The biggest mistake was the tearing up of the railways and selling off or abandoning the stations and trackbeds: ownership should have been maintained. Also it wa a case of economics first, politics second and environment a long way third!
When you look at it now it wasn't even economical, it was one thing and one thing alone stupidity, pushed by people who wanted to reduce government not in some sort of efficiency way but out of a dilusional sense of government = bad.
You do know long after British rail and now Network rail is STILL responsible for the bridges and other parts that were abandoned and that means they are still financially responsible for them, so money was not saved
People should stop looking at Beeching as the main player in this story and dig a little deeper into the story of why the Tory government went the way they did over BR, Ernest Marples has a lot of questions to answer over his part in this and had there been Oversight with teeth in Westminster he would certainly be serving time over it along with a few of his chums. It should also be noted that no other rail system in Europe had ever managed to cover its costs and why BR ended up in such a sorry state can be found in the subsidy comparison figures of that era, still, I guess we have the Marples mob to thank for our pitiful motorway system and lack of integration and also have a quick glance at the actual subsidies being paid out by Whitehall to train operators today in comparison to pre-privatisation, eyewatering.
@@johnclayden1670 Incorrect, the cuts started under the Eden-MacMillan government in 1957 and then continued through 1963 and the 1964-1966 Labour governmets until around 1969 when the Borders Railway in southern Scotland was closed to much opposition. So Labour did close and rip up railways, or rather they continued to let BR do that, however the closures had been happening for the previous 8 years, so basically they just chose not to save the remaining few lines earmarked for closure, such as the Great Central Railway and the Somerset & Dorset. I'm not sure if you'll take any heed of this though, I've seen several comments like this around blaming labour for everything like a big conspiracy or whatever, especially post brexit, so you could just be an anti labour troll but idk.
Not surprising since Marples stood to gain from road building, as owner of a road construction company. It would be described as corruption if it happened elsewhere.
Unrepentant to the end. If this had been implemented we would be in an even worse mess. All lines now grid locked, many reopening. He got it very wrong.
@@bobtudbury8505 well if that's what stamer sounds like, he's talking total sense, as this is just factual, what beeching did was mentally deranged with no forethought or sense of any understanding of reality.
@@Alex-cw3rz don't talk rubbish, things were differnt then, sitting in your armchair 60 years later. Beecging cosed nothing remember. labour did not close a lot of his recommendations but cut hundreds of miles on top . This is all down to the labour party , no one else, this is documented factual
@@bobtudbury8505 right bob so the guy saying the cuts were horrible is like Stamer, but also all the cuts and beyond were done by labour... I know coherence is not your aim here, neither is any semblance of reality but what you said is an oxymoron. Also can you show me the evidence that it was Labour that took up all the railways and not beeching?
The amount of track removed in wales and very limited bus service that replaced it is so poor that unless you live in one of the three cities you require a car to get anywhere . Outside of Cardiff even getting around the city requires cabs as they have combined school buses with public buses and many drivers wont allow you to ride what they consider a school bus
Of course there were two villains, Beeching and Marples. Marples should never have been appointed as Transport Minister, owning a company that was winning huge government contracts to build new roads and motorways. When this was pointed out in the press, he sold his shares......to his wife! The Marples' eventually slunk off to live in France, in order to avoid the consequences of a huge Inland Revenue investigation into their tax affairs. I'm not letting Beeching of the hook mind, he had no notion of an integrated transport system either. The whole nationalised transport system in the country, road, rail and water, could have been shaken up, altered with much less pain, and made to serve it's owners who of course are the people of the country. Far too much is now lost and we shall always be stuck with existing roads that are under too much stress and the constant demand for new and hugely controversial roads......and railways.
Quite correct Sir, that Company was Marples/ Ridgeway & this was another Establishment assault on the working class who have , unfortunately, died in droves in keeping those bastards in the luxury, privilege & control they consider they are entitled to.
I think most people realise that the the great swathe of cuts in railways came under the labour government from 1965 through 1970. The much lamented Somerset and Dorset and the Great Central are a point in case. Ernest Marples was no villain as he was out of office in October 1964. It’s not hard to check facts these days thanks to the internet😂🚂
and he had no power to close anything. What closed all the lines were the labour party, in fact they closed more miles, a lot more ,than beeching recommened
It wasn't all Beeching's fault, his terms of reference were narrow. His remit was solely how to make the railway pay again, not to consider social needs etc
@@sameyers2670 Beeching only wrote and published his report. It was up to the Government of the day to decide whether to implement his recommendations or not. I too think he's remembered as a convenient scapegoat today.
5 yrs this video has been up .and its a great piece of modern history .and yet only 163 likes from 15 thousand views . i can only shake my head . thanks for the upload chris .i gave it a like ;)
I love railways and looking back don't like the idea of the cuts, but Dr Beeching gave some very clear answers on this interview that helped explain his reasoning. I can understand the railway workers and their families not being happy about losing their livelihood but this does help explain why somewhat.
Now we are building HS2, badly needed for freight traffic. If this prat had kept the line from Mary le Bone north, (Great Central) this HS2 wouldn't have been needed, also the northern corridor would not have deteriorated to the extent it has.
There's no sense of hardship in the country as a consequence of the closures, he said. What happens when lines have to be closed for maintenance? He closed many alternative routes, leading to poorer services.
It wasn’t Beeching or governments that closed down uneconomical railways, it was the people: they didn’t use them. People were switching to cars. Oh yes they all came out to witness the last trains and travel on them, but it was too late.
We need to consider the future of the railways in this country right now. There are still hundreds of stations and indeed lines, which, with central government money, could be re-opened. Most of Britain is now grid-locked on the roads. Even remote areas along with most of the South East, South West and Midlands are grid-locked. Take the M6 for example, probably now one of the busiest motorways in Europe. We need to get freight off the roads and back on to the rail network at night when passenger services are quieter. There are literally thousands of huge 44-tonne HGVs being driven endlessly to deliver goods all over the country to our supermarkets literally carving up the road network which is now at breaking point. Cities such as Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool are grid-locked with traffic causing congestion charges to be enforced. Not only that, but look at the amount of roadworks now taking place. Beeching believed what he was doing in 1963 was right but he did not possess the hindsight of what is now happening almost 60 years later.
In a sense he was a bit of a fall guy. As usual, politicians and civil servants knew what they wanted to do before the report i. e. give into the road lobby and he was appointed to do it. No plans for replacement and improvement of public transport were made because Cons politicians didn't give a toss.
Neither do Labour, they closed more lines and erected commie blocks everywhere. Their is no political situation and all politicians are the same, doesn't matter what side they sit on, they only serve themselves.
The recurring theme in Beeching's self-defense is that he "looked at the traffic pattern" and decided it didn't justify the cost of operating a particular line. Such a position seems to totally ignore the network effect of slashing the network. When asked about costs for things like electrifying lines he, again, references "the current traffic" ad infinitum. He isn't challenged that "the current traffic" was not a measure of the future traffic. The only certainty of Beeching's decisions is that if he closed a line there was ZERO traffic on it. When challenged about the effects of his cuts on state of railways at the time of the interview (1973) is that he doesn't have "the current traffic patterns", but despite his lack of evidence he remains certain that every decision he made still makes sense in 1973. Incredible hubris and willful blindness. He also sidesteps the question of integrated transport policy with an 'above my pay grade' excuse, which is inexcusable for the man who headed British Railways. Also MIA, apparently, was any consideration of the number of road deaths and injuries resultant from all that traffic being shunted onto the road network - all of which would incur costs to the UK Treasury through benefits and NHS funding, not to mention the amount of pollution roads generated vs. trains and associated illness and deaths. All in all, Dr. Beeching's remit and his defense of his work are so obtusely defined as to ignore all the social and financial costs associated with his axe swinging.
Many of the smaller railway lines should never have been constructed in the first place, but expensive as they were after the war,they did act as feeder lines for the main lines. Affordable car ownership from the fifties onwards, was as a result of the easing of credit restrictions, leading to mini, viva, herald , Anglia etc. This new found freedom accelerated the demise of all rail lines in the UK. Railways are great in many ways, but go from where they want, when they want, which isn't necessarily what the passenger wants. Destroying the infrastructure after closure was a way of getting some cashflow back, but you can only do that once. Beeching was a clever man, but Marples was a villain, he gave Beeching a very tight remit that didn't consider social effects. Marples later did a moonlight flit to France for tax evasion. Thanks for the upload .
A telling moment in that interview was early on, when Dr. Beeching was talking about which trunk rail lines he would still close (at that time), and he said that a certain line could close ([quote] "...without any harm to anybody except people in Berwick-upon-Tweed". I take the point the presenter and Beeching himself make about over-simplifying things by blaming one person, but that quote does I think lend credence to the view that Beeching was himself a tad over-simple in his approach to the railways in that he took a narrow 'business' view of it with a blind eye to the wider social and economic ramifications of his recommendations. I think a similar charge could be leveled at the Heathites and Thatcherites who governed Britain in the 1970s and 1980s - "they know the price of everything and the value of nothing" was commonly said of them by ordinary British people at the time and after.
Not to mention travel by rail emits MASSIVELY less Greenhouse Gases and harmful pollutants (Dr Beeching obviously wasn't to know this in the 60s, but he certainly did by the time of this interview).
@@bobtudbury8505 immigrants are more likely to use rail transport and public transport in general, also a lot of rail staff are immigrants. So well done your lack of basic knowledge has made fall flat on your face and if you are going to say look at transport lorries they aren't immigrants that's transport of goods from one nation to another and to get rid of that would be to ruin the economy.
The railways were constructed when the only alternative transportation was horse and cart or canals and since WW1 there had been a gradual nibbling away at the system with closures however Beeching/Marples accelerated the process with his report, I think he cut too much, there were a lot of little used branch lines that should have been closed down however a lot of others should have been retained - there was a deliberate BR policy of closure by stealth - running down a line by making timings inconvenient reducing maintenance so speed restrictions have to be put in place also after closure some routes should have been mothballed and the track bed preserved for possible reopening however BR was very quick to rip out the infrastructure and sell off the land in an almost deliberate effort to prevent future reopening. In 1982 BR tried to close the Settle and Carlisle line after deliberately running it down however that was stopped by the government and now the line is thriving
Not just our railways heritage...but most of what was this country's industrial backbone. We have become a shadow of its former self,rudderless and awash,in a sea of petty industries?
So two routes to Brum heh, we don't need both of those. So what about the people served by the routes to Brum, I guess they don't count. The route north of Newcastle to Auld Reekie was a waste too? The alternative, up the west coast is hardly direct and is often too busy and crowded. The short sightedness of all those years ago ripping up the tracks and laying tarmac seemed such a good idea. I guess that plebs owning cars never entered the mind of the toff Marples. What a sorry state we have become due to these privileged beurocrats who only stood to gain from what they created and destroyed whilst the rest of us reaped the real costs.
There's a telling scene in another documentary I've seen on YT (Can't quite remember where unfortunately) that has the conversation between a reporter and a guard on the S&D in its last days and the fact that it was heaving with people sad to see it go. The guard it wryly amused him that all these people on the train at that moment bemoaning its demise were the same people who never used it normally. Why didn't they come before and perhaps the line wouldn't have been closed? Moot point obviously, but where were the passengers?
Thanks for sharing! The video explores the Beeching Plan in Britain, aiming to save money by closing train stations. It prompts reflection on transportation decisions' lasting impact. Consider watching the history of Dr Beeching Report for more insights by Hand Drawn History
I've seen Network Rail signs on some bridges and arches that have long since abandoned so they are still responsible for maintaining them what a waste of money. The way to cut losses are fare hikes and higher taxes on petrol and diesel and to encourage people to use railways is to make sure they offer a reliable service whether privatised or not.
I remember being told by someone that beeching said this, "oh well, back to hostilities." He knew what he was doing. It infuriates me that marples was allowed to have stock in a road company. Even as an American it pisses me off*
Would it not have a been better just to mothball or temp close the line. or if the line was to close, keep the line in situ. just not in use for x period of time
There would of have to have been some cuts - but not on the level that actually went ahead. There was however, no political will to put investment into the railways to update them - things like the HST took ages and there's electrification, etc. I don't doubt it was shortsighted - but there are other people to blame as well as the good doctor.
13:29 he admits he's out of touch but still manages to give examples of services he wants to take away from entire towns and cities. 13:37 why have two lines to Birmingham? Just stuff all the people on one line - what a genius! 13:41 only the people on Berwick upon Tweed, I suppose they don't count?
@@ShahidKhan-ke8fe it's recorded history? i also know ALL labour governments have left office with higher unemployment and a ruined economy, what a silly question
@@bobtudbury8505 I mean every government leaves with terrible figures, you know because why else are they taken out of power... Even when it's not their fault.
@@Alex-cw3rz do you know anything? do you research anuthing? you are wasting my time. When blair took office the economy was out-standing. There your point blown out the window, now go away it's like dealing with a 5 year old
80% of the closures were justified, indeed many of those lines shouldn’t have been built in the first place. The government were operating in the circumstances of the time, and that was a huge decline of rail usage that nobody could have predicted would ever reverse.
I will say one thing... "Someobody's got to pay", says the man demanding 24 grand a year back then 😂😂 Consistently says he can't speak to the traffic patterns in the days when this was recorded.... Then goes on to say he would've had a railway that reflects the current traffic pattern. Guy has no clue 😂 Came from the ICI board,vwhich subsequently destroyed ICI lmao Marples was the biggest villain in all of it. He, having sold his shares to his wife, still had control of the road construction company.... The same company he used to rip up the railways as soon as they were closed. Even though some railways were only listed for temporary closure until losses were recouped
So, i do not get this? BR was loosing millions each year due to low or no passenger counts - and to save money and actually start earning again, he closes down routes with little to non passengers. Yet, when he does this people start screaming? I mean, its the public's fault that BR was loosing money due to not using the railway-services. We have done the same thing in Norway, closed down lines where there were few passengers, and the bus actually outpaced the rail-services. People shouted and yelled, because a service they never used, was closed down. Also stations have been closed down, simply because there was not enough passengers.
Don’t know about Norway but you can’t believe these railway closures in the UK were as justified as they might seem. There was ulterior motives and the accuracy of the passenger numbers were it has since come to light in question. I’m 61 now and been looking at this subject for years and home truths still coming out.
The subsidy we pay now is more than the losses the lines had. It was ideological and many committees suffered greatly. I live in Wales and as i medically am not allowed to drive can realistically only work in 3 cities and even then only get around one of them. Mr and my wife are moving to Cardiff primarily so i can actually get around my local community and access basic services without having to use a taxi both ways
The problem was that those areas that he closed down routes on a lot weren't low passengers Cardiff to Aberystwyth was 100,000s a year, it now takes 7 hours to do that journey on a train, 8 hours by bus and 5 hours in a car for a formally 2 hour train journey. The other thing is the disturbution of the population has changed in fact it was happening when he was doing this, showing that he was just lying about the figures, I.e. almost all of these lines closed down are in areas where population has increased by a significant amount. The next thing was choice especially in our world now trains are a much more environmentally healthy option, it forced people into cars not because of BR's finances which actually got worse after this, but due to the car lobby. You need to remember anything that comes out of beeching mouth is a lie to cover his back.
Remember they massaged the passenger figures too. Taking surveys on school holidays, only allowing tickets issued at stations to be counted (thus making busy seaside resorts look empty) and various other things. Overquoting for infrastructure repairs was another thing. And at the public inquiries nobody was permitted to dispute BR;s figures either.
A good thing that he wasn't asked to report on the NHS or anytime you had a medical problem, he would have had them work out the cost of fixing it and if that was more than you were worth, bad luck, you would be 'axed' - i.e. served with a closure notice.
Remove the rails cos of the cost. Cos roads are free to build, require no maintenance, and never add to the health budget through pollution or accidents. Oh wait...
He didn't get everything right about the railways but he certainly didn't get everything wrong either. Intercity, freightliner are all down to Beeching. You have to understand that some of his assumptions were made using the technology of the time and thus would not prevail today. His removal of intermediate stations along trunk routes is one example. This was carried out to improve the major flows along those routes due to limitations of the signalling systems and the poor tractive performance of many of the Intercity trains of the time. However, today the flows could be improved whilst also keeping the intermediate stations.
At an emotional level I share the aversion many feel to the idea of tearing up so much of our railway infrastructure. But the unfortunate fact is, with the advent of mass car ownership, many of the rural branch lines had simply become redundant. Surely it is unreasonable to pour millions upon millions of taxpayers money into keeping trains running along a line where there might be a just a tiny number of passengers per month? In a way, the whole thing reminds me of the campaign a few years ago in our village to keep the local post office open. Well, the campaign at first succeeded - the office remained. But guess what? Nobody darn well used it!! So it closed after all. All those people loudly protesting about how important it was for the community, etc, carried on doing what they had always done - they visited a larger postoffice when in town doing their shopping! I'm sure it's the same with those people attacking Beeching back in the 60s - how many of them were actually using these branch line services they wanted to keep running? Of course, it is possible that the cuts went too far in some places. If there was a significant level of demand, then it would have been justifiable to keep a line open as a public service - even if not strictly profitable. But lines where there were almost _no_ passengers at all? They had to go folks. They had to! :-(
We spend more on subsidy now than the loses british rail ever had. Your also disenfranchising people who cant drive and forcing them to live in cities in ordsr to access employment and services
You have zero understanding of the reality of the situation, dozens of railways have been reopened since hundreds have plans to open. Lines with zero passengers is just a fabrication and the lack of intelligent forethought it takes to not imagine that lines with low usage had been closed previous to beeching is mind boggling. It wasn't even economical did BR do better in debts after this, no it got worse. Then it went private and got even worse over 30 countries have reviewed how British railways are run now and all of them took nothing from it, except that they need to make sure they don't do anything the British did.
MR B . You are dealing with politicians here who were as in this case and now not noted for giving true information. You say they weren’t used enough. I take you are going by stats provided by the Tory government of the day( and later closures by Labour). Unless you actually used any of these lines to back up your claim, these stats were lies. They were deliberately taken during school holidays and winter months. We will also disregard the powerful road lobby and social need whilst we are at it. Cut and dried? I don’t think so and no party comes out of this nicely. Labour only kept some lines open because they went thru marginal constituencies. So there you have it.
Sounded like a polite,reasonable man who was brought in to do a buisness assesment .I'm glad not all of his cuts materlized but I think its widely acknoledged some cuts were needed.To my mind he talked a lot of sense and ultimately it was politicians like Macmillan , Marples (with road interests)and later Wilson who made deicisions not Beeching.Some cuts were made later that not even he recommended .Of course the car was glamorized and still is through advertising and people are relunctant to abandon them.Most politicians who have not advocated tax cuts in the last forty years have not got elected and we can't have better public services without paying for them.To demonize Beeching to me seems unfair ,the politicians made the decision base on the circumstances of the time.Now we realise the effect on the climate that we didn't then theres more debate about alternatives to the motor vehicle like cycling,buses and trains but even now if they intefere with the car there not popular.
Eventually, the Tories got what they had always wanted the scrapping of nationalisation. And look where it's got us. It needed a psychopath like Thatcher to see it through. And all those idiots who voted her in.
Beeching, marples, mcmillan, Wilson The lot of em were corrupt, same as now. We need a completely fresh political system. The present one is totally twisted and bent. Bring on Reform
@Henry Discipline Maybe you're not but it was Attlee and Labour which nationalised the railways in 1948, putting it in the hands of a people who were very poor if not poverty stricken after six years world war. It was a pipe dream, expecting a run down railway system to be put right by millions of poor people. BTW, more lines were closed down BEFORE Beeching than AFTER = 2,900 v 2,300.
Can't stand this guy. What he did was terrible. Corrupt by the sound of things. Terribly short sighted, he needed glasses. You don't have to run frequent trains if there is little demand.
heath diddent stop progress either, waverley route wasent ripped up until 1971/72 so he could have easily reversed it, i would reckon the great central would have fallen into that catagory aswell, so heath was no better, marpels was the real villan at the start as he had lots to gain from road building
1948 Railway Nationalisation : Utopia-land of socialism and Attlee = cost of industry given to a war-torn, poverty stricken and austerity ridden nation; the concept was ill conceived and ill thought out but that's la-la land socialism for you. NO MONEY TO PAY FOR IT! Wake up you thick Labour donkeys and dinosaurs! Just look at Venezuela.
Read your history Greg. What the CIA has done to Venezuela has caused the problem. The USA took over from the British and other European colonisers in control by proxy. Privatisation of railways has been a scandalous joke making a few rich and decimating a rail system that every citizen Tory or otherwise is aware of. Socialism is not the answer in my opinion but somethings are better off in public hands.
@@davidshepherd1107 Venezuela was destroyed by far left socialism and no wonder when their Marxist President Hugo Chavez lavished billions in uncontrolled spending to effectively bribe his voters. Classic socialist vote buying and gerrymandering...they do it all the time and then wreck the economy. Thank God he died but then Maduro came in - another hard left head banger and then it got worse!
The biggest mistake was the tearing up of the railways and selling off or abandoning the stations and trackbeds: ownership should have been maintained. Also it wa a case of economics first, politics second and environment a long way third!
And taking down bridges!!!
@@digitallifeline162 All that engineering gone to pot!
When you look at it now it wasn't even economical, it was one thing and one thing alone stupidity, pushed by people who wanted to reduce government not in some sort of efficiency way but out of a dilusional sense of government = bad.
You do know long after British rail and now Network rail is STILL responsible for the bridges and other parts that were abandoned and that means they are still financially responsible for them, so money was not saved
@@nicholasr39 most of these structures are hardly maintained, just checked or cited for further obliteration if needed.
People should stop looking at Beeching as the main player in this story and dig a little deeper into the story of why the Tory government went the way they did over BR, Ernest Marples has a lot of questions to answer over his part in this and had there been Oversight with teeth in Westminster he would certainly be serving time over it along with a few of his chums. It should also be noted that no other rail system in Europe had ever managed to cover its costs and why BR ended up in such a sorry state can be found in the subsidy comparison figures of that era, still, I guess we have the Marples mob to thank for our pitiful motorway system and lack of integration and also have a quick glance at the actual subsidies being paid out by Whitehall to train operators today in comparison to pre-privatisation, eyewatering.
The cuts were implemented by the Labour government of Wilson. They are to be blamed.
@@johnclayden1670 Incorrect, the cuts started under the Eden-MacMillan government in 1957 and then continued through 1963 and the 1964-1966 Labour governmets until around 1969 when the Borders Railway in southern Scotland was closed to much opposition. So Labour did close and rip up railways, or rather they continued to let BR do that, however the closures had been happening for the previous 8 years, so basically they just chose not to save the remaining few lines earmarked for closure, such as the Great Central Railway and the Somerset & Dorset. I'm not sure if you'll take any heed of this though, I've seen several comments like this around blaming labour for everything like a big conspiracy or whatever, especially post brexit, so you could just be an anti labour troll but idk.
Not surprising since Marples stood to gain from road building, as owner of a road construction company. It would be described as corruption if it happened elsewhere.
and it was labour that closed the lines . beeching had no power
and yet again it was the labour party that closed the lines.Not beeching or the tories
'Oh Mr Porter', crikey, my Granny used to sing this to us back in the 6ts.
Unrepentant to the end. If this had been implemented we would be in an even worse mess. All lines now grid locked, many reopening. He got it very wrong.
you sound like stamer
@@bobtudbury8505 well if that's what stamer sounds like, he's talking total sense, as this is just factual, what beeching did was mentally deranged with no forethought or sense of any understanding of reality.
@@Alex-cw3rz don't talk rubbish, things were differnt then, sitting in your armchair 60 years later. Beecging cosed nothing remember. labour did not close a lot of his recommendations but cut hundreds of miles on top . This is all down to the labour party , no one else, this is documented factual
@@bobtudbury8505 right bob so the guy saying the cuts were horrible is like Stamer, but also all the cuts and beyond were done by labour... I know coherence is not your aim here, neither is any semblance of reality but what you said is an oxymoron. Also can you show me the evidence that it was Labour that took up all the railways and not beeching?
I love comments like this that just make stuff up. All lines aren’t gridlocked, and very few lines have reopened. 80% of the closures were justified.
The amount of track removed in wales and very limited bus service that replaced it is so poor that unless you live in one of the three cities you require a car to get anywhere . Outside of Cardiff even getting around the city requires cabs as they have combined school buses with public buses and many drivers wont allow you to ride what they consider a school bus
Don't think I'd want to ride on a St Trinian's Special!
Of course there were two villains, Beeching and Marples. Marples should never have been appointed as Transport Minister, owning a company that was winning huge government contracts to build new roads and motorways. When this was pointed out in the press, he sold his shares......to his wife! The Marples' eventually slunk off to live in France, in order to avoid the consequences of a huge Inland Revenue investigation into their tax affairs. I'm not letting Beeching of the hook mind, he had no notion of an integrated transport system either. The whole nationalised transport system in the country, road, rail and water, could have been shaken up, altered with much less pain, and made to serve it's owners who of course are the people of the country. Far too much is now lost and we shall always be stuck with existing roads that are under too much stress and the constant demand for new and hugely controversial roads......and railways.
Quite correct Sir, that Company was Marples/ Ridgeway & this was another Establishment assault on the working class who have , unfortunately, died in droves in keeping those bastards in the luxury, privilege & control they consider they are entitled to.
beeching made a report, marples was not in power, it was labour that closed the lines, socialists factually
You’re wrong. The Labour government shut down most of the railways after the were elected in 1964. Check your facts.
@@reynardbizzar5461 and who was transport minister then? Marples. He took office in 1959 as transport minister.
I think most people realise that the the great swathe of cuts in railways came under the labour government from 1965 through 1970. The much lamented Somerset and Dorset and the Great Central are a point in case. Ernest Marples was no villain as he was out of office in October 1964.
It’s not hard to check facts these days thanks to the internet😂🚂
He knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing!
and he had no power to close anything. What closed all the lines were the labour party, in fact they closed more miles, a lot more ,than beeching recommened
@@bobtudbury8505 they were all barstewards!
@@MM0IMC still are really
It wasn't all Beeching's fault, his terms of reference were narrow. His remit was solely how to make the railway pay again, not to consider social needs etc
The fact remains - he got it wrong with his accountant's mindset.
@@royfearn4345 I'm not saying mistakes weren't made
And people too often forget that Beeching didn’t close anything, ministers did, both Tory and Labour.
@@Bungle-UK I agree, ultimately it was the transport minister of the day that had the final say
@@sameyers2670 Beeching only wrote and published his report. It was up to the Government of the day to decide whether to implement his recommendations or not. I too think he's remembered as a convenient scapegoat today.
5 yrs this video has been up .and its a great piece of modern history .and yet only 163 likes from 15 thousand views . i can only shake my head . thanks for the upload chris .i gave it a like ;)
I love railways and looking back don't like the idea of the cuts, but Dr Beeching gave some very clear answers on this interview that helped explain his reasoning. I can understand the railway workers and their families not being happy about losing their livelihood but this does help explain why somewhat.
If he was a doctor he would say you got 2 kidney doing the same job you should remove one of them to save calories
Now we are building HS2, badly needed for freight traffic. If this prat had kept the line from Mary le Bone north, (Great Central) this HS2 wouldn't have been needed, also the northern corridor would not have deteriorated to the extent it has.
PLUS, the Great Central was built to accept European stock with more generous clearances. Now THAT was forward planning!
beeching had no power, it was labour. that closed the lines ,why do people keep getting getting it wrong
@@bobtudbury8505 your an ignoramus . I see facts dont apply to you just make it up
@@alantraish3368 i bet you vote labour too you ******* i speak fact, factually .onnly one ignorant on here and it ain't me, grow up
There's no sense of hardship in the country as a consequence of the closures, he said. What happens when lines have to be closed for maintenance? He closed many alternative routes, leading to poorer services.
It wasn’t Beeching or governments that closed down uneconomical railways, it was the people: they didn’t use them. People were switching to cars. Oh yes they all came out to witness the last trains and travel on them, but it was too late.
Exactly correct, the numpties won’t like the truth, thousands of short branch lines people didn’t want to use. They preferred their cars.
If ever there was a grave that needs pissing on, this man lays in it
he's passed away, you are disgusting . and factually it was the damn socialists, labour that closed the lines, right up to heath, 1970
@@bobtudbury8505 beeching was not a socialist are you mad?
Agreed a man that did more damage and took as much money from his office as possible.
Oh yeah, a man who runs the railways is really up there with Hitler etc 😂
We need to consider the future of the railways in this country right now. There are still hundreds of stations and indeed lines, which, with central government money, could be re-opened. Most of Britain is now grid-locked on the roads. Even remote areas along with most of the South East, South West and Midlands are grid-locked. Take the M6 for example, probably now one of the busiest motorways in Europe. We need to get freight off the roads and back on to the rail network at night when passenger services are quieter. There are literally thousands of huge 44-tonne HGVs being driven endlessly to deliver goods all over the country to our supermarkets literally carving up the road network which is now at breaking point. Cities such as Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool are grid-locked with traffic causing congestion charges to be enforced. Not only that, but look at the amount of roadworks now taking place. Beeching believed what he was doing in 1963 was right but he did not possess the hindsight of what is now happening almost 60 years later.
In a sense he was a bit of a fall guy. As usual, politicians and civil servants knew what they wanted to do before the report i. e. give into the road lobby and he was appointed to do it. No plans for replacement and improvement of public transport were made because Cons politicians didn't give a toss.
And STILL we, the people, vote them into power. We deserve to have our arses kicked, and brexshit does that effectively. BUT STILL WE DO NOT LEARN!
Neither do Labour, they closed more lines and erected commie blocks everywhere. Their is no political situation and all politicians are the same, doesn't matter what side they sit on, they only serve themselves.
Cut off the tributaries to feed the main line by offering busses then cut the busses 18 months later...legacy..
The recurring theme in Beeching's self-defense is that he "looked at the traffic pattern" and decided it didn't justify the cost of operating a particular line. Such a position seems to totally ignore the network effect of slashing the network.
When asked about costs for things like electrifying lines he, again, references "the current traffic" ad infinitum. He isn't challenged that "the current traffic" was not a measure of the future traffic. The only certainty of Beeching's decisions is that if he closed a line there was ZERO traffic on it.
When challenged about the effects of his cuts on state of railways at the time of the interview (1973) is that he doesn't have "the current traffic patterns", but despite his lack of evidence he remains certain that every decision he made still makes sense in 1973. Incredible hubris and willful blindness.
He also sidesteps the question of integrated transport policy with an 'above my pay grade' excuse, which is inexcusable for the man who headed British Railways.
Also MIA, apparently, was any consideration of the number of road deaths and injuries resultant from all that traffic being shunted onto the road network - all of which would incur costs to the UK Treasury through benefits and NHS funding, not to mention the amount of pollution roads generated vs. trains and associated illness and deaths.
All in all, Dr. Beeching's remit and his defense of his work are so obtusely defined as to ignore all the social and financial costs associated with his axe swinging.
Also admitted he would cut more Railways if it was up to home and he didn’t support electrification or APT
Many of the smaller railway lines should never have been constructed in the first place, but expensive as they were after the war,they did act as feeder lines for the main lines.
Affordable car ownership from the fifties onwards, was as a result of the easing of credit restrictions, leading to mini, viva, herald , Anglia etc.
This new found freedom accelerated the demise of all rail lines in the UK.
Railways are great in many ways, but go from where they want, when they want, which isn't necessarily what the passenger wants.
Destroying the infrastructure after closure was a way of getting some cashflow back, but you can only do that once.
Beeching was a clever man, but Marples was a villain, he gave Beeching a very tight remit that didn't consider social effects.
Marples later did a moonlight flit to France for tax evasion.
Thanks for the upload .
A telling moment in that interview was early on, when Dr. Beeching was talking about which trunk rail lines he would still close (at that time), and he said that a certain line could close ([quote] "...without any harm to anybody except people in Berwick-upon-Tweed".
I take the point the presenter and Beeching himself make about over-simplifying things by blaming one person, but that quote does I think lend credence to the view that Beeching was himself a tad over-simple in his approach to the railways in that he took a narrow 'business' view of it with a blind eye to the wider social and economic ramifications of his recommendations.
I think a similar charge could be leveled at the Heathites and Thatcherites who governed Britain in the 1970s and 1980s - "they know the price of everything and the value of nothing" was commonly said of them by ordinary British people at the time and after.
Roads today are shocking! Takes ages to get anywhere. Traffic in the 60’s was less that in 2019. To me the system is set up to fail slowly!
Not to mention travel by rail emits MASSIVELY less Greenhouse Gases and harmful pollutants (Dr Beeching obviously wasn't to know this in the 60s, but he certainly did by the time of this interview).
immigration plays a large part too, do you not realise how many are are ???
@@bobtudbury8505 immigrants are more likely to use rail transport and public transport in general, also a lot of rail staff are immigrants. So well done your lack of basic knowledge has made fall flat on your face and if you are going to say look at transport lorries they aren't immigrants that's transport of goods from one nation to another and to get rid of that would be to ruin the economy.
@@Alex-cw3rz what are you talking about?? why bring it up??? if there was not so many immigrants we wouldn't need so many lines or trains then, jeez
The railways were constructed when the only alternative transportation was horse and cart or canals and since WW1 there had been a gradual nibbling away at the system with closures however Beeching/Marples accelerated the process with his report, I think he cut too much, there were a lot of little used branch lines that should have been closed down however a lot of others should have been retained - there was a deliberate BR policy of closure by stealth - running down a line by making timings inconvenient reducing maintenance so speed restrictions have to be put in place also after closure some routes should have been mothballed and the track bed preserved for possible reopening however BR was very quick to rip out the infrastructure and sell off the land in an almost deliberate effort to prevent future reopening. In 1982 BR tried to close the Settle and Carlisle line after deliberately running it down however that was stopped by the government and now the line is thriving
Not just our railways heritage...but most of what was this country's
industrial backbone. We have become a shadow of its former self,rudderless and awash,in a sea of petty industries?
How lucky we are that he wasn't a medical doctor, maybe if he had been an optician he wouldn't have been so shortsighted.
jaxmar88 lol
So two routes to Brum heh, we don't need both of those. So what about the people served by the routes to Brum, I guess they don't count. The route north of Newcastle to Auld Reekie was a waste too? The alternative, up the west coast is hardly direct and is often too busy and crowded. The short sightedness of all those years ago ripping up the tracks and laying tarmac seemed such a good idea. I guess that plebs owning cars never entered the mind of the toff Marples. What a sorry state we have become due to these privileged beurocrats who only stood to gain from what they created and destroyed whilst the rest of us reaped the real costs.
Straight from the tory manual...
My grandmother remembers this tw#t called beeching’s act and she still think to this day it was utter bollocks
And is your grandma a transport expert?
There's a telling scene in another documentary I've seen on YT (Can't quite remember where unfortunately) that has the conversation between a reporter and a guard on the S&D in its last days and the fact that it was heaving with people sad to see it go. The guard it wryly amused him that all these people on the train at that moment bemoaning its demise were the same people who never used it normally. Why didn't they come before and perhaps the line wouldn't have been closed? Moot point obviously, but where were the passengers?
Very informative. If anyone has one I would appreciate a link to a similar video on the '48 nationalisation.
Thanks for sharing! The video explores the Beeching Plan in Britain, aiming to save money by closing train stations. It prompts reflection on transportation decisions' lasting impact. Consider watching the history of Dr Beeching Report for more insights by Hand Drawn History
I've seen Network Rail signs on some bridges and arches that have long since abandoned so they are still responsible for maintaining them what a waste of money.
The way to cut losses are fare hikes and higher taxes on petrol and diesel and to encourage people to use railways is to make sure they offer a reliable service whether privatised or not.
I remember being told by someone that beeching said this, "oh well, back to hostilities." He knew what he was doing. It infuriates me that marples was allowed to have stock in a road company. Even as an American it pisses me off*
Rivet you dr beeching
Would it not have a been better just to mothball or temp close the line. or if the line was to close, keep the line in situ. just not in use for x period of time
There would of have to have been some cuts - but not on the level that actually went ahead. There was however, no political will to put investment into the railways to update them - things like the HST took ages and there's electrification, etc. I don't doubt it was shortsighted - but there are other people to blame as well as the good doctor.
The arrogance and lack of foresight shown here is truly astounding, what a mess it's come to...so sad!
fascinating that he couldn’t see past ten years of planning the future public transport in a country.
The man just hates railways.
Who, Beeching or Marples?
Total arrogance from this man . Destroyed the railways. Not one word of apology . Typical tory attitude. Disgusting !
The British public destroyed the railways. Use it or lose it!
mascara snake angonamo, no ways there to use so how do ya?
Most of these quaint rural railways should never have been built in the first place.
They were losing money from Day One, never made a profit.
@@lennylaa1686 you do understand it's a public service? The social and economic value they bring to places they serve is a lot of money.
@@lennylaa1686 what using government stats ? You believe that? Take your head out of the sand
13:29 he admits he's out of touch but still manages to give examples of services he wants to take away from entire towns and cities. 13:37 why have two lines to Birmingham? Just stuff all the people on one line - what a genius! 13:41 only the people on Berwick upon Tweed, I suppose they don't count?
so why did labour close the lines.....never beeching or the tories
@@bobtudbury8505 what? do you know which party was in power when the Beeching report was published?
@@ShahidKhan-ke8fe it's recorded history? i also know ALL labour governments have left office with higher unemployment and a ruined economy, what a silly question
@@bobtudbury8505 I mean every government leaves with terrible figures, you know because why else are they taken out of power... Even when it's not their fault.
@@Alex-cw3rz do you know anything? do you research anuthing? you are wasting my time. When blair took office the economy was out-standing. There your point blown out the window, now go away it's like dealing with a 5 year old
80% of the closures were justified, indeed many of those lines shouldn’t have been built in the first place. The government were operating in the circumstances of the time, and that was a huge decline of rail usage that nobody could have predicted would ever reverse.
I will say one thing...
"Someobody's got to pay", says the man demanding 24 grand a year back then 😂😂
Consistently says he can't speak to the traffic patterns in the days when this was recorded.... Then goes on to say he would've had a railway that reflects the current traffic pattern. Guy has no clue 😂
Came from the ICI board,vwhich subsequently destroyed ICI lmao
Marples was the biggest villain in all of it. He, having sold his shares to his wife, still had control of the road construction company.... The same company he used to rip up the railways as soon as they were closed. Even though some railways were only listed for temporary closure until losses were recouped
So, i do not get this?
BR was loosing millions each year due to low or no passenger counts - and to save money and actually start earning again, he closes down routes with little to non passengers. Yet, when he does this people start screaming?
I mean, its the public's fault that BR was loosing money due to not using the railway-services.
We have done the same thing in Norway, closed down lines where there were few passengers, and the bus actually outpaced the rail-services. People shouted and yelled, because a service they never used, was closed down.
Also stations have been closed down, simply because there was not enough passengers.
Don’t know about Norway but you can’t believe these railway closures in the UK were as justified as they might seem. There was ulterior motives and the accuracy of the passenger numbers were it has since come to light in question. I’m 61 now and been looking at this subject for years and home truths still coming out.
The subsidy we pay now is more than the losses the lines had. It was ideological and many committees suffered greatly. I live in Wales and as i medically am not allowed to drive can realistically only work in 3 cities and even then only get around one of them. Mr and my wife are moving to Cardiff primarily so i can actually get around my local community and access basic services without having to use a taxi both ways
The problem was that those areas that he closed down routes on a lot weren't low passengers Cardiff to Aberystwyth was 100,000s a year, it now takes 7 hours to do that journey on a train, 8 hours by bus and 5 hours in a car for a formally 2 hour train journey. The other thing is the disturbution of the population has changed in fact it was happening when he was doing this, showing that he was just lying about the figures, I.e. almost all of these lines closed down are in areas where population has increased by a significant amount. The next thing was choice especially in our world now trains are a much more environmentally healthy option, it forced people into cars not because of BR's finances which actually got worse after this, but due to the car lobby. You need to remember anything that comes out of beeching mouth is a lie to cover his back.
Remember they massaged the passenger figures too. Taking surveys on school holidays, only allowing tickets issued at stations to be counted (thus making busy seaside resorts look empty) and various other things. Overquoting for infrastructure repairs was another thing. And at the public inquiries nobody was permitted to dispute BR;s figures either.
@@DJ_K666 spot on 👍
Didn't Beeching run off to live in France once he had his money, to get out of the way
A good thing that he wasn't asked to report on the NHS or anytime you had a medical problem, he would have had them work out the cost of fixing it and if that was more than you were worth, bad luck, you would be 'axed' - i.e. served with a closure notice.
They made him a Lord? :O
Of course! He did the Tories' bidding, making a pot of cash for fat cat ernie marples.
Went home to a glass of bubbly.
The main reason I'm sad beeching is dead is because I wish he was alive so I could berate him for his mind boggling ineptitude and stupidity
Remove the rails cos of the cost. Cos roads are free to build, require no maintenance, and never add to the health budget through pollution or accidents. Oh wait...
He didn't get everything right about the railways but he certainly didn't get everything wrong either. Intercity, freightliner are all down to Beeching. You have to understand that some of his assumptions were made using the technology of the time and thus would not prevail today. His removal of intermediate stations along trunk routes is one example. This was carried out to improve the major flows along those routes due to limitations of the signalling systems and the poor tractive performance of many of the Intercity trains of the time. However, today the flows could be improved whilst also keeping the intermediate stations.
Shut up you dirty bastard
He did everything wrong. He was being worked by Ernie Marples ulterior motive company
@@alantraish3368 nah, sorry dont agree
Hywel James whatever I’ve done my research
@@JeMappelleFrikandel plums
250 grand in todays money is what he were taking home
At an emotional level I share the aversion many feel to the idea of tearing up so much of our railway infrastructure. But the unfortunate fact is, with the advent of mass car ownership, many of the rural branch lines had simply become redundant. Surely it is unreasonable to pour millions upon millions of taxpayers money into keeping trains running along a line where there might be a just a tiny number of passengers per month? In a way, the whole thing reminds me of the campaign a few years ago in our village to keep the local post office open. Well, the campaign at first succeeded - the office remained. But guess what? Nobody darn well used it!! So it closed after all. All those people loudly protesting about how important it was for the community, etc, carried on doing what they had always done - they visited a larger postoffice when in town doing their shopping! I'm sure it's the same with those people attacking Beeching back in the 60s - how many of them were actually using these branch line services they wanted to keep running? Of course, it is possible that the cuts went too far in some places. If there was a significant level of demand, then it would have been justifiable to keep a line open as a public service - even if not strictly profitable. But lines where there were almost _no_ passengers at all? They had to go folks. They had to! :-(
We spend more on subsidy now than the loses british rail ever had. Your also disenfranchising people who cant drive and forcing them to live in cities in ordsr to access employment and services
@@petehall1985 even people who can drive are disenfranchised because they have to drive on choc a bloc roads and have ridiculous journey times.
You have zero understanding of the reality of the situation, dozens of railways have been reopened since hundreds have plans to open. Lines with zero passengers is just a fabrication and the lack of intelligent forethought it takes to not imagine that lines with low usage had been closed previous to beeching is mind boggling. It wasn't even economical did BR do better in debts after this, no it got worse. Then it went private and got even worse over 30 countries have reviewed how British railways are run now and all of them took nothing from it, except that they need to make sure they don't do anything the British did.
@@Alex-cw3rz our railways are a text book example of how to fuck up an important national asset.
MR B . You are dealing with politicians here who were as in this case and now not noted for giving true information. You say they weren’t used enough. I take you are going by stats provided by the Tory government of the day( and later closures by Labour). Unless you actually used any of these lines to back up your claim, these stats were lies. They were deliberately taken during school holidays and winter months. We will also disregard the powerful road lobby and social need whilst we are at it. Cut and dried? I don’t think so and no party comes out of this nicely. Labour only kept some lines open because they went thru marginal constituencies. So there you have it.
Git
Sounded like a polite,reasonable man who was brought in to do a buisness assesment .I'm glad not all of his cuts materlized but I think its widely acknoledged some cuts were needed.To my mind he talked a lot of sense and ultimately it was politicians like Macmillan , Marples (with road interests)and later Wilson who made deicisions not Beeching.Some cuts were made later that not even he recommended .Of course the car was glamorized and still is through advertising and people are relunctant to abandon them.Most politicians who have not advocated tax cuts in the last forty years have not got elected and we can't have better public services without paying for them.To demonize Beeching to me seems unfair ,the politicians made the decision base on the circumstances of the time.Now we realise the effect on the climate that we didn't then theres more debate about alternatives to the motor vehicle like cycling,buses and trains but even now if they intefere with the car there not popular.
Eventually, the Tories got what they had always wanted the scrapping of nationalisation. And look where it's got us. It needed a psychopath like Thatcher to see it through. And all those idiots who voted her in.
Beeching, marples, mcmillan, Wilson
The lot of em were corrupt, same as now. We need a completely fresh political system. The present one is totally twisted and bent. Bring on Reform
I understand where he is coming from but his plan was biased as he had ties with tarmac companies.
He comes across as a gentleman, talking what he considered as sense, and in essence he was given an unenviable task
Beeching : when socialism collided head on with economic reality : you run out of money.
@Henry Discipline Maybe you're not but it was Attlee and Labour which nationalised the railways
in 1948, putting it in the hands of a people who were very poor if not poverty stricken after six years
world war. It was a pipe dream, expecting a run down railway system to be put right by millions of
poor people. BTW, more lines were closed down BEFORE Beeching than AFTER = 2,900 v 2,300.
Economic illeracy. A government can never "run out of money".
He's right.
Can't stand this guy. What he did was terrible.
Corrupt by the sound of things. Terribly short sighted, he needed glasses.
You don't have to run frequent trains if there is little demand.
what ever, beeching had no power, factually it was the labour party that closed the lines, right up to 1970 when heath got in
heath diddent stop progress either, waverley route wasent ripped up until 1971/72 so he could have easily reversed it, i would reckon the great central would have fallen into that catagory aswell, so heath was no better, marpels was the real villan at the start as he had lots to gain from road building
@@johnr4459 there were plans afoot but the devistation stopped basically, there is alwayss fall out and continuation
Cobblers again. You really need some lessons don’t you
@@alantraish3368 all fact, take a day off, go to school once would be good
@@bobtudbury8505 stop being a sheep . No facts here only in your mind. Lecture is over for you mate. Back to the trough
1948 Railway Nationalisation : Utopia-land of socialism and Attlee = cost of industry given to a war-torn,
poverty stricken and austerity ridden nation; the concept was ill conceived and ill thought out but that's
la-la land socialism for you. NO MONEY TO PAY FOR IT! Wake up you thick Labour donkeys and dinosaurs!
Just look at Venezuela.
Read your history Greg. What the CIA has done to Venezuela has caused the problem. The USA took over from the British and other European colonisers in control by proxy. Privatisation of railways has been a scandalous joke making a few rich and decimating a rail system that every citizen Tory or otherwise is aware of. Socialism is not the answer in my opinion but somethings are better off in public hands.
@@davidshepherd1107 Venezuela was destroyed by far left socialism and no wonder when their Marxist
President Hugo Chavez lavished billions in uncontrolled spending to effectively bribe his voters.
Classic socialist vote buying and gerrymandering...they do it all the time and then wreck the economy.
Thank God he died but then Maduro came in - another hard left head banger and then it got worse!
Why not look at France instead?