Reply to: According to Ian Hislop...

[Doggy Styles]

I love railways.

But the only sensible solution is to remove all track and reserve the routes for coaches. Capacity could be increased tenfold, and coaches can start and finish closer to the two ends of your journey.

[Doggy Styles]

Of course, that we now could utilize the trackways for trams is never addressed by HM Gov.

Except for the Croydon Tramlink...

The bits of the Croydon Tramlink I've been on go down the middle of the road, not old railway tracks. Is that what steam trains did in the old black-and-white days?

[TimberWolf]

I've just thought of something that we can sell to pay off our debts. Roads. Put these in private hands where they will better and more efficiently run and it will raise a lot of money for the government. How could this possibly fail?

[Beefy198]

Nice to see on the programme all the people moaning about the state of the network "back in the day". I'll mention that whenever I hear anyone bark on about nationalising the railways again in order to bring down costs and improve punctuality.

[Bob Dalek]

Except for the Croydon Tramlink...

Thank you for destroying my POV.

[Moscow Mule]

Of course, that we now could utilize the trackways for trams is never addressed by HM Gov.

Except for the Croydon Tramlink...

[Bob Dalek]

Its funny that.

Beeching and that guy Malthus always get a beating from lefty lecturers etc
I never understood why, and I was always too scared to ask, or even mention it. I still am

Saw a decent documentary featuring Beeching recently (made in the 80s, I think). He had a job to do and did it. Trains were unbelievably expensive to run as they were, back then. Of course, that we now could utilize the trackways for trams is never addressed by HM Gov.

[expat]

There is no Glasgow north station

Crianlarich is a 2 sheep town and the male population are more intersted in firing into the sheep for an afternoon delight than going to Glasgow.

"The train from Glasgow north to Crianlarich" = "The train from Glasgow going northwards to Crianlarich". If there had been a station called that, I would have typed Glasgow North. I added the compass direction for thos who may not know where Crianlarich is.

But as we all know, the termini at that time were Buchanan St, Queen St, Central, and St Enoch.

That was my point about Ciranlarich, the passengers travelling on the segment Glasgow-Crianlarich were not going there, they were all going on, over lined that Beeching planned to close.

[minestrone]

So for example the line from Glasgow north to Crianlarich had enough traffic to be retained

There is no Glasgow north station

Crianlarich is a 2 sheep town and the male population are more intersted in firing into the sheep for an afternoon delight than going to Glasgow.

[expat]

Its funny that.

Beeching and that guy Malthus always get a beating from lefty lecturers etc
I never understood why, and I was always too scared to ask, or even mention it. I still am

I am not a lefty lecturer, but ISTM that the Beeching Report and its cuts justly attracted criticism for being far too narrowly-defined.

The remit was to save money by closing "uneconomic" lines, and the accounting measures used were bound to produce unexpected and unwanted results. For example:

1. if closing a line saved money, but in consequence even more money would have to be spent on alternative road transport, or money would otherwise be lost, no matter: it counted as a saving and the line was closed.

2. lines were classed as "uneconomic" in isolation. So for example the line from Glasgow north to Crianlarich had enough traffic to be retained. The line then split with one branch going to Oban and the other to Fort William: neither carried enough traffic so both were to be closed. This ignored the fact that virtually all the traffic on the Crianlarich line was for either Oban or Fort William, so if these two branches were both closed there would be little traffic on the remaining section.
This is just one little case that I know personally, the Beeching plan had this kind of thing up and down the country.

3. the cuts took no account of whether we might think lines worth keeping open anyway. The Germans have done this, for example: they have built a fast modern network, but they have also kept lots of little branch lines with 2 or 3 little trains a day. Since they already have the lines, they keep them.

[VectraMan]

According to one of the experts Hislop had on the programme, about one-third of the lines Beeching cut would be profitable if still in operation today.

Seems unlikely. In Beeching's day, car ownership was much lower, so the necessity for public transport linking villages and small towns was much greater.

[minestrone]

I wish the gimp could come back from the grave and sort out the bawsacks that work on the Glasgow-Edinburgh line.

[Purple Dalek]

According to one of the experts Hislop had on the programme, about one-third of the lines Beeching cut would be profitable if still in operation today.

Yes, if you are (very) imaginative with the concept of what profitable means in the context of the British railway system.

[NickFitz]

Beeching didn't cut enough. He expected that his report would be seen in a holistic way, which was rather naive. If he had taken a more realistic view he would have recommended cutting far more, and in this way it would have saved more. Wasn't it something like 40 year after the recommendation they started installing high speed switches, and that was because the French insisted on them as part of the chunnel deal. Talk about foot dragging...

According to one of the experts Hislop had on the programme, about one-third of the lines Beeching cut would be profitable if still in operation today.

[MrMark]

Its funny that.

Beeching and that guy Malthus always get a beating from lefty lecturers etc
I never understood why, and I was always too scared to ask, or even mention it. I still am

Funny though, I've met plenty of folk who hold right-wing views on other things, but would have supported pouring money into the old train network. Maybe it's nostalgia, but the sight of a steam train going down the an old countryside track, is something very beautiful. Perhaps we should have just converted all the south-west into a giant theme park (keeping all the old train lines).