Re: Dr Beeching

[neil.worthington@virgin.net (Neil Worthington)]

On Fri, 08 Jan 1999 08:52:56 GMT, gof@iname.com (John Gough) wrote:

[snip]

>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?

[snip]

I think that part of the answer lies in the multiplicity of small
companies, pre Grouping. By definition they were all individual profit
centres, not that they all actually made a profit. And many of them
were designed to make money through their owners' other enterprises,
like coal mines and seaports, rather than through railway activity
alone.

No-one so far seems to have mentioned that excellent book, "The Great
Railway Conspiracy" by David Henshaw. My voluminous archive of musty,
yellowing uk.railway posts reveals that
>it's on sale now from Martin Ball, RDS Sales, 89 North Wallington,
>Fareham, Hants. PO16 8TJ for £8.40 incldg. p&p (was published
>at £10.99 plus).  This is the second edn. with privatisation update,
>280 pps. with b&w illustrations, maps, comprehensive index, etc. 
(according to swarbie@mutara.demon.co.uk (Paul Swarbrick) nearly a
year ago).
-- 
Neil Worthington, Doncaster, UK
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