Dr Hoo
Established Member
Yes, I've thought that too.When Labour came to power in 1964, after 13 years of Tory rule, one of their first acts was to close the Blyth & Tyne Railway to passenger trains. It didn't matter electorally because the area had always been staunchly Labour. So it was ironic that the only way for local people to get their trains back 55 years later was to vote Tory in 2019. It worked of course, and Brexit might have played a part, but there's an even deeper irony that the reopening might well be after Labour win back the local seats next year!
Some interesting stuff there. I'd never heard it claimed that ICI was Britain's biggest tarmac producer before. In fact I wasn't even aware that ICI produced tarmac, asphalt and so on at all. There is no mention of the material on the wikipedia entry for ICI. (I am aware though that in a quirk of corporate restructuring history over the past sixty years some assets that were formerly owned by Buxton Lime Industries, which was part of ICI, have ended up with the company that we now commonly know at 'Tarmac'.)Quite an interesting read if you like the NE rail history, although the Beeching report was commisioned by the Tory government, delivered by March 63 but it was indeed Labour who moved forward with it the seconf tranche was deliver in 65.
What wasn't made public knowledge was with a few methods of rationislation a lot of the routes that were axed could of been saved and provided a better service than the bus routes.
However Dr Richard Beeching was on the board of ICI britians biggest tarmac producer, he took a 5 year sabatical from ICI but clealry had the tarmac interest at heart during his cull of the railways.
Given that the overwhelming traffic around the North East was coal and Dr B expected BR to continue moving no less that 23,000,000 tons per year of the stuff from numerous production points to the various shipment facilities and the recently-constructed Blyth Power Stations I'm not sure that there was much scope for rationalisation of the network at the time. The passenger service to Blyth in 1962 consisted mainly of a local shuttle from Newsham, connecting to/from a slightly irregular but roughly hourly local service from Monkseaton where it connected with the North Tyneside electrics. I'm not sure that a typical 45-50 minute journey to Newcastle City Centre with two changes was really very competitive with the through bus.
I'm also unclear how much scope there was for 'the tarmac interest' to make money out the transfer of what I suspect were very modest numbers of rail passengers to road in the area.
(I'm not sure that the tasks of winding up the British Transport Commission and running BR for a few years would be regarded as a 'sabbatical' either.)