Re: Dr Beeching

[news@nospam.freeserve.co.uk (Tony Polson)]

On Fri, 08 Jan 1999 13:20:00 GMT, in uk.railway Geoff Bannister
<gbannister.rcts@argonet.co.uk> wrote:

>The interesting thing here, in hindsight as ever, is that Robert Riddles,
>when he was the CME of BR, set his face firmly against dieselisation,
>arguing that the way forward was to electrify and pointing out that, if we
>dieselised, we would then set back electrification by a generation while the
>book cost of the diesels was reduced. This is precisely what happened in
>respect of the ECML. It was for that reason that Riddles stuck to his guns
>over the Standard steam programme. 

Absolutely right.  It also irrevocably affected the long term future of the GWML
and the Trans-Pennine lines and probably others too.

>If BR had been able to keep to its stated
>way of developing the Modernisation Programme - ie by running the Pilot
>Scheme diesels for 2/3 years before bulk ordering, we might not have seen
>the railways in the financial mess they got into and might have avoided the
>waste of huge sums of money which occurred as a result. 

If only that were true.  BR completely failed to respond to the massive changes
in its market during the 1950s.  BR senior management fiddled while Rome burned,
meanwhile huge losses rapidly mounted.  

>It was the
>Government which stampeded BR into accelerating the Modernisation Programme
>by massive orders for untried (and sometimes unbuilt!) classes and started
>the worsening financial slide which brought Beeching, who by the way was not
>a railwayman but a hard nosed businessman, into the equation.

Why blame the Government?  Government rightly insisted BR act because the
taxpayer was having to underwrite BR's massive and mounting losses.  BR's chosen
response was merely to accelerate their half baked and unnecessarily grandiose
Modernisation Plan.  Herein lies the root of the problems on British Railways
for the next 40 years.

--
Tony Polson, North Yorkshire, UK