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On 27 March 1963 a man called Dr Richard Beeching issued a report into Britain's railways. At the time British Rail was losing £140 million a year. The instructions given to Dr Beeching some 3 years before when he became chairman of the British Transport Commission was simple; make the railways pay. His report had a simple answer. Get rid of 2,128 stations, 67,000 jobs and close 5,000 miles of track and reduce train running by 68 million miles a year. He also succeeded in killing off the steam engine. In 1963 there were 8,767 steam engines on British rail tracks, by 1969 there were none.
In the end not all of these drastic cuts were made but the rail network of England, for over 100 years the way many people got from A to B, was greatly reduced. Dr Beeching felt that the future of local travel was on the roads either by car, about 35% of families had a car, or on a bus. The train service was for long distance inter-city travel and for carrying freight. It was also pointed out in his report that 95% of all train journeys happened on 50% of the lines. In other words some lines had very few passengers.
Dr Beeching looked at various ways of making the rail network profitable including cutting fares to get more passengers or raising fares to get more money from those who already travelled. In one way he was right because young people, me included, wanted a car. In those days it wasn't so expensive to run and, when you got to 17, you took your test, started work, saved some money and bought a car, all in the space of 18 months in my case.
Today young people are more likely to buy an iPhone than a car. In the last 5 years 20% less 17-19 year olds are taking their driving test and our roads are also more congested and car running costs, for young people, are incredibly high. This means we are now off on a circle again with young people travelling by train, the new(ish) private rail companies offering reduced fares to the under 25's and even some lines closed in 1963 opening again.
It is always easy to cut costs by cancelling services but sometimes these services are vital to people in rural communities. Dr Beeching has not been looked on kindly by those who suffered when his cuts were made and modern historians who look at what happened as a result. In fact possibly the only people who did like what he did were cyclists as some old railway lines were turned into cycle routes.
UPDATE FEBRUARY 2020
Sometimes, what seems like a good idea at the time is seen to be less good in later years. In January of this year, 2020, the Conservative government announced that it would be investing £500 million to re-open a few lines closed by Dr Beeching. We now know that, apart from walking and cycling, train travel is the least damaging to our planet in terms of the release of carbon dioxide.
However critics say that this amount is not nearly enough if all the cuts made following the Beeching report were to be undone. I wonder how any actions taken recently will look in 50 or so years time.
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