Re: Dr Beeching

[David H Wild <dhwild@argonet.co.uk>]

In article <369699e1.16383523@news>,
   Neil Worthington <neil.worthington@virgin.net> wrote:
> 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.

On the other hand, I don't think that the pre-grouping companies knew
anything at all about the difference between expenditure and cost. You
can't, for instance, set the price of a new locomotive against revenue in
the year that it was bought - you have to write the cost down over a number
of years. This was done, in part, but many of the costs were obscured in
the overall accounts.

I don't think that the "Whitby Bogies" would ever have been built if the
design and tooling costs of these locomotives had been set against revenue
on the Whitby line. If this had been realised we would have seen a lot more
standardisation much earlier.

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