Beeching's plan, duly executed, was to close down a huge portion of the network, to immediate detrimental effect on people all over the UK. Two small, entirely typical examples from one place: in the rural market town of Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, where we used to live, it had been possible, pre-Beeching, for anyone with an allotment, market garden or plant nursery, to put a crate of tomatoes onto an evening train and have them sold in Central London's Covent Garden market next morning. It had been possible, too, for a young woman to catch the train to the city for a Saturday night dance, and come back by train at the end of it. After Beeching, no such ready country-wide distribution except for those who happened to live on main lines, and a far greater social isolation. And, naturally, Beeching failed to make the railways pay. A barmy idea that was massively destructive.
In the US, the picture was different, but the same half century has seen a parallel reduction in services. Here's the map:
hi Michael
ReplyDeleteLots of nostalgia but also good sense.
To bring you up to speed on the HS2 "anti Beeching at an astronomical cost" project . They have just anounced that the high speed line will be "tunnelled" for 2 miles under the housing estate where I live . This is the preferred option, the other being to divert the river Tame and run HS2 on existing lines
This may annoy any of the Chiltern "green welly" brigade amongst your readers who won't be so protected from HS2, but caused some mirth in the Butler household plagued as it is with the M6 motorway and the airport flight path. The cost of HS2 is estimted at 30 billion. and its major selling point is that those wealthy enough to travel on it will have their journey timefrom Birmingham to London cut by 20 , yes 20 minutes. HS2 also argue it will provide more capacity.
So a few million saved in the 60's is proving expensive to turn round, but Beeching may yet turn in his grave. Personally I'm with the incomparable Henri David Thoreau who argues against train journeys, preferring to walk
ps I see Bob is on the road again with a new guitarist
ragards
Joe