Re: Dr Beeching

[R.J.Drew@lboro.ac.uk (Richard Drew)]

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

>On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 15:52:43 GMT, in uk.railway Barry S. Doe
><tbc002@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>I disagree. He did not achieve what he set out to do and the railways
>>continued to lose money. The answer was only much later seen by governments,
>>viz., that there was no point trying to make them pay and instead they
>>should be subsidised provided they were socially necessary.
>
>I respect your point of view (and your passion for railways) but the facts do
>not support your view.  Beeching's report was commissioned after vast amounts of
>taxpayers' money had been squandered on the Modernisation Plan to no avail.  The
>result, instead of the modern, economic railway that had been promised, was a
>railway that applied modern technology to old services without thinking whether
>those services fitted the needs of a changing economy.
>
>The British Railways Board squandered £1.5 billion (in 1955 money) on the
>Modernisation Plan without ever managing to turn around the losses.  Indeed
>those losses mounted rapidly and became unaffordable.  The reason the Labour
>Government implemented the Beeching closures is simple; in 1964-68 the country
>was in an economic crisis and could not afford to do otherwise.
>
>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.  
>
>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.

I would agree the modernisation plan had problems. Firstly it was implemented
too late. If the lightweight trains had been implemented in 1952 (or preferably
earlier) things would have been very different. A number of designs were a
mistake, but this can be blamed on the a major change of motive power policy,
and an insitance on buying British. The retrenchonist attitue of the BRB is to
blame for the loss of wagon load freight (marshalling yards are still to be
found on railways throught the rest of the world). At the time of the
modernisation plan it was not not intended to shut vertually every freight yard
in the country. You can acredit that idea on Beeching. OTOH the modernisation
plan produced an efficent fleet of multiple units. Some of the electrification
was completed, but only about half of the plan was finished.

>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.

The BRB was not in existance in the 50s. On Nationalisation, management was by
the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commision. In a period of
shortages, the RE was forced to build low tech steam engines. After
investigating successful use on the continent, proposals were made by the RE's
"Lightweight Trains Committee" in1952 that would have saved many lines were not
implemented, desipte one scheme providing a payback period of three years. It
has been suggested the BTC rejected the proposals due to its interest in busses
in the affected areas.

The RE was abolished in the 1953 Transport Bill giving the BTC control, and
resulted in several years of re-organisation, probably of a similar scale to the
recent privatisation. The "Modernisation Committee's" first draft proposed
closing 30% of the network (many branches had already been closed by the
"Branchline Committee" over the previous four years). The final report stated
there was to be " a marked reduction in the stopping and branch line services...
which should largely be handed over to road transport".

Half the 1.5Bgbp (over 15 years) was to cover maintenace arrears. Most of the
rest was to renew the motive power steam. This was to sort out problems that had
been present since the war. Before the war it was not unknown for over 500 steam
engines to be built for the British railways in a year. After the war, BR built
999 standard steam engines and (IIRC) a similar number of engines to earlier
designs over a twelve year period. It was estimated half the motive power stable
of 12800  engines would still be steam in 1970. The report included continuous
braking of freight trains (about a quater of the 1 223 000 wagons taken on by BR
in 1948 were over 46 years old) and a restart of the pre-war electrication
programmes.

By this time the BTC had lost a large portion of its road interests. Eight years
after nationalisation, railcars were finally found to make significant
differences to minor railway lines, proving significantly more popular, and
cheaper to run. After many years running these lines down, the BTC now saw a way
to make the lines pay.

A combination of optimism at the BTC (a second, more extensive modernisation
report was produced in 1957), cost over runs of the modernisation plan, a small
downturn of coal and steel traffic and investments with little short term return
saw the BTC running at an operational deficient. Having to pay a fixed return to
the British Transport Stock hardly helped, nor did the repayments on the dept
to pay for the modernisation. Whilst the BTC blamed the losses on stopping and
local train services, a Select Committee blamed government interference in fare
rates and on capital expenditure. It concluded a "large-scale British railway
system can be profitable", and that some services may be suitable for subsidy on
"social" grounds.

The benefits from the modernisation plan had always been expected to take at
least ten years, but the government was not prepared to wait. In 1960 the
"Stedford Committee" of industrialists (including Beeching)  was set up by the
Transport minister, Marples, to look at railways. Stedford was not keen on
railways, and minutes from a meeting with Marlpes (who owned his own road
building construction company) reads: 

"In the light of the future road schemes Sir Ivan agreed with the Minister's
view and said that, in the circumstances, it was all the more important to
prevent new railway modernisation projects being started."

However, the committee's report was not published. But a number of
recommendations were made public. They had little to say on closures, but
proposed a review of proposed modernisation schemes, and suggests loss making
lines could be made profitable by fares increases.

Marples used the report to restrict modernisation, particularly on secondary and
branch lines, and also for a while on the WCML elctrification. December 1960
Marples announced the BTC was to be abolished, and appointed Beeching to see its
demise the following year. BRB was formed in 1962 and assumed the majority of
the commision's liabilities. The closure process was also changed. The TUCC 
could invesigate hardship caused by proposals, but no longer looked at wider
social and strategic questions. Also the accounts they were given for a line
would not include contributory revenue (thus closures were in cases based on
figures that were only a quater of the true value).

>>By this time it was too late for much of the network. However, some branches
>>that managed to keep going (usually as replacement buses couldn't get to the
>>local stations) have since greatly improved and one can only wonder as to
>>how well some of the prime routes that closed would now be doing had they
>>continued (S & D, Borders, Great Central -  and note some of them are down
>>for re-opening which proves my point).
>
>Are you seriously suggesting that unlimited amounts of taxpayers' money should
>have been used to continue to pay for all these lines for 30 years or more until
>a possible use could be found for them?  Governments have to raise money for
>expenditure by either taxation or borrowing, which later has to be repaid by
>taxation anyway, so where would this money come from?

In the 50's the Central Transport Consultative Committee (the TCCs were
responsible for agreeing to closures) estimated the closure of 1000 miles of
railway saved 1.5mgbp. This was 1.5% of the anual spending on the modernisation
plan.

>>One should also remember the dishonest way Beeching obtained figures to
>>prove closure need. Seaside branch termini like Swanage, Lyme Regis,
>>Sidmouth etc, were closed on the grounds of the revenue collected at those
>>stations only (or any others on the branch) and no account was taken
>>whatsoever of tickets sold say, in London, to get to those places - despite
>>the fact that the latter revenue greatly exceeded the former.
>
>Beeching's job was made incredibly difficult by the failure of the railways to
>have any credible accounting system.  You are quite wrong to criticise Beeching
>for "dishonesty" when the truth is that *British Railways* had failed to
>appreciate where branch line revenues came from.  They were completely unable to
>identify which lines made a reasonable return and which lost money.  They were
>completely unable to suggest where savings could be made because their financial
>systems were either non-existent or in a sorry state.  
>
>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.

Beeching was in a position to ask his own questions and set his own accounting
standards. He was in charge of the railways before he wrote the report. The
blame for inaccurate inaccurate figures given to the TUCCs should be given to
Marples with advise from Sir William Carrington from the Institue of Chartered
Acountants.

>>In short Beeching was appointed by a government that doubted rail had any
>>furture except for a few trunk routes and commuter lines 
>
>If the Government thought this way it was only because no useful and credible
>information was coming from the British Railways Board ..
>
>>and told to prove it and ditch most of it.
>
>You do yourself no credit by stating this.  It is completely without foundation.
>Beeching's brief was to stem the losses, which were unaffordable.  He had no
>brief whatsoever as to what to prove and what to ditch, starting as he did with
>a blank sheet of paper.  

Investment in new rolling stock, rationalisation and other savings would have
been significantly better long term ways of stemming the losses. 

The BTC was a mess. It took far too long to implement the modernisation not
helped by its long winded committee structure. Giving the BTC other interests
did not help in the early days. The modernisation plan was expensive, but
neccessary. What wasn't needed was interference from Marples. Losses were to be
expected in the first years of the plan. Total re-oganisation of the railways
and the implementation of  closures by a minister with strong road connections,
using suspect metrics,  was bound to cause claims of unfair play.

(Principal source of reference: "The Great Railway Conspiracy" by David Henshaw)
-- 
Richard Drew