Is it time to stop blaming Beeching?

[corneliuslundie]

By coincidence I have just come across the following words, the final sentences of the book "Roads and trackways of Wales" by Richard Colyer, published in 1984:

"Of those few Welsh railway lines remaining many can only be travelled upon with inconvenience and discomfort, while at least one is positively dangerous. Whether they like it or not, most country people in Wales are now forced to rely on their motor cars for both long and short journeys. In the sense that virtually all the major roads in Wales lie on the course of a turnpike (which may itself represent the line of a much older road), we might be said to have entered the second turnpike age. Like readers of Punch in 1856, we must, for the foreseeable future, grin and bear, the 'ammer, 'ammer, ammer along the 'ard 'igh road."

Ignoring the bit about a dangerous railway line, what is interesting is how few of the railways in the area followed closely the turnpikes. I suspect that what he wrote about Wales, at least rural Wales, could be applied to rural England, Scotland and Ireland.

Discuss - or don't bother.

Jonathan 

Edited September 6, 2021 by corneliuslundie
correction

[Oldddudders]

When I joined the railway in 1966, several eloquent speakers told us newcomers that the major reason for the loss of freight traffic was the proliferation of 'C&D Licence vehicles' under new legislation earlier that decade that had basically liberated the road haulage industry to hit BR where it hurt. 

 

I have never followed up the veracity of this, but present it here as an acquired 'truth'.

[Compound2632]

18 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

what is interesting is how few of the railways in the area followed closely the turnpikes. I suspect that what he wrote about Wales, at least rural Wales, could be applied to rural England, Scotland and Ireland.

 

Whereas the motorway network quite closely replicates the railway system of the 1840s. Which shows, I suppose, that there has been little change in the major population centres since then.

[RJS1977]

On 05/09/2021 at 14:47, Compound2632 said:

 

It's not efficient. If it was all in the hands of a state monopoly (GPO?) deliveries could be planned to minimise mileage. But I bet there were similar complaints in the big cities back in the days when the LNWR, Midland, Lancashire & Yorkshire, Great Northern, Great Central, Great Western were all out delivering.

 

But even big companies seem to struggle with efficient deliveries - on at least one occasion during lockdown, we had three different Tesco delivery vans park outside my flat in the space of half an hour! Meanwhile there were other people struggling to book deliveries....

[62613]

1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Far from an over supply of taxis. Can we have more please? Proper ones rather than dodgy UBERs

 

If you've ever got a bus in Liverpool you would know why everyone uses cabs. Service stops early, starts too late, doesn't run at night, very poor Sunday service, too expensive, unreliable, too slow (often awful whiney electric things), I could go on.

 

Trains are just as bad as most of them don't go to anywhere people need to go to for work, school or home as those places weren't built in the 1830s and most newer houses and workplaces are out of town. However, nearly everything is still in the city centre, particularly peoples social lives.

 

So people wanting to go the pub. Wait half an hour for a bus that might not turn up. Pay £2.50 each which is the minimum fare. Or jump in a cab that turns up quickly and gets you to where you want to be. 

 

 

Jason

Crimes! I can remember when the maximum fare throughout Mesrseyside was 50p off - peak, and 75p peak; that was in 1984; the buses were packed, especially at start and going - home time. Then of course, a couple of years later, the second Thatcher government passed their transport act, the result of which, for buses, has been a drastic decline in services, and the domination of what's left by three groups.

 

Edited September 6, 2021 by 62613

[RJS1977]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

I'll just drop this here: "Exeter By-Pass"

People used to get out their folding chairs they were taking on holiday to points west and sit at the side of the road waiting for movement.

 

 

 

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

When I joined the railway in 1966, several eloquent speakers told us newcomers that the major reason for the loss of freight traffic was the proliferation of 'C&D Licence vehicles' under new legislation earlier that decade that had basically liberated the road haulage industry to hit BR where it hurt. 

 

I have never followed up the veracity of this, but present it here as an acquired 'truth'.

Wasn't there an ASLEF strike about the time the new lorry drivers appeared on the scene?

Gave them a huge helping hand to get started.

 

There was of course, post war, plenty of surplus lorries waiting to be snapped up by enterprising people to help move goods around.

Edited September 6, 2021 by melmerby

[F-UnitMad]

In a TV program presented by Pete Waterman, he said that another factor why railways lost freight to road was because of their 'common carrier' designation - they could not refuse uneconomic loads, plus their rates of carraige were published in the public domain, so all any budding lorry driver had to do in the 60s was get his new licence, and old Army Surplus lorry, and undercut the railway rates for freight he wanted to move.

Probably an over-simplification, but with some truth to it.

[corneliuslundie]

I am pretty sure that Oldddudders is right, though I am sure the government of the day would never have admitted it: competition MUST be better than monopoly and all that.

Jonathan

[RJS1977]

16 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Wasn't there an ASLEF strike about the time the new lorry drivers appeared on the scene?

Gave them a huge helping hand to get started.

 

Yes, I think in protest against the 'Modernisation Plan'.

 

The strike formed the background to an episode of Hancock's Half Hour, ironically given Hancock's later involvement with Beeching.

[rodent279]

24 minutes ago, F-UnitMad said:

In a TV program presented by Pete Waterman, he said that another factor why railways lost freight to road was because of their 'common carrier' designation - they could not refuse uneconomic loads, plus their rates of carraige were published in the public domain, so all any budding lorry driver had to do in the 60s was get his new licence, and old Army Surplus lorry, and undercut the railway rates for freight he wanted to move.

Probably an over-simplification, but with some truth to it.

I think there's a lot in this. The railways were hamstrung by twin albatrosses around their necks, in the form of Victorian/Edwardian infrastructure that needed investment, and the Common Carrier obligation. Add in the effect of 2 wars, which did much lasting damage, for which the railways were never properly compensated.

[Pandora]

47 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

I think there's a lot in this. The railways were hamstrung by twin albatrosses around their necks, in the form of Victorian/Edwardian infrastructure that needed investment, and the Common Carrier obligation. Add in the effect of 2 wars, which did much lasting damage, for which the railways were never properly compensated.

There were some highly capable vehicles on the market, the Ford Transit van for one,  good payload , cheap to run, and as fast as a car on Britain's rapidly improving uncongested road network.

There was also arbitrage,  a carrier could  accumulate several packages to the same destination,  combine the several packages into a single package, farm it out to the railway, who would receive only a single payment for carriage , a payment which would be less than the carriage charges for the individual packages

Edited September 6, 2021 by Pandora

[Pandora]

1 hour ago, F-UnitMad said:

In a TV program presented by Pete Waterman, he said that another factor why railways lost freight to road was because of their 'common carrier' designation - they could not refuse uneconomic loads, plus their rates of carraige were published in the public domain, so all any budding lorry driver had to do in the 60s was get his new licence, and old Army Surplus lorry, and undercut the railway rates for freight he wanted to move.

Probably an over-simplification, but with some truth to it.

A valid statement,  the road hauliers cherry picked the freight to earn a profit, the railways as a common carrier could not negotiate lower rates with customers and were left with the residue, the low-return  freight the road haulier did not want

[Phatbob]

If one must play the blame game, then the villain is Ernest Marples, the Secretary of state for Transport who hired Richard Beeching as his reasuringly expensive hit man, while at the same time owning a major motorway construction company.  He ended up doing a runner to Monaco to avoid prosecution for tax fraud.  A man who was without doubt "as bent as a nine bob note", as we used to say when I was a kid in Croydon.

[Fat Controller]

36 minutes ago, Pandora said:

There were some highly capable vehicles on the market, the Ford Transit van for one,  good payload , cheap to run, and as fast as a car on Britain's rapidly improving uncongested road network.

There was also arbitrage,  a carrier could  accumulate several packages to the same destination,  combine the several packages into a single package, farm it out to the railway, who would receive only a single payment for carriage , a payment which would be less than the carriage charges for the individual packages

There was a parcels company that used to fill their Escort-type van with parcels, then send it via Motorail from King's Cross and Edinburgh...

[pete_mcfarlane]

1 hour ago, Phatbob said:

If one must play the blame game, then the villain is Ernest Marples, the Secretary of state for Transport who hired Richard Beeching as his reasuringly expensive hit man, while at the same time owning a major motorway construction company.  He ended up doing a runner to Monaco to avoid prosecution for tax fraud.  A man who was without doubt "as bent as a nine bob note", as we used to say when I was a kid in Croydon.

I would also blame his boss, Harold Macmillan, for employing somebody so obviously spivvy as a minister in the first place. 

 

(Although I did win £25 on my Premium Bonds last month, which Marples was responsible for as Postmaster General, so he wasn't all bad....)

[TheSignalEngineer]

1 hour ago, Phatbob said:

If one must play the blame game, then the villain is Ernest Marples, the Secretary of state for Transport who hired Richard Beeching as his reasuringly expensive hit man, while at the same time owning a major motorway construction company.  He ended up doing a runner to Monaco to avoid prosecution for tax fraud.

And reputedly made his escape by nipping round from his Pimlico flat to Victoria to catch the Night Ferry train to Paris.

As far as his ownership of Marples Ridgeway was concerned, he sold his shares when Minister of Transport - to his Wife.

[mdvle]

2 hours ago, Phatbob said:

If one must play the blame game, then the villain is Ernest Marples, the Secretary of state for Transport who hired Richard Beeching as his reasuringly expensive hit man, while at the same time owning a major motorway construction company.  He ended up doing a runner to Monaco to avoid prosecution for tax fraud.  A man who was without doubt "as bent as a nine bob note", as we used to say when I was a kid in Croydon.

 

But would a different person in charge result in a different outcome for BR?  Doubtful.

 

The roads and motorways would have been built anyway - though perhaps with a better selection process for the construction process.

 

And that means the loss of freight was going to happen anyway, with the same financial hit to BR.

[RJS1977]

5 minutes ago, mdvle said:

 

But would a different person in charge result in a different outcome for BR?  Doubtful.

 

The roads and motorways would have been built anyway - though perhaps with a better selection process for the construction process.

 

And that means the loss of freight was going to happen anyway, with the same financial hit to BR.

 

Agreed - to my mind the fact that over half the closures were enacted under a Labour Government elected on a manifesto commitment to reverse them speaks volumes about their inevitability.

 

However what I definitely believe was wrong was the indecent haste with which lines were torn up, bridges demolished and trackbeds built on, preventing the possibility of their reuse at a later time.

[Reorte]

18 minutes ago, mdvle said:

 

But would a different person in charge result in a different outcome for BR?  Doubtful.

 

The roads and motorways would have been built anyway - though perhaps with a better selection process for the construction process.

 

And that means the loss of freight was going to happen anyway, with the same financial hit to BR.

I guess you'd have to look at other countries to compare, although the situation isn't the same in any two countries.

 

At a very broad level the outcome would've been the same - motorway building and railway closures. The detail might've been somewhat different.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Reorte

[tynewydd]

8 hours ago, melmerby said:

I'll just drop this here: "Exeter By-Pass"

People used to get out their folding chairs they were taking on holiday to points west and sit at the side of the road waiting for movement.

 

 

On our way to Devon to stay with Gran, we used to take out a Cornish Pasty in a flat tin (same mixture as a usual but flat) that my mother had made cut into squares, spread out a tartan rug on the verge or central reservation depending on which lane we were stopped in and have a relaxing lunch!  There was always a bit of a warning of movement starting again and so time to pack up. This pattern persisted on the new M5 at whatever point it had ended as it was built south, and then the A38 as it was "dual-ed" as well for a bit.  

I preferred the train journey from Derby to Plymouth as a youngster (travelling alone at 7 yo) but that meant relying on Granny for transport in her Morris Minor with the wood back - and she drove a car like a tractor - needing an average of three clutch rebuilds a year. 

[tynewydd]

4 hours ago, Pandora said:

A valid statement,  the road hauliers cherry picked the freight to earn a profit, the railways as a common carrier could not negotiate lower rates with customers and were left with the residue, the low-return  freight the road haulier did not want

This is what has happened to the US Post Office as well. They have to deliver to everywhere and have a social contract that the cost only depends on distance door-to-door, not on degree of difficulty.  Companies like Amazon can and do pick or choose and just use them for the most uneconomic deliveries of the "last mile(s)". 

One can observe, however, that when the boot was on the other foot and private companies on rail were the only way to go in the US, they operated as you would expect giant monopolies to do - they price gouged the little guy when there was no competition and acted to stop any new competition.  There were similar complaints about the LNWR and then the LMS (and probably all the big four) in the UK in areas where they were effective monopolies like North Wales.  When my father travelled to school in Leatherhead from St Asaph in 1940 he went via Wrexham and observed that the LMS and GWR trains were perfectly timed to miss each other to reduce the convenience of the route to Paddington compared to Euston.

I think two major problems with Beeching were the lack of understanding of the value of the network effect to traffic, which leads to devaluing the "twigs", and having a planning horizon that didn't properly value returns from investments in efficiency to reduce the overall cost.  The same standards were not applied to the road network, of course, either in the ROI for all the rural roads per mile or in setting up a true comparison of different investment strategies for how freight and passengers would most efficiently travel the longer routes once the novelty wore off. 

But the overall sentiment is correct - Beeching just reaped the whirlwind as a totem of the policies implemented both before and after him.  He was asked to do a job - he did it and he was not about to produce something that was not PC. 

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, tynewydd said:

I preferred the train journey from Derby to Plymouth as a youngster (travelling alone at 7 yo) but that meant relying on Granny for transport in her Morris Minor with the wood back - and she drove a car like a tractor - needing an average of three clutch rebuilds a year. 

Which is why some people should drive automatics. The slight increase in fuel consumption, is much cheaper than repairs to badly driven manuals. Although some people would never understand that logic.

[rodent279]

5 hours ago, tynewydd said:

I preferred the train journey from Derby to Plymouth as a youngster (travelling alone at 7 yo) but that meant relying on Granny for transport in her Morris Minor with the wood back - and she drove a car like a tractor - needing an average of three clutch rebuilds a year. 

Impressive feat, Morris Minor clutches are not easy to break!

[Bernard Lamb]

16 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

Wasn't Serpell, who was to present a report during the late 1970s/ early 1980s, an important member of Beeching's team? 

I believe he did have a prominent role in the team.

Although it was far easier to lay all the blame on Beeching.

Much the same situation with Barbara Castle being viewed in a good light when she was actually quite ruthless.

Bernard