50th Anniversary of Beeching.

[Burnside]

50 years ago, Dr Richard Beeching published his report "The Reshaping Of British Railways" aimed at pulling the rail industry back into profit.

His way of doing this was to axe stations, lines and staff.

In Airedale, Beeching's cuts came mainly in the form of station closures with every station between Leeds and Skipton closed with the exceptions of Shipley, Bingley and Keighley and further afield the closure of the line between Wennington and Morecambe via Lancaster Green Ayre, forcing trains to be diverted via Carnforth.

Wharfedale saw cuts with the line from Burley/Menston to Arthington via Otley closed. The line carried passenger services from Ilkley to Leeds via Otley and Bradford to Harrogate.

Also closed was the line from Ilkley to Skipton. This crossed Brook Street on a bridge before heading via Addingham, Bolton Abbey and Embsay into Skipton. Thankfully, the section between Bolton Abbey and Embsay survived as a preserved line.

This pattern was repeated across Yorkshire and indeed the whole country with stations closed and lines shut down and ripped up.

But was Beeching the villain he became? After all, he only made recommendations, it was the government who carried out the closures, some of which were correct as some lines had never made money, others, in hindsight, appear short sighted. An example being The Waverley Route between Carlisle and Edinburgh. It was closed despite local feeling and to reinstate the few miles from the outskirts of Edinburgh to Tweedbank is costing an eyewatering £300 million.

And let us not forget that the Minister Of Transport at the time of Beeching's report was Ernest Marples, who just so happened to have links to a company involved in building motorways.

Regardless of who is the biggest villain of the piece, there is the argument that without Beeching's cuts, the rail network would have floundered under the weight of lines that were built and had always run at a loss. Pruning was necessary, but to the extent Beeching suggested?

Britain's railways are carrying more and more passengers every year and some closed lines have already reopened, some will in the future and others will never see a train again.

Lines are being electrified, new trains being built and a High Speed route from London to Birmingham and The North is planned. Despite Beeching, Britain's railways are seeing major investment and one could say a bright future lies ahead.

[Kenton Schweppes]

Its easy in hindsight to lay the blame at his door, no one knew that railway would enjoy such a renaissance, he was only doing a job he was set out by the government. Suppose they used him as the fall guy, for want of a better phrase, everyone blames him. Its probably Ernest Marples who is the biggest villan of the piece. Railway was old hat and the car and motorways were seen as modern clean and forward thinking, moving Britain into a new age, shaking off its grimy pre war image.

The thing is there were some lines that closed, which in hindsight, shouldn't have closed. The old Carlisle to Waverley route which is re-opening, although not all the way to Carlisle as yet. Ripon in Yorkshire lost its line and is still marooned well away from the rail network to this day. East Lancs was cut of from Yorkshire when its 11 mile chord into Yorkshire was severed. Again the line from York to Hull was cut and its no surprise that all these lines are being campaigned to be reopened as have some of the other lines elsewhere in the country have reopened. Its a shame that the man isn't still with us to defend his policy and see whether he himself thought what he was doing was correct or whether he was just following Whitehall orders.

[sconehead85]

Reshaping as a euphemism for cuts, closures and redundancies. And there was a Tory government in 1963. Does anything ever change? No, because the Labour government which took over late in 1964 CARRIED OUT railway closures proposed by Dr Richard Beeching.

Many closed railways were replaced by bus routes which themselves vanished. Dont think that Beeching belongs to the past either- although its now the buses which are being axed due to cuts.

As a matter of interest had Dr Beechings destruction never happened , and STEAM locos had declined at their pre-Beeching rate, steam would have survived on British Railways until 1980 instead of August 1968 ! Sadly my memories are not detailed but I grew up not far from Stephensons Liverpool-Manchester railway line and recall steam locos in my childhood. Bear this in mind- I am among the YOUNGEST people in Britain to remember BR steam, being 10 y.o when the last steam trains ran.

sconehead85

[dwarfer1979]

Beeching is much maligned, he didn't start the closures (they had been going on for years before he joined just in a un-planned manner by local management) and he didn't decide on any closure (he merely made recommendations based on purely financial considerations as he was employed to do - it was politicians who decided which lines to close and which to save and some of the later closures, after Beeching had returned to ICI, included lines which he hadn't listed for closure in his report). Something had to be done as BR was losing money hand-over-fist and if major surgery had not occurred the sort of subsidy we see today (and which many decry as being too high) would seem chicken feed and we probably would have seen politicians loping off huge strategic pieces of the network to try and save things. It is unlikely Steam would have survived much longer if Beeching hadn't been there, the cost of operation alone was killing off the steam trains and it is unlikely BR would have kept Steam going into the late 70's on that alone, just like it is unlikely many of the lines that were closed as part of the Beeching Report would have survived much longer anyway.

Beeching drove the commercialisation of the railways, introducing Freightliners & Merry-Go-Round Coal trains (both major successes of subsequent years), and whilst he cut a lot he still left us with a much more extensive & intensive rail network that most of our European neighbours. We can all, with the benefit of hindsight, point to things that shouldn't have been closed (though I personally am less convinced by the Waverley as there isn't a great deal of people in the border area it runs through - how much subsidy the re-opened line is actually going to require will be interesting to see) but al lot of that requires 20 or 30 years of hindsight to become apparent and Beechings report stated it was about reshaping the railways for the next 20 years so the growth and development since the 80's would have been beyond the point he said it was reasonable to plan for as planning over periods that long would never be accurate.

Beeching was hired to turn round the railways, and whilst he never managed to get them back into profit he did stabilise them and modernise them and get them to a point where it could compete with road for those markets it did best. He shouldn't be judged on what we wished he had done but on what he was hired to do by our elected politicians, and in that he was largely a success (qualified as some of his assumptions were proven incorrect but many of the more controversial closures weren't actually his recommendation). To paraphrase what Beeching himself said it is a question of how much we the owners were willing to pay to keep the railways running, it would have cost a lot of taxpayers money to keep a lot of these lines open (since many of them couldn't even support the cost of a bus replacement how they were expected to pay for the more expensive provision of a railway is beyond me) and the British people just aren't willing to pay that sort of money.

[Kenton Schweppes]

I suppose the biggest and most strangest casualty in the West Yorkshire area, although it wasn't closed under any recommendation by Beeching, is the Leeds New Line. The closure of the line saw a huge swathe of the Spen Valley chopped clean straight off the railway network, it is indeed to this day the largest area, population wise, without access to the rail network. Unfortunately, there is no chance of it ever re-opening as a lot of the line has been built over. A line that could be reopened is the Spen Valley Line which was separate to the Leeds New Line although they ran close together through the Spen Valley. If the Spen Line was reopened Cleckheaton,Liversedge and Heckmondwike could be put back on the railway map, the track bed is intact, aside from a small section in Cleckheaton and would be a good candidate for reopening campaign.

[sconehead85]

The theory that "railways must run at a profit" when this is clearly chasing the dragon's tail. DWARFER says how much taxpayers are prepared to pay, as if the fare-payer is not being screwed till the pips squeak by the privatised railway companies. Sometimes there is a greater good than financial profit.

I must point out that Britain was among the FIRST countries to eliminate steam, Ireland was an early conversion in 1964, but France abandoned steam in 1975,and West Germany (1977), so at the 1950s rate of decline (steam was first sentenced to death in 1955) BR steam could have lasted until the 150th anniversary of the Rainhill trials, and it was Dr Beeching's axe which sped up the process. BRs later steam locos, numbered in the 70000-99000 range would have had a reasonable life span. Although not used in West Yorkshire, Evening Star 92220 could have had 18-19 years of use. But it werent to be.

sconehead85

[SF07]

Couple of news stories about the Beeching Axe in Yorkshire. One from the BBC comparing two towns in Yorkshire, Ripon and Ilkley (Ripon closed, Ilkley stayed open). The other one is from the Huddersfield Examiner on Slaithwaite and how the station closed and re-opened.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21829838
www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-west-yorkshire-news/2013/03/28/slaithwaite-station-bounced-back-after-beeching-axe-86081-33073334/

[Kenton Schweppes]

These lines cost millions to reopen as well, so it may have been a good idea at the time to close but in reality instead of total closure mothballing would have been a good idea and save for use later. There is a campaign to reopen the Ripon line, which for tourism it could be a boon but the cost's are so prohibitive its eyewatering.

[Jack]

The problem with the Ripon line is that does Ripon have a large enough population to sustain a modestly frequent service? Probably not. There isn't much in between in terms of population and the station would have to be well outside of the town because the by-pass sits on the old track bed.

[Kenton Schweppes]

Mar 29, 2013 14:11:58 GMT 1 Jack said:

The problem with the Ripon line is that does Ripon have a large enough population to sustain a modestly frequent service? Probably not. There isn't much in between in terms of population and the station would have to be well outside of the town because the by-pass sits on the old track bed.

No one said it would be easy. As for having a modest population, it does granted but, it could help develop the town and area. Besides if it was operated as a through line and rejoined up with the line to the North East it could come under the TransPennine Express operations with trains starting in Liverpool/Manchester and terminating in Newcastle/Sunderland/Middlesbrough that would be a more than sensible approach. It could also be used as good diversionary route too. Ripon is no different to Thirsk, Northallerton or Malton in respect of population, in fact it has a larger population than all 3 and both Thirsk and Northallerton/Malton put together and all 3 see regular hourly services served by TransPennine. As I said the cost's are eyewatering at the minute and it's unlikely to get off the ground anytime in the future.

[resolution]

Four points:
1) Ripon: Liverpool - Newcastle trains always used to go this way prior to dieselisation in 1961 and it would be a sensible route for them today if it existed. There would still be more than enough trains north of York on the ECML and it would have offered an alternative route over that section; there is none between Colton Jnct and Northallerton at present.
2) Spen Valley: The Leeds New Line lost its passenger service in 1953 and was effectively shut long before Beeching. The Heavy Woollen towns were cut off the network by the closure of the Mirfield - Low Moor section (used by Huddersfield - Bradford trains) in 1965.
3) The real mistake of Beeching was not closing lines and stations but creating a situation which made it so difficult to re-open them.
4) Without Beeching British steam would probably have lasted until about 1975.

[Kenton Schweppes]

Apr 1, 2013 11:36:40 GMT 1 resolution said:

Four points:
1) Ripon: Liverpool - Newcastle trains always used to go this way prior to dieselisation in 1961 and it would be a sensible route for them today if it existed. There would still be more than enough trains north of York on the ECML and it would have offered an alternative route over that section; there is none between Colton Jnct and Northallerton at present.
2) Spen Valley: The Leeds New Line lost its passenger service in 1953 and was effectively shut long before Beeching. The Heavy Woollen towns were cut off the network by the closure of the Mirfield - Low Moor section (used by Huddersfield - Bradford trains) in 1965.
3) The real mistake of Beeching was not closing lines and stations but creating a situation which made it so difficult to re-open them.
4) Without Beeching British steam would probably have lasted until about 1975.

Personally, I think the Spen Valley line is a good candidate for reopening, the route is wholly intact aside from a small section at Cleckheaton which shouldn't pose a insurmountable problem for reopening, its used as a cycle track at the minute. The line could be fed into the Wakefield line in the Huddersfield direction with a new curve. Stations could be opened at Liversedge, Heckmondwike and Cleckheaton and the service could go onto Leeds with a call at Bradford Interchange and New Pudsey before terminating at Leeds. This would give 2 benefits, another service to Bradford from Huddersfield (which Metro have expressed a desire for) and the Spen Valley a connection to Bradford and Leeds.

If the line were to reopen Ravensthorpe station could be redeveloped into a parkway station,renamed Ravensthorpe & Thornhill Parkway, with a big car park and bus services, there is plenty of land for a car park. Platforms built in the Wakefield direction giving it 4 platforms,a small manned part time ticket office. Get Grand Central to call there with its London trains. It would also serve Dewsbury for good connections to London from Wakefield on the East Coast mainline. This could also tie in with improvement in Wakefield services, when the Kirkgate refurb has been completed, a new service from Wakefield Kirkgate to Manchester Victoria via the Calder Valley, with a new station at Elland, could be introduced along with another new station at either Horbury or Ossett again another parkway type station could be built,as after Mirfield there are no more stops on the Wakefield service leaving a big chunk of population with a train that passes through where they live but doesn't stop. The Manchester to Huddersfield stopper could be sent through to Kirkgate instead of the proposed extension to Leeds outlined in the Northern Hub programme improving services to the whole area. The current Ravensthorpe station suffers from its remote position, I'll be honest, I wouldn't use it after nightfall, it could do with some kind of radical solution. I understand this could conflict with the increased service pattern on the Trans Pennine route when its increased to 5 tph instead of the current 4 tph. But I do think something radical could make the station a major junction for West Yorkshire travel without people having to travel to Leeds to get to where they want to be.

[dwarfer1979]

I would agree that the biggest failing under the Beeching era (whoever was responsible for it) was not the closing of lines but the immediate destruction of the permanent way making it all but impossible to restore if desired (even where people were trying to arrange funding to buy the line in question). If BR had done what the French did when closing lines in preserving the route & major infrastructure (even if they removed the track itself) then restoration if required would be easier.

You have to remember that at the time Beeching was working there was no facility for government funding of individual lines so the network could only be looked at as a whole and the worst bits cut out. It was the 1968 Transport Act (which also created the PTEs) which made an allowance for local authorities to fund individual services run by BR which if available earlier could have enabled some lines to be saved at the margins (it is generally considered by those in the know when looking at Beeching that about a third of the lines closed were utter dross and shouldn't have even had a line in the first place, a third were too weak to survive in the market as it was at the time and about a third could have been saved - and probably should have been saved). The amount the taxpayer was paying to keep BR going at the time of Beeching was horrendous and getting worse by the year so something had to be done otherwise what we pay now would have seemed like loose change. Could more have been saved in Beeching had been given a set level of subsidy that the British People would have been happy to pay (and later experience shows they do appear to be happy to pay a certain amount in subsidy for their railways), yes but that wasn't in Beeching's remit and so he was not given the option of including it in his calculations. Any issues over the broad policy should be aimed at his political masters rather than a man who actually believed the railways had a future in a more focused core railway and actually believed that some work carried by the roads should be moved back on to the railways (one of the reasons it is rumoured he left his job early was that he fell out with the government over this very fact because the road unions were too powerful accept any proposal along those lines).

I'm not a huge fan of the current system (as a busman the amount of subsidy the rail industry gets away with seems a little unfair) but is a result of the stupid system we have ended up with. The franchising system appears to have managed to end up with the worst of the two possible systems - the inefficient dead hand of government control over the commercial elements with all the risk having to be taken by the private businesses out of their profit, private operators need to make a profit but with government control of commercial elements they can only do that through greater subsidy and higher fares and when real life doesn't conform with predictions due to changes in the economic climate the operators have no way of adjusting their operations to suit the new environment. Either the government retains close control (something it never had under BR as the British Rail Board would have told them to go away) and awards management contracts to private businesses to run the services as specified for a set fee and the government takes the revenue risk and keeps the money or they specify minimum service levels and then let the private operators get on with running the railways and taking the risk and reaping the rewards and adjusting what they deliver accordingly. Either/Or is fine, a bit of both is a recipe for the rubbish we have now.

[angrycommuter]

Apr 1, 2013 12:45:37 GMT 1 Kenton Schweppes said:

Apr 1, 2013 11:36:40 GMT 1 resolution said:

Four points:
1) Ripon: Liverpool - Newcastle trains always used to go this way prior to dieselisation in 1961 and it would be a sensible route for them today if it existed. There would still be more than enough trains north of York on the ECML and it would have offered an alternative route over that section; there is none between Colton Jnct and Northallerton at present.
2) Spen Valley: The Leeds New Line lost its passenger service in 1953 and was effectively shut long before Beeching. The Heavy Woollen towns were cut off the network by the closure of the Mirfield - Low Moor section (used by Huddersfield - Bradford trains) in 1965.
3) The real mistake of Beeching was not closing lines and stations but creating a situation which made it so difficult to re-open them.
4) Without Beeching British steam would probably have lasted until about 1975.

Personally, I think the Spen Valley line is a good candidate for reopening, the route is wholly intact aside from a small section at Cleckheaton which shouldn't pose a insurmountable problem for reopening, its used as a cycle track at the minute. The line could be fed into the Wakefield line in the Huddersfield direction with a new curve. Stations could be opened at Liversedge, Heckmondwike and Cleckheaton and the service could go onto Leeds with a call at Bradford Interchange and New Pudsey before terminating at Leeds. This would give 2 benefits, another service to Bradford from Huddersfield (which Metro have expressed a desire for) and the Spen Valley a connection to Bradford and Leeds.

If the line were to reopen Ravensthorpe station could be redeveloped into a parkway station,renamed Ravensthorpe & Thornhill Parkway, with a big car park and bus services, there is plenty of land for a car park. Platforms built in the Wakefield direction giving it 4 platforms,a small manned part time ticket office. Get Grand Central to call there with its London trains. It would also serve Dewsbury for good connections to London from Wakefield on the East Coast mainline. This could also tie in with improvement in Wakefield services, when the Kirkgate refurb has been completed, a new service from Wakefield Kirkgate to Manchester Victoria via the Calder Valley, with a new station at Elland, could be introduced along with another new station at either Horbury or Ossett again another parkway type station could be built,as after Mirfield there are no more stops on the Wakefield service leaving a big chunk of population with a train that passes through where they live but doesn't stop. The Manchester to Huddersfield stopper could be sent through to Kirkgate instead of the proposed extension to Leeds outlined in the Northern Hub programme improving services to the whole area. The current Ravensthorpe station suffers from its remote position, I'll be honest, I wouldn't use it after nightfall, it could do with some kind of radical solution. I understand this could conflict with the increased service pattern on the Trans Pennine route when its increased to 5 tph instead of the current 4 tph. But I do think something radical could make the station a major junction for West Yorkshire travel without people having to travel to Leeds to get to where they want to be.

I think Ravensthorpe is too far away from anything to warrant being extended. I would open a new station in Thornhill/Saville Town on the Wakefield line near the B6117 road bridge. There is plenty of land and the road bridge could be used instead of a footbridge to cut down on costs.

Horbury could have a station built at the A642 road bridge. Again, plenty of room and the bridge would negate the costs of installing a new footbridge. Just after the station, the curve to Barnsley and Sheffield should be re-instated to provide a new link from Huddersfield/Bradford to Sheffield that would be much faster than the Penistone line.

[Kenton Schweppes]

Apr 3, 2013 16:30:31 GMT 1 angrycommuter said:

Apr 1, 2013 12:45:37 GMT 1 Kenton Schweppes said:

Personally, I think the Spen Valley line is a good candidate for reopening, the route is wholly intact aside from a small section at Cleckheaton which shouldn't pose a insurmountable problem for reopening, its used as a cycle track at the minute. The line could be fed into the Wakefield line in the Huddersfield direction with a new curve. Stations could be opened at Liversedge, Heckmondwike and Cleckheaton and the service could go onto Leeds with a call at Bradford Interchange and New Pudsey before terminating at Leeds. This would give 2 benefits, another service to Bradford from Huddersfield (which Metro have expressed a desire for) and the Spen Valley a connection to Bradford and Leeds.

If the line were to reopen Ravensthorpe station could be redeveloped into a parkway station,renamed Ravensthorpe & Thornhill Parkway, with a big car park and bus services, there is plenty of land for a car park. Platforms built in the Wakefield direction giving it 4 platforms,a small manned part time ticket office. Get Grand Central to call there with its London trains. It would also serve Dewsbury for good connections to London from Wakefield on the East Coast mainline. This could also tie in with improvement in Wakefield services, when the Kirkgate refurb has been completed, a new service from Wakefield Kirkgate to Manchester Victoria via the Calder Valley, with a new station at Elland, could be introduced along with another new station at either Horbury or Ossett again another parkway type station could be built,as after Mirfield there are no more stops on the Wakefield service leaving a big chunk of population with a train that passes through where they live but doesn't stop. The Manchester to Huddersfield stopper could be sent through to Kirkgate instead of the proposed extension to Leeds outlined in the Northern Hub programme improving services to the whole area. The current Ravensthorpe station suffers from its remote position, I'll be honest, I wouldn't use it after nightfall, it could do with some kind of radical solution. I understand this could conflict with the increased service pattern on the Trans Pennine route when its increased to 5 tph instead of the current 4 tph. But I do think something radical could make the station a major junction for West Yorkshire travel without people having to travel to Leeds to get to where they want to be.

I think Ravensthorpe is too far away from anything to warrant being extended. I would open a new station in Thornhill/Saville Town on the Wakefield line near the B6117 road bridge. There is plenty of land and the road bridge could be used instead of a footbridge to cut down on costs.

Horbury could have a station built at the A642 road bridge. Again, plenty of room and the bridge would negate the costs of installing a new footbridge. Just after the station, the curve to Barnsley and Sheffield should be re-instated to provide a new link from Huddersfield/Bradford to Sheffield that would be much faster than the Penistone line.

I would agree with the reinstatement of the Horbury curve too.

As for Ravensthorpe, its the remoteness that's what keeps passengers numbers low. It either closes or gets redeveloped. There is plenty of land around the station for a car park and some kind of turning circle for buses. Just think if the station was redeveloped,new services introduced then just maybe,it could be a success but a massive costly error if it didn't.

[ratty]

Would beg to differ that the track bed is intact on the Spen Valley line, especially at the Low Moor end, as what was Transperience (one of my former employers), is now an industrial estate. Obviously, it is not insurmountable an obstruction, but it does mean that the track bed is not complete at the moment. Also , is it not the case that Tescos at Cleckheaton encroaches on the trackbed there?

[Kenton Schweppes]

Apr 4, 2013 10:07:12 GMT 1 ratty said:

Would beg to differ that the track bed is intact on the Spen Valley line, especially at the Low Moor end, as what was Transperience (one of my former employers), is now an industrial estate. Obviously, it is not insurmountable an obstruction, but it does mean that the track bed is not complete at the moment. Also , is it not the case that Tescos at Cleckheaton encroaches on the trackbed there?

I was aware of the encroachment at Cleckheaton but not at Low Moor. It still could be reopened by it is not even mentioned in Metro's Rail Plan, nor are no new stations or any re-openings of disused or new routes for that matter.