What If... the railways hadn't closed in the 1960s

[petejones]

So the Beeching cuts didn't happen and the railways flourished during the 1960s; dieselisation took over from steam on rural branch lines. I assume DMUs would likely have been used for passenger services, but what about freight? Would a dedicated loco such as the Class 22 have been used? Would that have been too heavy for some of the more precarious branch lines? Perhaps a shunter would be pressed into service to trundle along with a few wagons?

 

Just looking for ideas really.

[PatB]

For freight handling, I can see containerisation becoming common in your scenario. Not necessarily Freightliner or ISO containers, but more a matter of demountable, interchangeable bodies on common underframes. Can be removed or replaced by one man (and maybe another to do the rigging) with a crane, and can stand in the goods yard until such time as the recipient of the load can come and retrieve the contents themselves, thus saving significantly on railway manpower and hence costs. It would, of course, require active goods yards to be equipped with a suitable crane, which would have a substantial capital cost, and so I would see many smaller/low traffic yards still being closed, with traffic being concentrated on terminii and more significant intermediate stations.

 

Less than wagonload (LWL) freight, if still around, would, as I see it, have become 100% palletised or, possibly, use a heavy-duty development of the BRUTE trolley system, again to minimise manual handling by railway staff, which is a significant cost.

 

At the very least I would expect the vast majority of freight vehicles to be fitted to allow higher train speeds. For the same reason I would see the short wheelbase wagon to have been abandoned fairly quickly in favour of something akin to the OAA/VAA but, obviously, adapted to suit the demountable body principal.

 

On the same general subject, a few years ago I read an interesting article in, I think, a 1976 issue of Modern Railways (possibly) on a proposed system for economical handling of LWL freight. Whilst I can't now remember all the details, I recall being very enthusiastic and thinking "This could actually work", before coming down to earth and remembering that I was reading this in 1998 in a 20+ year old magazine, so it obviously hadn't happened ;-).

[Fat Controller]

Containers, or demountable bodies, have been around from the earliest days of railways. They were certainly commonplace in the 1960s, especially for perishables such as both fresh and frozen meat. During WW2 , when a lot of goods yards with minimal facilities suddenly became important railheads, the government ordered quantities of both rail and road mobile cranes to be built; these would simply travel to where the current need was.

[corneliuslundie]

Certainly axle loading would have been an issue on some lines such as the Mid Wales where the Dean goods had long been about the limit. So definitely light axle load diesels would have been needed, but not puny ones as there are some significant hills in Wales.

But I fear that buses would actually still have stolen the traffic. I looked recently at times from Newtown to Brecon by train in the 1950s. Minimum 3 hours. The T4 bus, every 2 hours, now takes 2 hours. I can't see that even dieselisation and more modern trains could have matched that.

I also looked at the M&M. There are a good many buses each day now and times are quicker than the railway times were, but more important they serve towns which the railway missed because of its original aim to reach Manchester. There is a campaign to reopen it but I cannot see where the traffic will come from. Strata Florida?

One thing which would have been crucial to success would have been a campaign to keep freight traffic rather than shed it as actually happened. There is plenty of freight traffic on the road between Welshpool and Newtown which forms part of both the north-south and east-west through routes, much of it long distance. 

One line which might have done well was the original Cambrian main line east of Welshpool.

Jonathan

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by corneliuslundie
Typos corrected

[PatB]

46 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

Containers, or demountable bodies, have been around from the earliest days of railways. They were certainly commonplace in the 1960s, especially for perishables such as both fresh and frozen meat. During WW2 , when a lot of goods yards with minimal facilities suddenly became important railheads, the government ordered quantities of both rail and road mobile cranes to be built; these would simply travel to where the current need was.

Quite so. My assumption for the purpose of the exercise is that such schemes were successful and were expanded to cover a majority of general freight traffic. After all, the whole idea is a pretty big "what if", so I don't see as too much of a stretch to propose that some of the 50s and 60s stuff that in reality went nowhere might have fulfilled its potential. 

[melmoth]

8 hours ago, petejones said:

So the Beeching cuts didn't happen and the railways flourished during the 1960s; dieselisation took over from steam on rural branch lines. I assume DMUs would likely have been used for passenger services, but what about freight? Would a dedicated loco such as the Class 22 have been used? Would that have been too heavy for some of the more precarious branch lines? Perhaps a shunter would be pressed into service to trundle along with a few wagons?

 

Just looking for ideas really.

 

The lines north of Carmarthen stayed open until about 1973 for dairy traffic from Pont Llanio and Felin Fach and I think every photo I've seen has got a Hymek on the train. There are certainly photos of them working Aberystwyth - Carmarthen trains in the 1960s.

 

Bangor - Caernarfon - Afon Wen saw Class 40s (at least as far as Caernarfon) and 24/25s.

[Fat Controller]

1 minute ago, melmoth said:

 

The lines north of Carmarthen stayed open until about 1973 for dairy traffic from Pont Llanio and Felin Fach and I think every photo I've seen has got a Hymek on the train. There are certainly photos of them working Aberystwyth - Carmarthen trains in the 1960s.

 

Bangor - Caernarfon - Afon Wen saw Class 40s (at least as far as Caernarfon) and 24/25s.

The various lines north of Carmarthen would see the 'Mecs replaced by Class 37s. They also saw some non-milk traffic (coal, feed-stuff and fertiliser, and agricultural machinery) up untl the end of freight services.

[John M]

CIE Irish transport company continued to transport sundries (LWL) traffic by ISO containers in Liner Trains into the early 1990s, internationally a number of railways transport sundries traffic by providing a line haul service for Logistics companies.

 

CIE made a determined attempt to improve the profitability of its marginally profitable sundries traffic during the 1970s by developing a total distribution service similar to a modern logistics business or the services traditionally offered by the railways.

 

Sundries traffic was packed at a customers premises or railway warehouse into caged trolleys not dissimilar to the BR BRUTE system, minimising handling.

 

Traffic was transported between rail terminals by Liner Trains in 10' ISO containers with delivery and collection to or from a customers premises using a Bedford TK fitted with a tail lift.

 

Containers were loaded/unloaded from Liner trains by forklift, at a number of locations loading/unloading took place while the train was waiting on a running line.

 

The sundries side of the business struggled to achieve profitability and was discontinued in the early 1990s following the de-regulation of the Irish transport industry.

 

Low traffic density, short line haul distance in combination with restrictive labour agreements may have affected the viability of the operation

 

Kiwirail use curtain sided ISO containers on bogie wagons for line haul work for a number of Logistics and Courier companies.

 

Although the overall population and level of economic activity are similar, the longer line haul distance between terminals in New Zealand compared to Ireland would improve the viability of rail for line haul operation of LWL traffic

 

 

 

 

 

[philip-griffiths]

The problem is the Beeching Cuts.  The MTA, Sirhowy and the services in the Eastern and Western valleys all succumbed before the Beeching Report. 

 

regards

[NCB]

Class 37s did work the later freight workings north of Carmarthen until they ceased.

 

A couple of factors contributed to the decline. One was Conservative government policy of not allowing passenger services to be truly competitive with buses. An example, in the 1950s I was growing up in Ruthin, Vale of Clwyd, and on occasions was hauled off to the dentist in Denbigh. One option was the train. Comfortable, didn't take long. The other option was a double decker bus, which clanked and ground its way over the rough roads of the time, and took ages. The trouble was the train fare was over twice the bus fare. The bus was packed, the train almost empty. If the train fare had been the same as the bus fare it would have been the other way around, and a significant increase in income for the railway.

 

The other factor was little attempt by the railways to improve performance. Again from Ruthin, the Ruthin to Chester service was powered by modern 2-6-4Ts, but from Denbigh to Chester ground along almost at walking pace, when a much livelier service would have been possible, It was easier to close than improve. It's a miracle the Central Wales line survived.

 

The roads between Aberystwyth and Carmarthen have improved recently. It took me 1.5 hours yesterday, but it was fairly traffic free. In August you can add at least another half hour. If the link reopened then it would provide useful connections through to Swansea, Cardiff and London. But I can't see it happening; the Aberystwyth end has been built over, for a start.

[JohnR]

I'm not sure simply not having the Beeching cuts would mean the railways would "flourish". They had been in decline since at least the mid-50s, and arguably since the war.

 

A more "enlightened" Government policy at the time would still have resulted in cuts to the passenger network, albeit not as drastic as happened in reality - they probably would have happened at the same rate as in the 50s. I suspect some lines which would have been "saved" wouldnt look the same. In our Time Line, the Waterloo-Exeter line was drastically singled, and it wouldnt surprise me that if it had been saved, lines like the Great Central would have had the same fate. 

 

The 1968 Transport Act was introduced by Barbara Castle in order to "end the Beeching cuts" and stabilise the network at around 11,000 miles in length, (it was then at just over 12,500 miles) though the supply of grants for "socially necessary" railway lines. The reality was slightly different, as the network continued to contract, and even today, after a number of rail reopenings, is only 9,800 miles in length. 

 

But what if instead of the 1962 Act, we had the 1968 one? Albeit one still removing the common carrier status, and allowing BR to have a commercial pricing policy?

 

 

 

 

[caradoc]

I'm not convinced that aligning rail fares with bus fares would really have made that much difference; Particularly in rural areas, buses are often able to provide much more convenient, and probably more frequent, services than trains. An example from where I grew up in the 1960s; The Radley/Abingdon branch closed to passenger traffic in 1963. Today Abingdon is linked to Oxford by a number of frequent bus services, which serve the town's suburbs, Oxford city centre, and in some cases continue through Oxford to the JR Hospital (albeit currently altered due to roadworks in Oxford). The railway simply could not compete with that, requiring passengers firstly to get to Abingdon station, usually change trains at Radley, and then get from Oxford station to their final destination. And for passengers from the Abingdon area towards London, driving to Didcot for an express from there would beat a train to Radley, and a change there to a stopping service, every time.

[melmoth]

9 hours ago, NCB said:

It's a miracle the Central Wales line survived.

 

 

It survived, initially, because George Thomas (later Lord Tonypandy) informed Harold Wilson that it ran through six marginal constituencies...

[Edwin_m]

The 1960s was when railways and other transport started to be looked at as a social good rather than a commercial business.  In fact Beeching recognised this but it wasn't part of his remit to act on it.  So probably without the wholesale closures of the Beeching era some lines would have survived long enough to be considered socially necessary, as the remaining ones were by Barbara Castle as mentioned.  Their case would have been helped by the cost reductions which BR started implementing on the surviving lines - even if singled and rationalised the right of way and principle of the service are preserved and there is scope to improve it later if warranted.  Most of the route reopenings of recent years have been of lines that were still in freight operation, rather than those that closed completely. 

 

The other factor missed by Beeching (again probably due to the remit) was that the technology that provided reliable and reasonably comfortable buses to replace trains on most of the rural routes would also lead to widespread car ownership and traffic congestion, making many of those bus services unviable.  The opportunity was missed to move towards a Swiss-style integrated network where the railways provided the trunk hauls and buses provided mainly feeder services in areas where the was little congestion. 

 

However I don't think a sundries freight business would have survived.  The traditional goods yards were essentially close enough together to allow delivery to any address in the country within the limited range of the horse and cart.  The same automotive advances also made trucks widely available, which as well as being faster were longer range.  So instead of having a truck sitting around at a rail depot awaiting local deliveries (or worse still sending one empty from a central depot to meet the train) the goods can go on the truck from origin to destination.  Or at the very least to/from a large intermodal railhead where the journey is long enough and the volume great enough for the economies of bulk rail haulage to justify the cost of the transfer.  Being an island there are far fewer opportunities for this than on the Continent or in the USA. 

[NCB]

Depends a lot on which part of the country you're talking about when it comes to what would have worked, and what the argument for retaining services was. Mid Wales, for example, is very different from rural Oxfordshire. If the M&M or the Mid Wales Railway were seen as through lines, as they were originally conceived, rather than branch lines, they would have been, and would still be, attractive. The roads in the area are still comparatively poor, and subject to traffic delays, especially in the holiday season. The Cambrian main line still carries a useful amount of traffic because it's an essential link, not only to Shrewsbury, but to the world beyond. If the M&M provided a similar service to Carmarthen with good connections beyond it would fulfill a need.

[The Johnster]

On 04/07/2019 at 10:47, Fat Controller said:

The various lines north of Carmarthen would see the 'Mecs replaced by Class 37s. They also saw some non-milk traffic (coal, feed-stuff and fertiliser, and agricultural machinery) up untl the end of freight services.

37s did actually inherit the jobs from Hymeks at the very end of of the milk train operations here.

 

You'd have to ask how much difference Beeching actually made in Wales.  The Gwent Valleys passenger services had already gone, as had those centred on Brecon and on Monmouth, as had the Afan Valley with the exception of the Treherbert-Bridgend which hung on a few more years, and traffic was falling to desperately low levels on the Carmarthen-Aberystwyth and the LNWR on the Lleyn as well.  Freight was an increasingly dead duck everywhere except for mineral traffic and the milk, which were the only factors in keeping such lines open.  The Vale of Glamorgan would have gone but for the Aberthaw power station traffic.  

 

The commuter traffic from the Valleys to Cardiff and Newport had not really begun to develop until the late 70s, and local buses by and large took up the slack very effectively in those areas.  The points about journey times in more rural areas are valid as well; it was quicker to get to London from Newport by train, 150 miles, than it was to Brecon 35 miles away, both through services.  But I doubt a Newtown-Brecon bus could have beat the train before the road was improved between those places and upgraded to become the A470 in 1970; nowadays you can sit at 60mph for considerable distances here if traffic permits while not much more than 40 was safely achievable anywhere along it then!  

 

Dmus would have had trouble on the Brecon and Merthyr, and would have probably had to have been power twins; they'd have been sufficient for the traffic!  The Mid Wales was pretty gently graded though.  The routes that might have made a difference, Brecon to Abergavenny or Monmouth-Newport, connecting wealthy market towns to the main lines, were never built!

Edited July 17, 2019 by The Johnster

[mike morley]

What happened to the MPV-based timber trains that were trialed between Aberystwyth and Chirk a decade or so ago?  I vaguely recall a discussion on a previous incarnation of RMweb that suggested one purpose of the trial was to see if the MPV's could be used for other varieties of freight traffic elsewhere on the Cambrian system.

Were the trials simply not a success or what?

[TheQ]

I doubt cranes would have lasted long, standard loads smaller than Iso containers are normally palletised. There are plenty of suitable forklifts available that would drop loads on and off railway wagons using curtain siders. I'm sure if a lorry curtain sider can carry pallets otherwise not tied down, a railway wagon could do the same, so no second man needed.

If not palletised then the cages used by Supermarket suppliers could have been rolled on and off quite easily.

[Fat Controller]

46 minutes ago, mike morley said:

What happened to the MPV-based timber trains that were trialed between Aberystwyth and Chirk a decade or so ago?  I vaguely recall a discussion on a previous incarnation of RMweb that suggested one purpose of the trial was to see if the MPV's could be used for other varieties of freight traffic elsewhere on the Cambrian system.

Were the trials simply not a success or what?

I think the problem was that they couldn't carry a useful load. The same happened with the container loads from Bulmers at Hereford. Prior to the British trials, DB had done some trial running in Germany, which didn't carry on beyond the test period.

[tomparryharry]

As others said, closures in Wales happened long before Beeching. As soon as a colliery was worked out, the reason for being there evaporated. Sometimes I'm amazed by just how much is in fact left. One conjecture I have is the proposed amalgamation of the Cardiff, Taff & Rhymney Railways. Had such an amalgamation indeed taken place, the entire 4-track Taff main line from Pontypridd to Cardiff would have been given over to enable the A470 trunk road, with all of the rail traffic going over to the Cardiff section.  

 

Ian.

[wombatofludham]

From what I have read one line that very nearly didn't close was the Ruabon to Barmouth line.  The aforementioned George Thomas ( a very "Marmite" SoS for Wales, some of his decisions were questionable, especially over Aberfan) raised concerns about the loss of another trunk route across rural Wales which linked some areas of nascent Welsh nationalism, especially around Bala  post Capel Celyn.  It was also suggested it would be better to serve the new Trawsfynnydd nuclear power station from Bala with a deviation or tunnel around the new controversial reservoir at Llyn Celyn.  Arguably, linking as it did important towns like Llangollen, Bala, Dolgellau and the coast, it probably made more sense to keep the line than some other Welsh cross country lines (although the Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth route also served some important centres like Machynlleth, Welshpool and the newly designated new town of Newtown, one of the only "rural" new towns designated in the 1960s).  Had George Thomas got his way, it would no doubt have been modernised in a similar way to the Cambrian and allowed direct North West to the coast services to be introduced, providing a quicker route to Barmouth than round the coast line.  In fact, you could envisage a scenario where the Mach route went to Aberystwyth, and Pwllheli was served via Dolgellau, and the section between Morfa Mawddach and Mach was closed, as the most troublesome section of the route to maintain and operate.  Whilst that would have removed Tywyn from the main line map, together with Aberdyfi, the road link from Tywyn to Mach isn't too bad relatively speaking so could easily have been served by a bus in 1960s transport planning thinking.

The fact the Traws Cymru bus from Ruabon to Barmouth runs at a high (2hrly) frequency using double deck vehicles shows that there is still demand for travel along the corridor, despite the bus running at a glacial speed because they dive into every village en-route.  There's no doubt a train would be much quicker and I'm sure the route would be nearly as successful today as the Aberystwyth corridor although the university traffic does help that route.  The Traws Cymru route is probably one of the few rail replacement buses that has survived largely intact, albeit at much better frequencies and with vastly improved equipment, and whilst it probably doesn't take much longer than the old steam hauled all shacks service it replaced, there's no doubt in my mind that had the line survived, modern lightweight 158 units would be offering a much quicker service along the line now and given the astonishing growth of all-year tourist visitors to places like Dolgellau (for walkers) and Llangollen would be considered a vital link today.

[NCB]

Strategic thinking of the day, if you can call it that, didn't really see any role for railways in mid and north Wales apart from the north coast main line. In a way the Aberystwyth line was lucky to survive, the coast line even more so, and those would have gone if Beeching's final plans had been allowed to proceed. You only have to tweak the vision slightly in favour of railways, to see a case for retaining both the Ruabon to Barmouth and Bangor to Afon Wen lines. However, it would have to recognise that these would be in the main very rural services, similar to the Central Wales line; they didn't have the custom of Aberystwyth with its university and other bodies at the end of the line.