Beeching-Axt

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Many railway lines were closed as a result of the Beeching Axe

The Beeching Axe is an informal name for the UK Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running the British railway system. The name derives from the main author of the report The Reshaping of British Railways, Dr. Richard Beeching. Although this report also proposed the development of new modes of freight service and the modernisation of trunk passenger routes, it is best remembered for recommending the wholesale closure of what it considered to be little-used and unprofitable railway lines, and the removal of stopping passenger trains and closure of local stations on other lines which remained open.

The report was a reaction to the significant losses which had begun in the 1950s as the expansion in road transport began to abstract significant passenger and goods traffic from the railways; losses which continued to bedevil British Railways despite the introduction of the railway modernisation plan of 1955. Beeching proposed that only drastic action would save the railways from increasing losses in the future.

However, successive governments were more keen on the cost-saving elements of the report rather than those elements requiring investment. Over 4,000 miles of railway and 3,000 stations were closed in the decade following the report, being a reduction of 25% of route miles and 50% in the number of stations. To this day in railway circles and amongst older people, particularly in those parts of the country that suffered most from the cuts, Beeching's name is still synonymous with the mass closure of railways and consequent loss of many local services.

Background

See also History of rail transport in Great Britain.

Pre-Beeching closures

Although Dr Beeching is commonly associated with railway closures. A significant number of lines had actually closed before the 1960s.

After growing rapidly in the 19th century, the British railway system reached its height in the years immediately before the First World War. In 1913 there were 23,440 route miles of railway.

After the war, the railways began to face competition from other modes of transport such as buses, cars, road haulage and air travel. Due to this, a modest number of railway lines were closed during the 1920 and 1930s. Most of these early closures were of short suburban lines which had fallen victim to competition to buses and trams which offered a more frequent service. An example of this was the Harborne Line in Birmingham, which closed in 1934.

Also, a number of lines had been built by rival companies between the same places to compete with each other. With the grouping of railway companies in 1923, many of these duplicating lines became redundant and were closed. In total 1,264 miles of railway were closed between 1923 and 1939.

With the onset of World War II, the railways gained a reprieve as they became essential to the war effort and were heavilly used. By the time the railways were nationalised in 1948, they were in a substantailly worn down condition, as little maintenance or investment was carried out during the war.

Railway closures began again in the early 1950s, and steadilly speeded up as the decade went on. Although there was no consistant policy towards railway closures during this time. Many of the most minor and little used lines were closed during this period. Mostly there was little public outcry at this. However some secondary cross country lines were closed as well such as the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway in East Anglia, which was closed in 1959. In total 3,318 miles of railway were closed between 1948 and 1962

The 1950s

By the early 1950s, economic recovery and the end of fuel rationing, meant that the pre-war trends of increasing competition for the railways reasserted themselves as more people could afford cars and road haulage could compete for freight. The railways struggled to adapt to this new reality.

Britain's railways had falled behind those of other countries. In an attempt to catch up, the British Transport Commission (BTC) unveiled the modernisation plan in 1955 which proposed to spend more than £1,240 million on modernising the railways, by replacing steam with diesel and electric locomotives. The plan promised to win back traffic and restore the railways to profitabillity by 1962. Much of the modernisation plan was approved.

Traffic on the railways remained fairly steady during the 1950s, however the economics of the railway network steadily deteriorated. This was largely due to costs (such as labour) rising much faster than income. Railway fares and freight charges were repeatedly frozen by the government in an attempt to control inflation.

The result of this was that by 1955 the railways began operating at a deficit as income no longer covered operating costs, and the situation steadilly worsened. Much of the money spent on the modernisation plan had been borrowed, and much of it was wasted. By the early 1960s the railways were in financial crisis, operating losses had increased with a deficit of £68m in 1960. This increased to £87m in 1961, and still further to £104m in 1962 (over £1 billion in 2005 money). The BTC could no longer pay interest charges on borrowed money which further worsened the financial crisis. The government finally lost patience with continuing to fund the railways and looked for some radical solutions to solve its problems.

Background to the Beeching Axe

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A timetable from 1963 showing the closure of a branch line and the suggested replacement bus service. This was the start of the Axe; the peak year followed in 1964.

In tune with the mood of the early 1960s, the transport minister in Harold Macmillan's Conservative government was Ernest Marples, the director of a major road-construction company (his two-thirds shareholding were divested to his wife whilst he was a minister). Marples believed that the future of transport lay with roads, and that railways were a dead-end relic of the Victorian past.

An advisory group known as the Stedeford Committee (after its chairman, Sir Ivan Stedeford) was set up to report on the state of British transport and provide recommendations. Also on the Committee was Richard Beeching, who at the time was the Technical Director of ICI. He was later, in 1961, appointed Chairman of the newly formed British Railways Board. Both Stedeford and Beeching clashed on a number of issues related to the latter's proposals to drastically prune the rail infrastructure. In spite of questions being asked in Parliament, Sir Ivan's report was never published and the proposals for the future of the railways that came to be known as the "Beeching Plan" were adopted by the Government, resulting in the closure of a third of the rail network and the scrapping of a third of a million freight wagons.

Beeching believed the railway system should be run like a business and not a public service, and that if parts of the railway system did not pay their way—like some rural branch lines—they should be closed. His reasoning was that once these were closed, the remaining core of the system would be restored to profitability.

Beeching I

A copy of The Reshaping of British Railways report, displayed beside the National Union of Railwaymen's response pamphlet.

When Beeching was Chairman of British Railways he initiated a study of traffic flows on all the railway lines in the country.

This study took place during the week ending 23 April 1962 , two weeks after Easter, and concluded that 30% of route miles carried just 1% of passengers and freight of the network, and half of all stations contributed just 2% of income

The "The Reshaping of British Railways" report (or Beeching I report) of 27 March, 1963 proposed that out of Britain's then 18,000 miles (29 000 km) of railway, some 6,000 miles (9 700 km) of mostly rural branch and cross-country lines should be closed. Furthermore, many other rail lines should lose their passenger services and be kept open for freight only, and many of the lesser-used stations should close on lines that were to be kept open. The report was accepted by the Government.

At the time, the highly controversial report was called the "Beeching Bombshell" or the "Beeching Axe" by the press. It sparked an outcry from many communities that would lose their rail services, many of which (especially in the case of rural communities) had no other means of public transport.

The government argued that many rail services could be provided more cheaply by buses, and promised that abandoned rail services would have their places taken by replacement bus services.

A significant part of the report also proposed that British Rail electrify some major main lines and adopt containerized freight traffic instead of outdated and uneconomic wagon-load traffic. In general, politicians jumped at the money-saving parts of the plan but were less enthusiastic about those parts that required expenditures. Some of those plans were eventually adopted, however, such as the creation of the Freightliner concept and further electrification of the West Coast Main Line from Crewe to Glasgow in 1974. Additionally the staff terms and conditions were improved over a period of time.

Rail closures by year

The remains of Rugby Central Station on the former Great Central Railway, one of many stations and lines that were closed under the Beeching Axe

At its peak in 1950, the mileage of the British Railway's system was around 21,000 miles (33 800 km) and 6000 stations. By 1975, the system had shrunk to 12,000 miles (19 300 km) of track and 2000 stations, roughly the same size it was in 2003.

Contrary to popular belief, Beeching did not start the rail closures, as a number of rail closures had occurred during the 1950s and certainly earlier. In reality he was continuing a trend, as the Branchline Committee of BR had already closed a number of unremunerative lines between 1950 and 1963. Indeed, approximately 3000 miles (4800 km) of line had already been closed. After the publication of the first report, the closure process was accelerated.

• Branchline Committee closures
  • 1950....150 miles (240 km) closed
  • 1951....275 miles (440 km) closed
  • 1952....300 miles (480 km) closed
  • 1953....275 miles (440 km) closed
  • 1954 to 1957....500 miles (800 km) closed
  • 1958....150 miles (240 km) closed
  • 1959....350 miles (560 km) closed
  • 1960....175 miles (280 km) closed
  • 1961....150 miles (240 km) closed
  • 1962....780 miles (1 260 km) closed
• Beeching closures
  • 1963....324 miles (521 km) closed
  • 1964....1058 miles (1702 km) closed
  • 1965....600 miles (965 km) closed
  • 1966....750 miles (1 207 km) closed
  • 1967....300 miles (480 km) closed
  • 1968....400 miles (640 km) closed
  • 1969....250 miles (400 km) closed
  • 1970....275 miles (440 km) closed
  • 1971....23 miles (37 km) closed
  • 1972....50 miles (80 km) closed
  • 1973....35 miles (56 km) closed
  • 1974....0 miles (0 km) closed

Recommendations not implemented

Not all of the recommendations for railway line closures were implemented; a number of lines were kept open for a variety of reasons, including political manoeuvring. For example, the railway lines through the Scottish Highlands such as the Far North Line and the West Highland Line, although they were seen as not very cost-efficient by Beeching's definition, were kept open, in part because of pressure from the powerful Highland lobby. It has also been suggested that other lines such as the Central Wales Line may have been kept open because they passed through marginal constituencies. In addition, some lines such as the Tamar Valley Line in Cornwall which were listed for closure were kept open because the local road links were poor.

Others were kept open simply because they provided vital links between towns. The Marshlink line connecting Hastings and Ashford in South-east England escaped closure as it made up the southern half of what was effectively a triangle of railways between Kent and Sussex. Its closure would have meant a hugely increased journey length – all the way up to Tonbridge – for anyone wanting to travel by rail between the towns. It is still open today although the majority of it is not electrified.

On the other hand, some routes that Beeching proposed to keep as major trunk routes, for example the Woodhead route, were eventually closed in favour of keeping alternative politically-sensitive routes open.

Overall, 2128 stations were closed on lines that were kept open.

Myths

There are two mistaken beliefs regarding the Beeching report that persist to this day. First, that the Beeching report was mainly concerned with (and proposed the closure of) little-used rural branch-lines. This is not correct. As the maps and text show, as well as a some minor railway lines, many of Beeching's closures were to be of lines in populated industrial areas (including the electric commuter lines from Liverpool to Southport and Bury to Manchester – which in the end were both reprieved, though others were not), cross country routes linking large towns and cities, and included some major inter-city railway lines, where it was deemed that these lines were duplicates of other main-lines. The most notable of these was the former Great Central Railway, which linked London to the Midlands and north of England. The often overlooked truth of the Beeching report that its main effect was to deprive substantial towns such as Mansfield (since reopened), Corby - currently the largest town in Europe without a rail link (to be reopened), and Leigh (Lancashire) (these three towns alone in 2007 having a total population of around a quarter of a million) of their railways rather than solely concentrating on little used rural routes. A further example is the service from Bury to Bacup in Lancashire which at closure (in 1966) had a service of at least every thirty minutes (and was a well used service) – this was not a line running empty trains, but a busy commuter line. Careful inspection of the passenger usage map in Beeching's report (http://www.joyce.whitchurch.btinternet.co.uk/maps/density.jpg ) shows that a number of high usage lines were proposed for closure and were in fact closed. Beeching's published report itself gives few details of the lines to be closed (rather it gives a few "examples," mainly of lines which indeed were carrying very few passengers); it certainly does not give any details for those well-used lines which he proposed for closure. One example which was not a "no-hoper" line did "slip through" Beeching's public relations exercise: the direct line from Hull to York. The line's trains carried an average of 43 passengers each, hardly an insignificant loading (compared with just eight for another example: the line from Thetford to Swaffham).

The second mistaken belief is that increased car ownership leads not only to less use of rail but to 'terminal decline'; in 2007 car ownership in the UK is at its highest, yet passenger rail usage is also at a fifty year high. (see: http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.1528 )

Since 1974, there have been few passenger railway closures in the UK (examples include March to Spalding in 1982, and some branch lines including Maiden Newton to Bridport in 1974, Alston to Haltwhistle in 1976 and Tunbridge Wells to Eridge in 1985). Indeed there have been some re-openings, usually on lines that had lost their passenger service due to Beeching, but had been left open for freight services, therefore reinstatement of passenger services came at a relatively low cost. However, in the 1970s and 1980s there was a large scale closure of such latterly freight-only lines, the demolition of structures and disposal of permanent way, which has made many such re-openings less likely in future, thus effectively making the Beeching legacy permanent.

This is what the BR network would have looked like if Beeching's (II) plans had been implemented (all lines except those bolded would have been closed

Beeching II

In 1964, Dr. Beeching issued a second, less well-known, report "The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes", widely known as "Beeching II", which went even further than the first report. The report singled out lines that were believed to be worthy of continued large-scale investment.

Essentially, it proposed that all railway lines other than major inter-city routes and important commuter lines around big cities had little future and should eventually close. If the report had been implemented, the railway system would have been cut to just 7,000 miles (11,260 km), leaving Britain with little more than a skeletal railway system, with large parts of the country entirely devoid of railways.

The report was rejected by the then Labour government and Dr. Beeching resigned in 1965. Although politicians were ultimately responsible for the rail closures, Dr. Beeching's name has become synonymous with them ever since.

Changing attitudes and policies

It was in 1964, that a Labour government was elected under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. During the election campaign, Labour promised to halt the rail closures if elected. Once elected, however, they quickly backtracked on this promise, and the closures continued, at a faster rate than under the previous administration and until the end of the decade.

In 1965, Barbara Castle was appointed transport minister and she decided that at least 11,000 route miles (17,700 km) would be needed for the foreseeable future and that the railway system should be stabilised at around this size.

Towards the end of the 1960s it became increasingly clear that rail closures were not producing the promised savings or bringing the rail system out of deficit, and were unlikely ever to do so. Mrs. Castle also stipulated that some rail services that could not pay their way but had a valuable social role should be subsidised. However, by the time the legislation allowing this was introduced into the 1968 Transport Act, Section 39 of this Act made provision for a subsidy to be paid by the Treasury for a three year period. There were a number of services and railway lines that would have qualified and benefited from these subsidies, but a number had already been closed or removed, thus lessening the impact of the legislation. Nevertheless, a number of branch lines were saved by this legislation.

Overview

The closures failed in their main purpose of trying to restore the railways to profitability, with the promised savings failing to materialise. By closing almost a third of the rail network, Beeching managed to achieve a saving of just £7 million, whilst overall losses were running in excess of £100 million. These losses were mainly because the branch lines acted as feeders to the main lines and this feeder traffic was lost when the branches closed. This in turn meant less traffic and less income for the increasingly vulnerable main lines. The assumption at the time was that car owners would drive to the nearest railhead (which was usually the junction where the closed branch line would otherwise have taken them) and continue their journey onwards by train, but in practice, having once left home in their cars, they used them for the whole journey. Another reason for Beeching plan's not achieving any great savings is that (perhaps ironically) the busiest commuter routes have always lost the greatest amount of money. Some of the worst performing rural lines in 1962 (for example Thetford to Swaffham) had costs so low that axing their services saved just a few hundred pounds, whilst millions were being lost on busy London commuter lines, which even Beeching realised would be a political and practical "disaster" to close.

The use of light railway concepts, already in use on some branch lines at the time of the report, was ignored by Beeching. Such concepts have since been successfully utilised by British Rail and its successors on lesser-used lines that survived the axe (such as the line from Ipswich to Lowestoft which survives as a "basic railway").

The "bustitution" policy which replaced rail services with buses also failed. In many cases the replacement bus services were far slower and less convenient than the train services they were meant to replace, resulting in them being extremely unpopular with the public. As a consequence of this, most of the replacement bus services only lasted a few years before they were removed due to a lack of patronage, thus effectively leaving large parts of the country without any means of public transport. In practice, this policy proved unsuccessful, as the travelling public never saw a bus service as a suitable replacement for a rail service.

The closures were brought to a halt in the early 1970s when it became apparent that they were not useful, that the benefit of the small amount of money saved by closing railways was outweighed by the congestion and pollution caused by increasing reliance on cars which followed, and also by the general public's hatred of the cuts. The 1973 oil crisis proved to be the final end of large scale railway closures, as it highlighted the problems of relying entirely upon oil dependent road transport.

One of the last major railway closures (and possibly one of the most controversial) resulting from the Beeching Axe was of the 98-mile-long (158 km) Waverley Route main line between Carlisle, Hawick, and Edinburgh, in 1969; plans have since been made in 2006 with the approval of the Scottish Parliament to re-open a significant section of this line. With a few exceptions, after the early 1970s proposals to close other lines were met with vociferous public opposition and were quietly shelved; this opposition stemmed from the public's experience of the many line closures during the main years of the cuts in the mid and late 1960s. Today, Britain's railways, like nearly every other railway system in the world, still run at a deficit and require subsidies.

One of the major criticisms made of the Beeching report was that it failed to take into account future trends such as population growth and the greater demand for travel. The population of many of the towns which had their railways closed in the 1960s has now grown significantly since, leaving these towns more in need of rail transport. Unfortunately much of the land of railways closed during the Axe has since been sold off and built over, making the railways prohibitively expensive to re-open. This is as much a criticism of the policy since the Beeching closures of the wholesale disposal of former railway land rather than the protection of trackbeds using a system similar to the US Rail Bank scheme for possible future use.

Serpell Report

In the early 1980s, under the government of Margaret Thatcher, the possibility of more Beeching-style cuts was raised again, briefly. In 1983 Sir David Serpell, a civil servant who had worked with Dr Beeching, compiled what became known as the Serpell Report which called for more rail closures. The report was shown to have some serious weaknesses, such as the closure of the Midland Main Line (a busy route for coal transport to power stations) and the conversion of the Great Central Line to a bus route (politically unacceptable due to the area it served). The report met with fierce resistance from many quarters and, having lost credibility, it was quickly abandoned.

Reopenings

Since the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, traffic levels have grown significantly and in some areas this has become close to gridlock. In recent years there have been record levels of passengers on the railways. A modest number of the railway closures have therefore been reversed.

London

After studies instigated by the now-defunct Greater London Council, the Snow Hill tunnel, south of Farringdon station, was reopened for passenger use in 1989, providing a link between the Midland Main Line, from St Pancras station, and the Southern Railway, via London Bridge station. This now provides the only north-south cross London rail link and it has been highly successful, providing a spine of service from Bedford to Brighton. Although its closure was not a Beeching cut, its success demonstrates the possibilities for rail expansion, in contradiction of Beeching's approach.

East Midlands

A notable reopening is the Robin Hood Line in Nottinghamshire, between Nottingham and Worksop via Mansfield, which reopened in the early 1990s. Previously Mansfield had been the largest town in Britain without a rail link.

West Midlands

In the West Midlands a new Birmingham Snow Hill station was opened in 1987 to replace the earlier Snow Hill station. The tunnel underneath Birmingham city centre that served the station was also reopened, along with the line towards Kidderminster and Worcester. This introduced a new service between Birmingham and London, terminating at Marylebone. The former line from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton has been reopened as the Midland Metro tram system. The line from Coventry to Nuneaton was reopened to passengers in 1988. Despite the successful and potential re-opening of many rail routes as light-rail and metro lines, the concept is still under-threat due to the varying popularity of these schemes with successive governments (see Darling Axe).

South Wales

Beeching saw South Wales as a declining industrial region. As a result, it lost the majority of its network. Since 1983 it has experienced a major rail revival, with 32 new stations, and three lines reopened within 20 miles (32 km) of each other: Abercynon–Aberdare, Barry–Bridgend, and Bridgend–Maesteg. The Ebbw Valley Line is also scheduled to be re-opened.

Scotland

In Scotland, a 35-mile (56 km) stretch of the former Waverley Route between Edinburgh and Galashiels is expected to be reopened in 2011 now that funding has been approved. The closure of the line in 1969 left the Scottish Borders area without any rail links. The Edinburgh-Bathgate line, reopening in 1985, was the first success of a new policy introduced by the Thatcher government of experimental reopenings that would become permanent only if well-used. It was and did. Plans are now in hand to reopen the section between Bathgate and Drumgelloch. More recently, a four-mile (6.4 km) section of the Argyle Line was reopened in December 2005, serving Chatelherault, Merryton and Larkhall for the first time since 1968. Also, after several years of 'false' promises dating to the 1980s, the railway from Stirling to Alloa and Kincardine is currently being rejuvenated, and will open in 2007, providing a passenger (and freight) route once again.

Heritage railways

Part of the Midland line from Mangotsfield to Green Park has been re-opened as the Avon Valley Railway

In addition a small but significant number of closed stations have reopened, and passenger services been restored on lines where they had been removed. Many of these were in the urban metropolitan counties where Passenger Transport Executives have a role in promoting local passenger rail use. Several lines have also reopened as heritage railways.

Track improvements

One effect of the Beeching closures which was not always immediately obvious was the single tracking of some formerly double track sections of line. In some cases - e.g. Princes Risborough (at one time the junction of four separate lines and an important railway town, after the closure of the GCR it was reduced to a single platform station) to Bicester singling was done but the line was re-doubled by Chiltern Railways in the early part of the 21st century. Another line which was singled was the line from Inverness to Dingwall which is now the major barrier to increasing the number of trains on the Far North Line from Inverness to Thurso and Wick. The West of England Main Line formerly an express route from London to the South-West, was singled and effectively reduced to a cross-country line, since at national level it was viewed as duplicating the Great Western Main Line. Traffic on the single-tracked Golden Valley Line between Cheltenham and Swindon has also increased to a point where redoubling is being considered.

Disposals of land and structures

Notwithstanding the positive environmental implications of a reopening, many of the areas along these routes have expanded and grown over the last 40 years. Where some lines were not profitable in 1963 (on a backdrop of falling passenger numbers and a rise in car use on uncongested roads) they could well be profitable now, or at least could have a desirable and impact on reducing road congestion, pollution and congestion on the railway lines that have remained open, and thus be worth operating with a government subsidy. However, in many instances it would be prohibitively expensive for lines closed by the Beeching Axe to be reopened; although it was not stipulated in the report, since Beeching there has been a policy of disposing of surplus-to-requirements railway land. Therefore many bridges, cuttings and embankments have been removed and the land sold off for development; closed station buildings on remaining lines have often been either demolished or sold.

See also

• List of closed railway stations in Britain
• List of British towns with no railway station

Further reading

• Forgotten Railways: by H.P. White (1986) ISBN 0-946537-13-5.
• The Great Railway Conspiracy: by David Henshaw (1994) ISBN 0-948135-48-4.
• British Railways after Beeching: by G. Freeman Allen, Ian Allan.(1966) (No ISBN)
• BR 1948 - 1973: by T.R.Gourvish Cambridge.(1974)

External links

• Petition calling for line re-openings
• Website about Beeching cuts in more detail
• Railway maps before and after cuts
• Extensive before and after photo collection of closed stations, with commentaries
• History of the closed Guildford to Horsham branch line
• download the Beeching Report Part 1
• download the Beeching Report Part 2 (maps)