Re: Dr Beeching

[gof@iname.com (John Gough)]

On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 23:56:58 GMT, news@nospam.freeserve.co.uk (Tony
Polson) wrote:

>The British Railways Board squandered £1.5 billion (in 1955 money) on the
>Modernisation Plan without ever managing to turn around the losses. 

I think the significance of the way in which British Railways -- I
don't think it was the British Railways Board then -- squandered the
1955 modernisation money can hardly be exaggerated. What even at the
time seemed to many people to be a failure by railway top management
to use the money wisely set the agenda for the railways as far as the
politicians were concerned for quarter of a century. Not till Sir
Robert Reid was trust really re-established -- and then that didn't
set a new basis for working because Major and his merry men appeared
on the scene with their privatisation agenda.

>The sad thing about Beeching is that his report (and his axe) should never have
>been necessary.  The reason why they were necessary is simple; it was the
>failure of the British Railways Board in the 1950s to identify and tackle the
>growing problems on the railways.  Instead the Board took the easy route and
>threw huge amounts of money at them through the Modernisation Plan. 

Absolutely true. It was the BTC/BR failure to manage itself adequately
that led the politicians to bring in the outsider.

>IMHO the two massive errors of judgement in the Modernisation Plan were 
>(1) Dieselisation using untried designs from a hatful of inexperienced diesel
>locomotive builders and (2) massive investment in marshalling yards at the time
>wagonload freight was in rapid decline.  You might wish to add the choice of
>Dieselisation instead of widespread electrification and application of expensive
>solutions to the retention of remote branch lines which had never been economic
>from the time they were built.

And look how soon it was deemed necessary to start thinning out the
huge numbers of classes and sub-classes of diesel (and electric)
locomotives. The less said about the marshalling yards fiasco the
better (though in defence it has to be said that other railways were
also busy building these huge white elephants at the same time). And
what about electrification without modernisation? The EML scheme wired
virtually every last siding up to the buffer-stops, studiously renewed
crossovers for the old very low-speed values, didn't improve layouts
(assuming that new EMUs would have the acceleration of a Black Five on
a suburban rake) ...

>It's easy to say that money should have been found for keeping everyone's
>favourite line/service/locomotive/rolling stock but Governments have to make
>tough decisions regarding bigger and wider issues such as health, education and
>social security.  Money had to be found for building roads as car ownership
>boomed and car usage became more affordable.  I would not be at all happy if I
>had to drive my car in 1998 on roads fit for the 1950s - although many of them
>still appear that way.

There would be plenty of money in this country for all sorts of
(well-planned and well-managed) projects for the national good --
including both roads and railways as well as education and healthcare
-- if we didn't not only try to play the Great Power ("punch above our
weight") long after we had ceased to be one and allow defence
procurement decade after decade to go on wasting quite so much money
in uncontrolled fashion.

>Beeching had no option but to work with the information he was given; it is
>pointless to blame him for decisions he had no option but to make on the basis
>of bad information - he could only do his best with the information he was
>given.

There'a a historic question here to which I should very much like to
know the answer. It always seems that the nineteenth-century railway
companies (I ought really to say pre-Grouping, I suppose) knew rather
more about their income and expenditure than did British Railways in
the fifties and early sixties. When and how did the decline in
knowledge about the financial details of the business come about?

As for Beeching, let's never forget Beeching II -- we always remember
the first (blue -- small format) report, but we tend to forget the
very interesting second (orange -- large format) report. Beeching and
his board had positive ideas they wanted to pursue. They weren't
allowed to.

As far as nailing one's own colours to the mast goes, I have no doubt
that a significant number of closures was needed -- in a good many
cases of lines that should never have been built in the first place in
the form in which they were built. It is surely no accident that all
other West European countries have or are having to face up to the
question of closures as well. But I also have no doubt that there were
far too many closure on the basis of those very dubious statistics of
lines that should on  network ground never have been closed. So Im in
the middle, between the positions taken up by Barry and by Tony.

John Gough