costs by introducing lower-maintenance trains (diesel rather
> than steam, requiring fewer workshop/stabling staff) and by reducing the
> station staff by converting stations to unstaffed.

That would not have fitted with the answer Beeching was required to
produce.

> Britain was doubly unlucky that it not only had Beeching recommending mass
> closure but it also had a very pro-roads transport minister in Ernest
> Marples who agreed with the concept of moving rail passengers and freight on
> the roads (eg the new motorways)

He certainly did! The Steven Norris of the day I suppose, except more
blatantly crooked (and sans shagging).

On 4 Oct, 20:05, Nick Leverton <n...@leverton.org> wrote:
> In article <Xns9B2DB812BD68Frjhtalk21...@138.199.67.64>,
> Rick Hughes  <r...@talk21.com> wrote:
>
> I still wonder why the exercise was not based on actual receipts, why it
> was felt adequate to close lines as unprofitable on the basis of just one
> week of passenger counts.  It smacks - as we now know it was anyway - of
> a hatchet job designed to justify decisions which had already been made.
>
> The programme derided the railways for not having changed in over 100
> years, but one thing they had become very good at was accounting for
> costs and receipts, thanks to the legacy of the Railway Clearing House.
>
> To correlate costs by hand might seem to have been a massive exercise.
> But each station would have made monthly and annual returns as to their
> receipts.  Both ticket sales and tickets collected at destination were
> accounted for.

This is what I mean - there must have been (or be) raw data that tells
more than the head counts. I wonder whether it could have been
requested that every station calculate their own figures (pay the
station master overtime!) - they have the incentive if it keeps their
line open then, if they could prove its contributing to the network. I
wonder how much of that data still exists in a dusty archive
somewhere, waiting for some young transportation engineer to write his
phd on...

> We recently heard here in uk.r from someone researching a 1955 BR
> project to use computers to calculate tariffs.  Between 1955 and 1961
> computers evolved massively, there were probably two generations of
> improvement inbetween.  Even given the limited, by 21st century standards,
> capabilities of 1960s computing, if Beeching had been as modern as he
> claimed then I am sure that a fair allocation could have been made for
> incoming ticket sales, those from big stations to the branch lines, as
> well as for receipts from the branches themselves, and a true picture
> of the profitability of the various lines could have been derived.

Indeed.