Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Richard Beeching
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
=== First Beeching Report === {{main|Beeching cuts}} On 27 March 1963, under orders from Marples, Beeching published [[Beeching cuts#The Reshaping of British Railways (Beeching I)|his report on the future of the railways]], entitled ''The Reshaping of British Railways''. He called for the closure of one-third of the country's 7,000 railway stations. Passenger services would be withdrawn from around 5,000 route miles accounting for an annual train mileage of 68 million and yielding, according to Beeching, a net saving of Β£18m per year. There were no proposals to improve or repurpose the usage and efficiency of the existing network or how to maintain or dispose of redundant infrastructure. The reshaping would also involve the shedding of around 70,000 British Railways jobs over three years. Beeching forecast that his changes would result in an improvement in British Railways' accounts of between Β£115M and Β£147M.<ref>The Times, "Beeching Report Proposes Closing Nearly a Third of Britain's 7,000 Railway Stations", 28 March 1963, p. 8.</ref> The cut-backs would include the scrapping of a third of a million goods wagons, much as Stedeford had foreseen and fought against.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gourvish |first1=T. R. |title=British Railways 1948β73: A Business History |date=1986 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=9780521188838}}</ref> Unsurprisingly, Beeching's plans were hugely controversial not only with trade unions, but with the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] opposition and railway-using public. Beeching was undeterred and argued that too many lines were running at a loss, and that his charge to shape a profitable railway made cuts a logical starting point.<ref name="obit"/> As one author puts it, Beeching "was expected to produce quick solutions to problems that were deep-seated and not susceptible to purely intellectual analysis."<ref>{{cite book | last = Simmons | first = Jack |author2=Biddle, Gordon | title = The Oxford Companion to British Railway History | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 1997 | location = Oxford | page = 29 | isbn = 978-0-19-211697-0 }}</ref> For his part, Beeching was unrepentant about his role in the closures: "I suppose I'll always be looked upon as the axe man, but it was surgery, not mad chopping."<ref>{{cite book | last = Davies | first = Hunter | author-link = Hunter Davies | title = A walk along the tracks | publisher = Weidenfeld and Nicolson | year = 1982 | page = 11 | isbn = 978-0-297-78042-7 }}</ref> Beeching was nevertheless instrumental in modernising many aspects of the railway network, particularly a greater emphasis on [[block train]]s which did not require expensive and time-consuming shunting ''en route''. Labour came to power at the [[1964 United Kingdom general election|general election in October 1964]]. On 23 December 1964, Transport Minister [[Tom Fraser]] informed the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] that Beeching was to return to ICI in June 1965.<ref>{{cite journal |editor-first=B.W.C. |editor-last=Cooke |date=February 1965 |title=Notes and News: Dr. Beeching leaving B.R. |journal=[[The Railway Magazine|Railway Magazine]] |volume=111 |issue=766 |page=113 }}</ref>
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)