Gareth Marston
Established Member
I am very glad I started this thread.
It makes for very interesting reading, as far as I have read and seen the cuts saved very little money, which begs the question where was the money being lost?
You would have thought that several things could have been tried first, for instance actually asking the public why they were not using services.
How about asking people are the train times good for them, asking for ideas.
From my experience in business, you might be suprised what good ideas people have.
If you owned a business that made several things, but the "widget" department was losing money, you would not knock down that building and sell the expensive machinery that makes the "widget" straight away. You would redeploy staff where possible and mothball the machines at least for a year or two.
You could then decide how much you were saving, and hope that there would be an upturn in the demand for "widgets".
I think with the cuts, it comes down to fashion, motorways were seen as the future, and railways losing money and seen as old fashioned.
Many things could have been tried, but the political will to try alternatives simply was not there.
The railways were not losing money because passengers had deserted the railway there had been an increase since nationalisation nor was the main problem loss making branch lines. Basically the railway had been run into the ground because of Government policy which forced it to carry goods and passengers at rates which weren't commercially viable. Combine this with the profitable coal traffic and other bulk movement goods being a lot less than in yesteryear UK coal production in 1960 was two thirds of 1913 for instance and then factor in that road completion had taken away most of the less than wagonload trade but Legislation forced the railways to maintain facilities for doing it.....