50 years on from Dr Beeching's axe

TO any lover of the countryside, the miles of disused railway lines that criss-cross the British landscape are a familiar feature. There’s one that once ran between York and Beverley, another – now a cycle track – that went from Scarborough to Whitby and a third that once carried goods and passengers between Harrogate and Church Fenton.

A line snaked down the East Yorkshire coast from Hornsea to Hull and another, part of the east Lancashire Line, linked Skipton with Colne.

They are all long abandoned. Some – like the Scarborough to Whitby line – have been turned into cycleways, others into long-distance footpaths.

A few have been rescued as ‘‘heritage’’ railway lines – the North Yorkshire Moors Railway is a classic example.

Others are clogged with brambles, fenced off with barbed wire, or else have simply been absorbed back into the landscape.

They are, of course, the branch lines closed following the notorious Beeching Report of 1963.

Dr Richard Beeching was a former ICI technical director who, in 1961, was brought in as British Railways chairman to sort out our rail industry.

On March 27, 1963, when he was aged 49 and as Britain was recovering from one of the worst winters in living memory, he released a bombshell report.

Entitled The Reshaping of British Railways, the report had been expected to contain some cutbacks on the loss-making nationalised railways.

But the scale of Beeching’s report was devastating. In an effort to move the railways into profitability, he proposed taking an axe to the network.

To the consternation of rail lovers, passengers and many politicians, Beeching outlined around 2,300 stations for closure, around a third of the total, as well as about 5,000 of the 17,380 miles of track.

Beeching pointed out that the least-used stations were taking in less than £2,500 a year and were only contributing two per cent of passenger revenues.

He also worked out that one-third of route miles carried just one per cent of the passengers.

The uproar at the report was particularly loud in these rural areas where trains were seen as a lifeline.

To the chagrin of many, most of the proposals were accepted by the politicians who made the final decisions on the closures.

It was the pro-roads Tory Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples (who actually owned shares in a company involved in road building), who had appointed Beeching in 1961. But it was Harold Wilson’s Labour government which implemented the cuts, including some not even recommended by Beeching.

More than 2,000 stations were closed over a period of a few years, thousands of miles of track were shut down and around 67,000 jobs were lost.

The rail unions were naturally strongly against the closures. The National Union of Railwaymen actually issued a report of its own, entitled “The Mis-shaping of British Railways”, in which it denounced Beeching.

And as the 50th anniversary of Beeching’s report approaches, ral unions remain as anti-Beeching as ever.

‘‘We are still paying today for the reckless axing of rail services during the Beeching era,” said Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union.

Meanwhile, Manuel Cortes, of rail union the TSSA, described the Beeching report as “a huge act of political vandalism which left many parts of rural Britain without any train services at all and elevated the car to be the number one transport priority of UK politicians”.

But how different would Britain really be today if Beeching hadn’t taken the axe to the rail network?

It is easy to look back with hindsight and say Beeching got it wrong. If the rail network hadn’t been pruned so dramatically, would we now have been living in a greener and more pleasant land, in which the train was the first travel option of choice rather than the car?

John McGoldrick, curator of railways at the National Railway Museum, isn’t so sure. Beeching’s reputation as an axe-man is not entirely fair, he said.

The railways were failing at the time he took over. British Railways was a hopelessly inefficient, bureaucratic and hierarchical organisation. Passenger numbers were falling and much of the rolling stock was run down.

The railways were also leaking taxpayers’ money like a sieve. In 1959 alone, British Railways made losses of £350 million – a huge sum at the time. The next biggest public sector loss-maker that year was the National Coal Board, which lost £52 million.

Beeching was brought in to do a job, to sort the mess out. And, in principle, it was probably the right thing to do, Mr McGoldrick said. Beeching not only took an axe to unprofitable rural lines, he also modernised British Railways’ management structure and introduced Inter-City.

The statistics he used to justify line closures were sometimes skewed and not particularly reliable.

The data for the numbers of people using lines was collected over just a couple of weeks in April, for example, which was never going to be the busiest of times for people wanting to use the train to get to a seaside resort such as Scarborough.

His programme of closures didn’t make the savings expected. And undoubtedly he ordered the closure of some lines that should have stayed open. The closure of the York to Beverley line was justified on the grounds that there was an alternative route. “But that route takes about two and a half hours!”

But something needed to be done. ‘‘British Railways was startlingly inefficient.”

Perhaps most importantly, Mr McGoldrick does not think it was Beeching who was primarily responsible for turning us into a nation of car users rather than rail passengers The car was already rapidly becoming the main form of transport before Beeching took over at British Railways – the M1 opened in 1959, for example.

The truth was that the railways were a ‘‘Victorian mode of transport’’ – one over which individual travellers had little control.

Post-war Britain was looking for something different and its people were embracing the American way of life – of personal freedom, individual travel, consumerism and self-aggrandisement, Mr McGoldrick said. The car was more in tune with the times.

Ironically, 50 years on from Beeching, rail passenger numbers are growing again and we are seeing real investment in the now-privatised rail network.

Much of that investment, however – the refurbishment of Kings Cross and St Pancras stations, the proposals for a high speed HS2 line linking London with the north – is being made in major trunk routes and mainline stations.

And Mr McGoldrick believes that while there are moves to reopen some smaller stations and lines, such as the Skipton to Colne route and even a new Haxby station, we will never go back to the pre-Beeching days when rural lines and tiny stations and halts dotted the landscape.

Like the steam engine, they are probably a thing of the past.

Victims of the Beeching cuts

Local lines and stations closed in the wake of Beeching included:

York to Beverley Line

This appeared to be in a good state at the start of the 1960s. Nine trains ran in each direction every day with a healthy number of passengers, the line was reportedly in profit and there had even been some modernisation. None of this saved the line. Beeching argued that most passengers using the line were travelling from York to Hull and that the stations in between – including Earswick, Warthill, Stamford Bridge, Pocklington and Market Weighton – were underused. The line was closed, with the final trains running on November 27 1965.

A number of station buildings remain in good condition, including Pocklington Station, now the sports hall of Pocklington School, and stations at Warthill, Fangfoss, Londesborough, Cherry Burton and Kiplingcotes amongst others.

In recent years there have been campaigns to reopen the line, although parts of the trackbed have now been redeveloped for housing, so if the line were ever to reopen it could not follow the original route the whole way.

Scarborough and Whitby Railway

This line, linking Scarborough and Whitby up the North Yorkshire Coast, with stops at Scalby, Cloughton, Hayburn Wyke, Ravenscar and Robin Hood’s Bay among others, opened in 1885 and closed in 1965, following Beeching. There were plans to buy the line and turn it into a heritage line, the Yorkshire coast railway. However, the cost apparently proved too great, and those behind the plans turned their attention to the line through the North York Moors instead. Today, the Scarborough to Whitby line is used as a cycle track.

North Yorkshire Moors Railway

This began life as the Whitby and Pickering Railway in 1832. It was closed by British Railways in 1965, following Beeching, but reopened as the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, a ‘‘heritage’’ line, in the early 1970s. It continues to be hugely popular today.

Harrogate to Church Fenton Line

First opened in 1847, this ran from Harrogate via Thorp Arch to Tadcaster and ultimately Church Fenton. It included the now disused Prospect Tunnel near Harrogate, but was one of the first to close under the Beeching axe.

Skipton to Colne line

This was an 11.5 mile stretch of the East Lancashire line. Although not directly targeted by Beeching, it was closed in January 1970. The Skipton-East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership is campaigning for reinstatement of the trans-Pennine route as part of the national rail network.

Hull and Hornsea Railway

This linked Hornsea with Hull down the East Yorkshire coast via stations with delightful names such as Wassand, Sigglesthrone and Swine. It was closed as a result of Beeching, with the last passenger train running on October 19, 1964.

• The National Railway Museum in York is marking the 50th anniversary of the Beeching report with a special exhibition from March 22 until June 16. The exhibition will explore the social impact of the Beeching cuts and will feature a specially commissioned work by artist and filmmaker Esther Johnson, which will look at the closure of the Waverley line between Carlisle and Edinburgh.

A debate on the Beeching report, to be held at the museum on March 27 and chaired by BBC Yorkshire transport correspondent Alan Whitehouse, has sold out.