Beeching ax
Beeching cuts (also Beeching-guillotine or Beeching bomb ; Engl .: Beeching cuts or Beeching Bombshell ) is the informal name of a project of the British government in the 1960s, the aim of which was the cost and scope of the state rail network to to reduce. The project name was based on Dr. Richard Beeching , a former British Railways chairman, who, in his report, The Reshaping of British Railways, outlined the need to reorganize the UK's rail network. The addition of ax or guillotine was added to satirize the massive closings of railroads associated with the project .
The Reshaping of British Railways report
In response to the increasing losses suffered by British Railways in the 1950s, partly due to the growing importance of road traffic, the report The Reshaping of British Railways was published in March 1963 by Dr. Richard Beeching published. This became particularly necessary because even an extensive modernization plan of British Railways did not show the desired success. Beeching therefore proposed a drastic approach with massive line closures, but also the expansion and increased efficiency of rail transport. In view of the scarce public funds, however, the latter was severely neglected and primarily the money-saving route closings were promoted. In total, around 6,400 kilometers of rail line and 3,000 stations were closed in the following years, which meant a 25 percent reduction in the route network and halving the number of stations.
background
Track closings in front of the Beeching Ax
Although route closings in the UK are often linked to the beeching ax , there have been a significant number of closings before.
After a massive growth in the British rail network in the 19th century, the expansion of the network reached its peak shortly before the First World War . In 1913 there were around 37,500 kilometers of rails. After the war, road and air traffic developed into major competitors of the railways. As a result, the first rail connections were closed as early as the 1920s and 1930s. However, mainly short suburban connections that could not compete against new bus or tram routes were affected.
In addition, until 1939 there were numerous double railway lines operated by competing railway companies. In order to avoid this duplication and to increase efficiency, numerous secondary routes were closed by the Grouping Act . This procedure closed a total of around 2,000 kilometers of rail network.
With the beginning of the Second World War , the British railroad experienced a renaissance, as trains were ideally suited to transport goods essential for the war effort. Due to a lack of maintenance, the entire rail network suffered a lot during this time. This meant that after the nationalization of the network in 1948, large investments were necessary.
Line closings under British Railways ahead of the Beeching Ax
With the beginning of the 1950s, the pre-war line closings continued. The British Transport Commission established a Branch Lines Committee in 1949 , whose task it was to analyze routes for profitability and close them if necessary. During this time, the majority of the small and small lines of the British railway network, such as the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway in East Anglia , were closed under strong protest .
Background to the beeching ax
Towards the end of the early 1950s, the economic recovery and the abolition of gasoline rationing reintroduced competition between road, aviation, and rail. To counter the growing economic difficulties, the British Transport Commission published a modernization plan in 1955 that proposed investing more than £ 1.24 billion in the ailing rail network and replacing the obsolete steam locomotives with diesel and electric locomotives. This plan outlined increasing passenger numbers and expected a return to profitability in 1962.
Despite the plan, British Railways' passenger numbers remained constant in the 1950s. Nevertheless, the company's economic results continued to deteriorate, mainly due to rising spending, such as employee wages. The result of this situation was that in 1955 the income was no longer sufficient to cover the running costs. In addition, since large portions of the funds used for the modernization plan were borrowed, a serious financial crisis developed in the early 1960s, with operating losses ranging from £ 68 million in 1960 to £ 104 million in 1962. This resulted in the British Transport Commission struggled to service current loans and the government eventually lost patience and sought radical solutions to the problem. This was pushed, among other things, by the conservative transport minister Ernest Marples , who, partly due to his work as director of a road construction company, saw the end of the national railroad and attributed the future to road traffic.
In order to find solutions to the threatening economic problems, the Stedeford Committee , which was named after its chairman Sir Ivan Stedeford , was first established. This committee should determine the status quo of the UK railway network and develop recommendations. Richard Beeching, who was technical director at Imperial Chemical Industries at the time and from 1961 chairman of the new British Railways Board, was also a member of the committee . Stedeford and Beeching fought, at times violent, how the national rail network could most sensibly be shortened. In addition to a questioning in Parliament, Ivan Stedeford's report was never published. Instead, the government resorted to the so-called Beeching Plan , which provided for a reduction in the size of the rail network by 30 percent and the scrapping of around 300,000 freight wagons. Beeching believed that the railways of the future would derive their profit primarily from the transport of people, but from the transport of goods.
Beeching I
As chairman of British Railways , Beeching initiated a study of traffic flows on all railways in the country. The investigation of these flows took place between April 16 and 23, 1962 and found that only one percent of passengers and freight were transported on 30 percent of the railway lines and that 50 percent of the stations accounted for only two percent of the company's total turnover. The report, The Reshaping of British Railways - Part 1 , produced from the study suggested that around 29,000 kilometers of railway lines, mainly in rural areas, should no longer be used, that numerous other lines should only be used for freight traffic and that little-used stations should be closed. In addition to the line closures, the report also suggested electrifying large parts of the rail network and transporting more general cargo instead of bulk and other small-scale transports. This plan was accepted by the government.
This controversially discussed report, forced by the press, became known to large parts of the population as the Beeching Bombshell (Eng .: Beeching bomb) or the Beeching Ax (Eng. Beeching ax) . This was followed by an outcry from numerous rural communities that the report said should lose their rail connections. In order to counteract any hysteria , the government argued that it is much cheaper for many municipalities to be supplied via bus connections.
The implementation of the Beeching ax was pushed ahead quickly in view of the enormous savings potential. However, the politicians entrusted with the implementation attached greater importance to the line and station closings than to the investments in freight transport and electrification, which were not fully implemented. Nevertheless, with the establishment of the Freightliner company, an important part of the recommendations was implemented.
List of route closings by year
In 1950 the British rail network had a maximum extension of 33,600 kilometers and 6,000 stations. According to the Beeching ax , the system had shrunk to 28,800 kilometers and only 2,000 train stations. Even after the end of the program, further line closings were made in the course of the 20th century.
- 1950 .... 240 km closed
- 1951 .... 440 km closed
- 1952 .... 480 km closed
- 1953 .... 440 km closed
- 1954 to 1957 .... 800 km closed
- 1958 .... 240 km closed
- 1959 .... 560 km closed
- 1960 .... 280 km closed
- 1961 .... 240 km closed
- 1962 .... 1260 km closed
- Publication of the Beeching report
- 1963 .... 521 km closed
- 1964 .... 1702 km closed
- 1965 .... 965 km closed
- 1966 .... 1207 km closed
- 1967 .... 480 km closed
- 1968 .... closed 640 km
- 1969 .... 400 km closed
- 1970 .... 440 km closed
- 1971 .... 37 km closed
- 1972 .... 80 km closed
- 1973 .... 56 km closed
- 1974 .... 0 km closed
Recommendations not implemented
Not all of the recommendations in the Beeching report have been implemented. A certain number of railway lines were preserved for political reasons. This concerned z. B. Connections through the Scottish Highlands that were scheduled to be closed but continued to serve after intervention by the influential Highland Lobby . Some connections, for example in Cornwall , were also retained because the poor road network could not have offered an equivalent replacement.
Beeching II
In 1964, Beeching published a second, lesser-known report called The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes , which became known as Beeching II . This second report aimed at further route closings and named a few routes for which further expansion and further investments made sense. Essentially, Beeching called for the closure of all railway lines except for the inter-city routes between the large cities and important commuter lines. The map on the right gives an idea of how small the UK's rail network would have been had the plan been fully implemented. A full implementation of Beeching II would have reduced the railway network to a roughly 11,260 kilometer long “skeleton” that would no longer have served large parts of the country, such as northern Scotland , Wales , Yorkshire , East Anglia and the south-west of England.
Prime Minister Harold Wilson initially promised during the election campaign to end the closings after Beeching I, but then pushed them ahead even faster. His transport minister, Barbara Castle , later leaned closely to Beeching II and called for a trunk system with a circumference of around 17,600 kilometers. The report's proposals were never implemented, however, as the British Labor government at the time rejected Beeching's ideas as too far-reaching, despite some more controversial views. Beeching then resigned from his office in 1965.
Although policymakers were ultimately responsible for the line closures, Beeching's name has become synonymous with closing rail lines.
Results of the Beeching ax
The line closings marked with the Beeching Ax missed their target and did not help to bring the company British Railways back into profitability. Beeching only achieved savings of £ 30 million, while the company's operating loss leveled off at £ 100 million. The small savings resulted mainly from the fact that the closed small railway lines served as feeders for the large ones. Without these feeders, the number of passengers on the existing railway lines also fell. Beeching's assumption that passengers would only use their car as far as the nearest major train station in order to continue their journey by train from there proved to be incorrect.
Another reason for the failure of the plan was that many of the small railroad lines were running only a very small deficit. The important and highly frequented commuter routes generated much greater losses; but even Beeching recognized that closing these lines would not be politically feasible.
The failure of the Beeching plans is also attributed to the fact that they focused one-sidedly on route closings and largely disregarded other savings opportunities. The potential use of cost-saving railcars and rail buses was rejected by Beeching with the argument that the route costs alone were decisive, and he also almost completely ignored the costs for administration and staff. Critics accuse him that a less drastic reduction in the rail network in combination with a renewal of the technical equipment and a reduction in the use of personnel would have achieved better savings effects.
From today's perspective, many of the closings carried out as part of the Beeching ax can be described as short-sighted. The railway line between Settle and Carlisle , which was originally intended to be closed, is now much more frequented by freight and passenger trains than before the Beeching report. The closure in the 1960s of the Great Central Main Line , which connects the south of England with the north and already met important standards of modern high-speed lines (straight lines, few curves) at the time of its construction, seems just as rash . Due to the high volume of traffic through the Eurotunnel , the construction of which began only five years after the closure of the Great Central Main Line, consideration is now being given to reopening the old route as a high-speed line.
In addition, many of the partial closings of double-track lines, which are carried out as rationalization measures, are heavily criticized today. Growing traffic and a "rediscovery" of the railway by many commuters has meant that many single-track routes are heavily congested because of the Beeching ax , so that a new double-track expansion is being seriously considered. This problem mainly affects the routes between Inverness and Dingwall , Cheltenham and Swindon and Oxford and Worcester .
Bus transport
The replacement of rail transport by buses ( bustitution ) also failed. In many cases, the bus traffic was significantly slower and less comfortable than the previous train traffic, so that the buses quickly became unpopular with the local population. As a reaction to this unpopularity, many bus routes only existed for a few years due to a lack of passengers and resulted in many parts of the country no longer having any connection to local public transport.
Last closings under Beeching
In the early 1970s, when it became clear that no major savings were being made, the line closures were ended. At the same time, it became clear that the immense growth of road traffic has made environmental pollution and traffic congestion ever greater problems. These developments, but especially the 1973 oil crisis , led to growing opposition to Beeching's closings.
One of the last major and controversially discussed line closings was the end of the 158 km long Waverley Line between Carlisle and Edinburgh in 1969. In 2006 the Scottish Parliament decided to reopen the section of the line between Edinburgh and Galashiels . The construction work was completed in 2015, and passenger trains have been running on the old route again since September this year. In times of rising petrol prices, the situation is similar on other routes in England that could presumably be run economically today. However, since the majority of bridges, underpasses and track beds were removed or sold or converted into hiking trails after the Beeching ax , a new installation would only be possible with large financial investments.
The Serpell report
In the early 1980s, under the government of Margaret Thatcher , Richard Beeching's ideas to close more lines were taken up again. In 1983 Sir David Serpell , a former Beeching employee, published a report calling for further line closures. Due to strong protests against this plan and its weaknesses in terms of content (Serpell proposed the closure of the Midland Main Line , which is of immense importance for the supply of various coal-fired power stations ), the ideas of renewed line closures were quickly rejected.
Reopenings
Due to the massive increase in traffic, numerous routes and also train stations that were closed as part of the Beeching ax have now been reopened. A north-south connection, the Thamesline , was successfully reopened in London and now offers a closed connection between Bedford and Brighton again . The station at Chandler's Ford in Hampshire , which closed in 1969, was also reopened . One of the most important reopenings is that of the Robin Hood Line in Nottinghamshire . Previously, the city of Mansfield , which is on the line, was the largest English city without a direct rail connection. There were also reopenings in Birmingham , Worcester , Marylebone , Coventry , South Wales , Edinburgh and Stirling . The longest line to be rebuilt so far is the Borders Railway , which opened in September 2015, between Edinburgh and Tweedbank .
"Heritage railways"
Some railway lines, such as between Mangotsfield and Bath were as heritage railways ( Museumsbahnen ) reopened. These serve primarily as a tourist attraction and are often served by historical steam locomotives or small trains.
Individual evidence
- ^ Modernization and Re-Equipment of British Railways . railwaysarchive.co.uk. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
- ^ A b c White, HP (1986): Forgotten Railways, ISBN 0-946537-13-5
- ^ Christian Wolmar : On the wrong Line , 2005, ISBN 1-85410-998-7
- ^ The Great Vanishing Railway - timmonet.co.uk
- ^ British Railways Board ( Memento of March 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ David Henshaw: The Great Railway Conspiracy , 1994, ISBN 0-948135-48-4
- ^ The Reshaping of British Railways - Part 1: Report . railwaysarchive.co.uk. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
- ^ The Development Of The Major Railway Trunk Routes . railwaysarchive.co.uk. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
- ^ The Railway Conspiracy
- ^ The Great Railway Conspiracy
- ^ Railway Finances - Report of a Committee chaired by Sir David Serpell KCB CMG OBE . railwaysarchive.co.uk. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
Further literature and sources
- G. Freeman Allen: British Railways after Beeching . Ian Allan, Shepperton 1966
- TR Gourvish: British Rail 1948--1973: A Business History . Cambridge 1974
- David Henshaw: The Great Railway Conspiracy . 1994, ISBN 0-948135-48-4
- HP White: Forgotten Railways . 1986, ISBN 0-946537-13-5