What do you think of Beeching, after the demise of the British railways.?

He was put in charge of an industry that he didn't understand. He was an industrial chemist, not a railway expert.

What he didn't understand was that the branch lines he was so eager to close fed passengers into the main line network. Closing branches meant passengers did not use the bus to their next nearest railway station as he expected, but instead made the whole journey by road, and so were lost from the main line rail services.

I think that Dr. Beeching shut down too many rail lines; I don't think it was necessary to shut down so many rail lines to save Britain's railways. The real problem was a lack of investment in Britain's railway system and relying on old technology.

In the 1950s, most countries in Western Europe were switching over to diesel and electric locomotives while Britain was still using steam engines. Had Britain's railways begun switching over to diesel or electric locomotion before World War II, when other countries were beginning to do so, Britain's railway system would have been far more widely used and there would have been no need for so many closures.

While there probably were a few blunders, most of the lines closed then really were uneconomic to run.

Many rural branches only ever made sense when most cooking and heating was done with coal, which was heavy and was best distributed around the country by trains to local coal depots. Once energy was coming to each village down gas pipes and electricity cables, not in coal trains, those lines lost their main source of revenue.

The big problems were:

1) the failure of BR to retain ownership of the trackbeds of closed lines with potential for future use. That would have made it much easiler to re-open those lines which now have a use again. (E.g. Spaling - March to take freight away from the overcrowded ECML north of Peterborough)

2) internal rivalries between sections of BR descended from past rival railway companies preventing conecting up separated formerly competing lines (e.g. failing to link up old Southern and Great Western lines at Brentford and at Staines) to make useful new through routes.

One of the most tragic decisions in British history. All those lines closed because they 'didn't pay'. Well, how incredibly shortsighted. All they had to do was adjust the timetables, or, at worst, mothball some routes until they were needed. Instead, the government closed them and sold them off for a fraction of their replacement value. Now, when we do need them, and need them badly because we have such serious transport problems, they cannot be replaced.

Now, nearly 50 years on, we have a hugely expanded population, massive congestion. Our roads clogged with freight, much of which could have gone by rail, if we still had those rails. Most of those lines would damn well pay now.

Just another massive f****-up on the part of our ever-incompetent politicians.

Beeching did what he was told to do - get rid of the lines that were loosing money. He wasn't asked to make them pay.

He could have been burnt at a stake made of beech.