Dr Richard Beeching

Robin Summerhill · Post by **Robin Summerhill** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 2:27 am

Its been rather quiet around here lately, and we appear to have missed (by a couple of days) the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Beeching Report. As nobody has started a thread about it I thought I would.

So, was he evil, misguided, or was he on the right track (pun intended) in getting shot of the hopelessly uneconomic parts of the railway network?

Over to you

horace · Post by **horace** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 2:02 pm

Watched programme with Ian Hislop on BBC 4 discussing this very issue. The problem was as far as he could see was that Beeching just looked at finances not the operation of a railway from a social or functional basis. If a line made a loss it was closed even if it was supplying the passengers to make another line profitable. This programme came to the conclusion that 30% of the closures if examined today with passenger flows and journey information fed into the figures would not have happened.

Robin Summerhill · Post by **Robin Summerhill** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 9:24 pm

horace wrote:Watched programme with Ian Hislop on BBC 4 discussing this very issue. The problem was as far as he could see was that Beeching just looked at finances not the operation of a railway from a social or functional basis. If a line made a loss it was closed even if it was supplying the passengers to make another line profitable. This programme came to the conclusion that 30% of the closures if examined today with passenger flows and journey information fed into the figures would not have happened.

The show is still available on BBC i-player if you've got an hour to spare

If you haven't, skip the first 25 minutes or so, because the earlier section deals largely with history of the railway system generally.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... the_Rails/

I found it quite an unbiased examination, although the statement that 30% of closures need not have taken place seemed to be more of a gut feeling rather than borne out by any figures. My gut feeling would be more or less the same, but I couldn't back that statement up with facts either

jules · Post by **jules** » Sun Mar 31, 2013 12:54 am

Its been rather quiet around here lately, and we appear to have missed (by a couple of days) the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Beeching Report. As nobody has started a thread about it I thought I would.

Over to you

Oh Dear! You are right it has been rather quiet around here and I've rather missed our regular discussions. But you are seriously in danger of giving me a real old "RA" here

Bit busy this weekend, but I will attempt ASAP to make my usual 2p (or should that be Ãº100?)'s worth of socially historic contributions ... or theories thereof at the very least ...

Can I recommend a video for you Robin? Just go to youtube, search for "Henry's Bootblacks" and watch "Everyone's got horns". I think it will make you smile

jules · Post by **jules** » Sun Mar 31, 2013 12:58 am

Make sure you watch it to the end though