Although the railways were carrying more passengers than ever before, freight was beginning to transfer to Britain's trunk roads and it was forecast that private car ownership was set to boom once petrol rationing ended. The prognosis for British Railways was an uncertain one, of big losses unless there was massive state investment in infrastructure and rolling-stock - ideological anathema to the Tories, of course. Inevitably and unfortunately, the road lobby (with unwavering support from Britain's car industry) carried the day. The Branch Lines Committee of the British Transport Commission was set up to identify railway lines to be closed - nearly 3,500 miles of track in the 1950s. But that was just the beginning.
Richard Beeching was appointed chairman of British Railways by the Conservatives in 1961 with a mandate to get rid of routes that weren't 'viable'. Cue a huge contraction of the country's rail system. At a time when other nations (France, Germany, Italy for instance) were investing in the modernisation and expansion of their networks, Britain (the country that pioneered rail travel) was seemingly and short-sightedly hell-bent on decline and fall.
abandoned railway viaduct
Beeching's 'The Reshaping of British Railways' report, when published in 1963, proposed axing a further 5,000 miles of track and 2,636 stations (over half of the country's total) plus 67,700 British Railways jobs and many Tory councils and corporations were complicit.It was savage and seismic; many would argue totally the wrong thing to do; and it was a blow from which our railways have never recovered. To cite one example close to home, Blackpool Corporation actually argued openly for the closure of the town's Central Station (a building of Victorian splendour) so the site could be redeveloped for commercial gain (casino, bingo hall and carparks).
A similar decimation of our bus network and services is ongoing. And although the road lobby won out in the 1950s/60s, ironically the same reluctance to invest in that manufacturing sector has seen the British car industry decline to almost nothing, while French, German and Italian car companies have become pre-eminent in Europe.
The majority of branch lines were closed, the tracks ripped up for scrap, the stations allowed to fall into disrepair. Some stations were auctioned off - my father had a romantic notion of buying one but it never happened, just too impractical. And so, although a handful of wealthy individuals and some preservation societies did purchase stretches of line and a few stations, by and large the branches all disappeared and only the trunks of the railway network remained by the end of the 1960s.
abandoned branch line
Some of those old, abandoned routes have been repurposed as cycle tracks or hiking trails, others have been replaced by roads, still others are overgrown and largely forgotten. Our governing bodies have made some crass decisions in recent decades but the lopping of the branches off our national rail network looks in hindsight to be one of the more regrettable.To conclude on a slightly more upbeat note, who remembers the TV series 'Love On A Branch Line' based on John Hadfield's comic novel of the same name from 1959? With a screenplay adaptation by David Nobbs and starring Michael Maloney and Lesley Phillips it was entertaining Sunday night viewing over four episodes in mid-1994 and I've just discovered that each 50-minute episode is available on YouTube. Filmed on the North Norfolk Railway, 5 miles of heritage steam railway running between Sheringham and Holt (a section of what was once the Melton to Cromer branch line), it's a riveting blast from the past and highly recommended viewing.
Here's a terse verse of sorts to conclude this Saturday's chunterings...
Beechinggoodbye, no reprievethe fall of an axeno trains on the tracksthe wrong kind of leaves...Thanks for reading, S :-) Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook
