What were the 5 most controversial closures of the 60s?

[A0wen]

No, the lesson is that if you have a service that provides an important social benefit, you account for it and fund it. You don't embark on cutting routes purely as a financial saving.

I also don't get this distinction that a lot of pro-closure beople have between "a Beeching closure" and "a BR led closure". Beeching was a Chairman of BR and set the ethos of the organisation to a considerable extent, therefore a Beeching closure was a BR led closure. The run-down and closure may have taken place after Beeching left, but he instilled the theory behind it.

That line didn't have an "important social benefit" though - it was at best a secondary line, the places it ran through had alternative rail and bus provision - quite extensively so in the case of the buses.

You're doing your usual game of 'buzz word bingo' about any closure. That said I'm surprised you didn't take the bait about it being a far better line as a tram than it every could have been as heavy rail.

 

[yorksrob]

That line didn't have an "important social benefit" though - it was at best a secondary line, the places it ran through had alternative rail and bus provision - quite extensively so in the case of the buses.

You're doing your usual game of 'buzz word bingo' about any closure. That said I'm surprised you didn't take the bait about it being a far better line as a tram than it every could have been as heavy rail.

Well the experience relayed by @pacer107 suggests that it did have an important social benefit as it was being used by people to come into the City centre.

You can argue that that social need could also be served by buses, but it's notable that BR and the PTE effectively had to turf passengers off the service by destroying it, so they must have had some reason to choose the train over those alternatives.

 

[Sprinter107]

That line didn't have an "important social benefit" though - it was at best a secondary line, the places it ran through had alternative rail and bus provision - quite extensively so in the case of the buses.

You're doing your usual game of 'buzz word bingo' about any closure. That said I'm surprised you didn't take the bait about it being a far better line as a tram than it every could have been as heavy rail.

Yes, there was an alternative bus service that ran almost parallel, within half a mile of some stations that ran extremely frequently. Apart from Wolverhampton, the towns served by that line had no alternative rail service. But it wasn't as convenient as the train as regards speed. Even back then, the A41 was a busy road. And up until WMPTE took over running of that bus service, the passengers on it had to pay twice. As soon as the bus reached the metropolitan boundary, which was by the West Bromwich Albion football ground, the conductor would go round again and charge everyone another fare to continue on. It was a busy train service that was run down, and thats come from people who both worked and travelled on it. It became an inconvenience to operate it, so it had to go. I'm not sure that its the correct assumption, but on the early days of WMPTE, maybe they favoured buses over trains. Fortunately, they had the sense to preserve the trackbed for what is now the Metro.

 

[Mikey C]

No, the lesson is that if you have a service that provides an important social benefit, you account for it and fund it. You don't embark on cutting routes purely as a financial saving.

I also don't get this distinction that a lot of pro-closure beople have between "a Beeching closure" and "a BR led closure". Beeching was a Chairman of BR and set the ethos of the organisation to a considerable extent, therefore a Beeching closure was a BR led closure. The run-down and closure may have taken place after Beeching left, but he instilled the theory behind it.

But it's still unfair to blame Beeching for all closures, when in this case he recommended keeping this line open, and it closed 7 years after he left BR. The PTE etc have to take responsibility for this.

What eventually happened, with the Metro/Tram taking over made lots of sense, what didn't make sense was the long period in between, when you consider that the Tyne and Wear Metro was given the go ahead in 1973!

 

[Grecian 1998]

The planned closure of the Waverly route generated a lot of protest during its final days of operation. There is a section on Wikipedia (yes I know it's not the ideal source) under 'Last trains' at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waverley_Route.

This is probably due to it being one of the last 'big' closures and the fact that protest was more organised than earlier in the 1960s.

 

[Peter Sarf]

Yes, there was an alternative bus service that ran almost parallel, within half a mile of some stations that ran extremely frequently. Apart from Wolverhampton, the towns served by that line had no alternative rail service. But it wasn't as convenient as the train as regards speed. Even back then, the A41 was a busy road. And up until WMPTE took over running of that bus service, the passengers on it had to pay twice. As soon as the bus reached the metropolitan boundary, which was by the West Bromwich Albion football ground, the conductor would go round again and charge everyone another fare to continue on. It was a busy train service that was run down, and thats come from people who both worked and travelled on it. It became an inconvenience to operate it, so it had to go. I'm not sure that its the correct assumption, but on the early days of WMPTE, maybe they favoured buses over trains. Fortunately, they had the sense to preserve the trackbed for what is now the Metro.

I also got the impression that West Midlands the PTA wanted to concentrate all rail services on one central station - New Street. Very laudable but never quite achieved as Moor Street hung on !. Then the Stourbridge services moved over to using the Snow Hill route and trams came along.

On the subject of trams I could never understand what kept the West Croydon to/from Wmbledon line open. Because, in my experience, it was a dead loss. Infrequent and very unreliable. Now it is a tram route it is fast and frequent serving many more stops. There has even been some capacity improvements beyond Mitcham Junction to Wimbledon to cater for demand.

Trams - did we really get rid of all those trams all over the UK ?.

Someone mentioned manning of stations up thread and the reductions thereof. I have recently noticed a purely London Overground station with three staff in a cabin - there used to be no staff iirc. Is that money well spent ?. But it does indicate a will to make a service successful.

 

[A0wen]

I also got the impression that West Midlands the PTA wanted to concentrate all rail services on one central station - New Street. Very laudable but never quite achieved as Moor Street hung on !. Then the Stourbridge services moved over to using the Snow Hill route and trams came along.

On the subject of trams I could never understand what kept the West Croydon to/from Wmbledon line open. Because, in my experience, it was a dead loss. Infrequent and very unreliable. Now it is a tram route it is fast and frequent serving many more stops. There has even been some capacity improvements beyond Mitcham Junction to Wimbledon to cater for demand.

Trams - did we really get rid of all those trams all over the UK ?.

Someone mentioned manning of stations up thread and the reductions thereof. I have recently noticed a purely London Overground station with three staff in a cabin - there used to be no staff iirc. Is that money well spent ?. But it does indicate a will to make a service successful.

I don't think it was just the PTA / PTE that wanted all train services centralised onto a single station - BR did as well. But I kinda get it - from a passenger perspective it makes sense to simplify journeys, particularly if you were arriving into New Street from the southern end of the WCML or Leicester area, you didn't then want to go traipsing up the road to Snow Hill to get to places like Shrewsbury.

Same argument was true in Manchester, which of course led to the building of the Windsor Link, so places like Bolton and Blackburn were more easily accessed, rather than having to get off the train at Piccadilly and onto a bus to Victoria.

And its reasonable to question whether cities like Leicester, Nottingham or Sheffield could realistically have sustained two major stations within the city ?

The trams or Light Rail networks of "now" i.e. the last 30 years are quite different to what was closed down back in the 1950s. Far less street running, far more separation - yes, I know some old tramways like Leeds had long sections of off-road running, but they were the exception. The DLR is a good example of this - no on street running, most of its formation reusing old railway lines. Nottingham, Manchester and Birmingham all similar though with some on street running, the bulk of the network is reusing old rail formations.

 

[Sprinter107]

I also got the impression that West Midlands the PTA wanted to concentrate all rail services on one central station - New Street. Very laudable but never quite achieved as Moor Street hung on !. Then the Stourbridge services moved over to using the Snow Hill route and trams came along.

On the subject of trams I could never understand what kept the West Croydon to/from Wmbledon line open. Because, in my experience, it was a dead loss. Infrequent and very unreliable. Now it is a tram route it is fast and frequent serving many more stops. There has even been some capacity improvements beyond Mitcham Junction to Wimbledon to cater for demand.

Trams - did we really get rid of all those trams all over the UK ?.

Someone mentioned manning of stations up thread and the reductions thereof. I have recently noticed a purely London Overground station with three staff in a cabin - there used to be no staff iirc. Is that money well spent ?. But it does indicate a will to make a service successful.

Yes, i think you're correct in the fact that only one station was wanted in Central Birmingham, and that was New Street, as Moor Street had also been up for closure in 1969. Before the service was run down, the loadings on the Snow Hill to Wolverhampton trains were similar to the loadings on the nearby Snow Hill to Stourbridge trains, yet the Stourbridge trains survived. Even though it was classed as a duplicate route, I think maybe if it couldve been diverted into New Street it may have survived, as the loadings wouldve justified it. Out of all the former Western region lines going to Central Birmingham, that was the only one that couldn't be diverted into New Street, and was the only one that was closed.

 

[yorksrob]

But it's still unfair to blame Beeching for all closures, when in this case he recommended keeping this line open, and it closed 7 years after he left BR. The PTE etc have to take responsibility for this.

What eventually happened, with the Metro/Tram taking over made lots of sense, what didn't make sense was the long period in between, when you consider that the Tyne and Wear Metro was given the go ahead in 1973!

I do agree.

The politicians and Chairmen who followed could have changed the policy and the ethos. They did to an extent, but it was too little too late.

For this particular route, it was a bus orientated PTE which bears responsibility, however it's worth noting that most of the nerwork through Snow Hill had to be reinstated in one way or another, and that had been a victim of the policy of closing duplicate routes.

 

[Sprinter107]

I do agree.

The politicians and Chairmen who followed could have changed the policy and the ethos. They did to an extent, but it was too little too late.

For this particular route, it was a bus orientated PTE which bears responsibility, however it's worth noting that most of the nerwork through Snow Hill had to be reinstated in one way or another, and that had been a victim of the policy of closing duplicate routes.

That route in particular, as you can probably work out, is a real bug bear to me, because it should not have been closed. I'm not one of these people who throw my arms up in the air about route closures. Some routes would never have paid. But that one was busy. As I said up thread, some of my family used it to get to Hockley to work in the factories there. The inconvenience to them was using the slower parallel bus. However, my grandad used the train from Langley Green to Hockley, a 14 minute journey. When they took the train off, he had a choice. A bus from Langley Green to Five Ways along the congested Hagley Road, and a bus from there to Hockley, or, a bus from Langley Green to Oldbury, another to West Bromwich, and a third bus from there to Hockley. He bought a season ticket for the train. He couldn't get one then for the bus. Every journey had to be paid for individually. So, not only did he have to leave the house much earlier for work, he arrived home much later, and was very much out of pocket with the extra he had to pay in fares. So it really was true hardship.

 

[yorksrob]

That route in particular, as you can probably work out, is a real bug bear to me, because it should not have been closed. I'm not one of these people who throw my arms up in the air about route closures. Some routes would never have paid. But that one was busy. As I said up thread, some of my family used it to get to Hockley to work in the factories there. The inconvenience to them was using the slower parallel bus. However, my grandad used the train from Langley Green to Hockley, a 14 minute journey. When they took the train off, he had a choice. A bus from Langley Green to Five Ways along the congested Hagley Road, and a bus from there to Hockley, or, a bus from Langley Green to Oldbury, another to West Bromwich, and a third bus from there to Hockley. He bought a season ticket for the train. He couldn't get one then for the bus. Every journey had to be paid for individually. So, not only did he have to leave the house much earlier for work, he arrived home much later, and was very much out of pocket with the extra he had to pay in fares. So it really was true hardship.

I must admit, my own trip into Leeds would be twice as long by bus.

 

[Hey 3]

The seven mistakes of the 60's
Railways in Wigan Borough (not all only the Tyldesley Loopline, Manchester-Wigan via Monton Green, and Whelley Loop)
Monsal Dale line
Manchester Central - Cheadle Heath
GCML(possibly)
Northampton- Market Harbrough/Bedford
Varsity Line(to reopen)
Uckfield-Lewes
And a sneaky seventh, the Waverley Route
Yes, It is two more but I don't care.

 

[Irascible]

Could the Snow Hill-WLL line have been sensibly diverted into Wolves high level? two adjacent stations there seems more of an issue than two less adjacent in Birmingham ( albeit Snow Hill was falling apart ).

-

I'm sure there were a number of marginal case branch lines which could have been made to work with some stripping down - only have to look at how some survived on even more marginal freight use - but was there any real controversy about methodology *at the time*?

 

[AndrewE]

The canals also had "fight for every mile" fundamentalists in the 1950s/60s. At the time, the canals were much more of a lost cause than the railways were, and the majority accepted that deadwood such as the Huddersfield Narrow Canal should be eliminated.

60-70 years on, it's generally agreed that those fundamentalists were actually right. The Huddersfield Narrow has been restored, as have many other waterways, and work is proceeding on canals that were closed long before WWII.

So I'd be careful about drawing too many parallels with the majority in the 1960s.

Abandoning canals wholesale was itself abandoned when it was realised that it would cost more to build the infrastructure to cope with all the drainage that they accepted than it would to keep them as they were, even if not open to navigation. They would have had to extend all the field drains to connect up with the [new] drain pipe along the middle of the canal and then maintain all that. Much easier and cheaper to keep it as an open channel/drain/ditch

 

[A0wen]

The seven mistakes of the 60's
Railways in Wigan Borough (not all only the Tyldesley Loopline, Manchester-Wigan via Monton Green, and Whelley Loop)
Monsal Dale line
Manchester Central - Cheadle Heath
GCML(possibly)
Northampton- Market Harbrough/Bedford
Varsity Line(to reopen)
Uckfield-Lewes
And a sneaky seventh, the Waverley Route
Yes, It is two more but I don't care.

Most of Northampton - Harborough's stations closed in the 50s. The passenger service was withdrawn on 4th Jan 1960, so the decision on closure was clearly in the 1950s. As a freight / diversion route it stayed open until 1981, so its final closure was really in the 80s.

Northampton - Bedford wasn't a loss. It was a slow and meandering line which served nowhere of any size or significance en route. Even as a DMU service it took 40 minutes to complete the journey (about 20 miles) with 4 intermediate stops and the service frequency was less than hourly (8 departures over 14 hours).

 

[Sprinter107]

Could the Snow Hill-WLL line have been sensibly diverted into Wolves high level? two adjacent stations there seems more of an issue than two less adjacent in Birmingham ( albeit Snow Hill was falling apart ).

-

I'm sure there were a number of marginal case branch lines which could have been made to work with some stripping down - only have to look at how some survived on even more marginal freight use - but was there any real controversy about methodology *at the time*?

I dont think it wouldve been easy to divert them into the High Level without spending much money, and they wanted the service gone, so that wasn't going to happen. It was easy to divert the Leamington Spa services into New Street, and the Stourbridge trains could be diverted when they relaid a short section of track between Smethwick Junction and Galton Junction which had been disused since the mid 1950s.

 

[tbtc]

No, the lesson is that if you have a service that provides an important social benefit, you account for it and fund it. You don't embark on cutting routes purely as a financial saving

"important social benefit" joins the "resilience" and "useful" and "valuable" and other unquantifiable abstract notions to try to justify incredibly lightly used lines/stations

By the same token, you could argue that every single line/station provides some kind of "social benefit" - I'm sure that the one man and his dog who use it both find it valuable (it's just that the numbers are nowhere near enough to warrant heavy rail - in many cases the numbers wouldn't be near enough to warrant a minibus)

I also don't get this distinction that a lot of pro-closure beople have between "a Beeching closure" and "a BR led closure". Beeching was a Chairman of BR and set the ethos of the organisation to a considerable extent, therefore a Beeching closure was a BR led closure. The run-down and closure may have taken place after Beeching left, but he instilled the theory behind it.

I do enjoy the gymnastics required to absolve BR of blame for things - not just with line closures but across the board - e.g. every pound spent was because BR were great, but every pound spent was the fault of the wicked treasury for not giving BR sufficient funds.

Lines were closing in the days of the "Big Four" - lines continued to be closed under BR for years before Beeching took over - lines continued to be closed by BR after his repot (including a number of lines that he never proposed to close) - yet it's never BR's fault, is it - everything comes down to one man (oh, and conspiracies about Marples too, can't forget that)

Just accept that lots of lines were built to serve markets that no longer existed (e.g. freight markets that no longer existed) or were much more efficient by road (small freight flows that maybe warranted a branch in Victorian times when there were no alternatives for how to get your goods to the rest of the country, in the pre-motorway era) or were built by entrepreneurs to try to gain market share (e.g. you wouldn't build a line from Settle to Carlisle unless you were a desperate businessman trying to get a slice of that Anglo-Scottish market)

Many of these lines should have closed well before the 1960s - if that means you want to portray your opponents as "pro closure" then fair enough - good luck getting that to stick - but if you can't accept that BR were ever wrong (any bad decisions were entirely the fault of Beeching himself or Governments over the fifty years act BR existed) and you can't accept that any line should close today (because everything has some kind of "social benefit") then you'll never have to accept any grey areas

 

[yorksrob]

"important social benefit" joins the "resilience" and "useful" and "valuable" and other unquantifiable abstract notions to try to justify incredibly lightly used lines/stations

By the same token, you could argue that every single line/station provides some kind of "social benefit" - I'm sure that the one man and his dog who use it both find it valuable (it's just that the numbers are nowhere near enough to warrant heavy rail - in many cases the numbers wouldn't be near enough to warrant a minibus)



I do enjoy the gymnastics required to absolve BR of blame for things - not just with line closures but across the board - e.g. every pound spent was because BR were great, but every pound spent was the fault of the wicked treasury for not giving BR sufficient funds.

Lines were closing in the days of the "Big Four" - lines continued to be closed under BR for years before Beeching took over - lines continued to be closed by BR after his repot (including a number of lines that he never proposed to close) - yet it's never BR's fault, is it - everything comes down to one man (oh, and conspiracies about Marples too, can't forget that)

Just accept that lots of lines were built to serve markets that no longer existed (e.g. freight markets that no longer existed) or were much more efficient by road (small freight flows that maybe warranted a branch in Victorian times when there were no alternatives for how to get your goods to the rest of the country, in the pre-motorway era) or were built by entrepreneurs to try to gain market share (e.g. you wouldn't build a line from Settle to Carlisle unless you were a desperate businessman trying to get a slice of that Anglo-Scottish market)

Many of these lines should have closed well before the 1960s - if that means you want to portray your opponents as "pro closure" then fair enough - good luck getting that to stick - but if you can't accept that BR were ever wrong (any bad decisions were entirely the fault of Beeching himself or Governments over the fifty years act BR existed) and you can't accept that any line should close today (because everything has some kind of "social benefit") then you'll never have to accept any grey areas

I'm not sure what point it is you're trying to make. Anyone who's seen my posts will know that I'm generally very critical of BR's approach to route closures during the 1960's. Also the fact that the railway was capable of pursuing a more balanced approach to closures from the 1920's onwards, illustrates that the methodology espoused by Beeching wasn't inevitable (something I've also pointed out on many occasions.

 

[High Dyke]

Grantham to Lincoln via Honington Jct. It was sacrificed building the curve at Newark from the ECML to the Midland route. Without that being built the proposal was to close the MR Nottingham to Lincoln line.

 

[A0wen]

I'm not sure what point it is you're trying to make. Anyone who's seen my posts will know that I'm generally very critical of BR's approach to route closures during the 1960's.

Basically you believe all the closures by BR were wrong for some reason - even where it eliminated duplicate routes which ran a couple of miles from the surviving line.

Also the fact that the railway was capable of pursuing a more balanced approach to closures from the 1920's onwards, illustrates that the methodology espoused by Beeching wasn't inevitable (something I've also pointed out on many occasions.

What "more measured" approach was this? The Big 4's approach to closures was purely economic - it had to be, they were private companies. Losing money meant putting the company at risk.

The big difference between the Beeching approach and the Big 4 was Beeching looked at the network holistically - whereas the Big 4 would never have done that because they wanted to preserve their own routes where a competitor ran.

 

[Bevan Price]

I have no simple answer, but I think:
1. Many lines were basket cases from the start, and should never have been built.
2. The rot set in years before Marples/Beeching.
3. Many lines died due to one or more of neglect; management complacency; management incompetence; wilful "damage" to services.
If you look at old timetables for some of the lines that closed, it seems clear that some managers were content to "leave things as they always had been" -- there was little effort to redesign timetables to provide services that might actually be useful to workers, shoppers, etc.

Now I know some will say that commuting was less common at the time of Beeching, but that can be partly attributed to some timetables being so poor that it was almost impossible to commute by rail.

Or, as with the Birmingham Snow Hill / Wolverhampton Low Level case posted above, the timetable was systematically "wrecked" to ensure (either intentionally, or thoughtlessly) that services became nearly useless.

As also pointed out previously, it is easiest to suggest mistakes with hindsight.

So, my own list might be (including post-Beeching errors):
1. Eccles - Tyldesley - Leigh - Newton Le Willows.
(Tyldesley / Springs Branch/Wigan NW was more difficult to justify -- much of the population lay in long, linear settlements with no easy locations for stations serving "centres of population")
2. Uckfield - Lewes (probably sacrificed to make it cheaper to build a new road near Lewes)
3. Steyning line.
4. Manchester Central - Matlock - Derby. (Poor quality local services, especially at the Manchester end.)
5. York - Beverley - Hull. (Again, timetable was of limited use for commuting.)

Sorry about Dumfries - Stranraer, Dunblane - Crianlarich, etc., but far too many miles of sparsely populate countryside on those & similar routes.

 

[Irascible]

I have no simple answer, but I think:
1. Many lines were basket cases from the start, and should never have been built.
2. The rot set in years before Marples/Beeching.
3. Many lines died due to one or more of neglect; management complacency; management incompetence; wilful "damage" to services.

1 and 2 overlap - the rot set in post ww1 with the intro of viable buses which turned the only fast transport in some places into an expensive choice. Why even the GWR didn't make a bigger attempt at railbuses I don't really know, but the railways seemed overly stuck in place... which leads to 3 - which anecdotally seems to apply to a broad range of industry post-war too.

Beeching didn't get it all right by any means, but there's no way you can defend the rest of BR either. Where did this slash & burn mentality at BR come from? it seems like there was a desire to run as few services as they could get away with, not as many as practicable.

Was there any noise/protest about the methodology? ( as opposed to the obvious noise zbout clisures thsmselves )

 

[yorksrob]

Basically you believe all the closures by BR were wrong for some reason - even where it eliminated duplicate routes which ran a couple of miles from the surviving line.

What "more measured" approach was this? The Big 4's approach to closures was purely economic - it had to be, they were private companies. Losing money meant putting the company at risk.

The big difference between the Beeching approach and the Big 4 was Beeching looked at the network holistically - whereas the Big 4 would never have done that because they wanted to preserve their own routes where a competitor ran.

Really ?

I've never advocated all closed routes being reopened. I can reel off several routes that they probably had a point about closing at the time. Hythe in Kent, the Meon Valley, the Bluebell, the K&ESR. This is just the area of the country I have more knowledge of - there are undoubtedly others. Some of these could have (or did) make good preserved railways - not all of them would have.

Yes, the Big 4 had to have a commercial outlook. However, they wouldn't have manipulated traffic or data to justify the closure of a well used route (such as York - Beverley). My big problem with the closure programme from Beeching onwards was that they went from looking at the usefulness of each route on a route by route basis, to a more ideological drive to justify closures.

 

[65477]

It I understood the OP's question correctly we have over 50 posts and I think on post #35 on the Waverley line has actually addressed the question. Are there any documented cases where: the TUCC meeting was well attended, questions asked in parliament, local councils objected etc..?

 

[yorksrob]

Reading about Shoreham - Christs Hospital, there seemed to be a lot of work undertaken by campaigners against closure, including passenger surveys and objections.

Waverley made a lot of news footage - I think I read that protesters barricaded themselves on the last train, and a petition was taken to Downing street.

I've seen pictures and footage of the protesters against the closure of Ashford - Hastings (fortunately still with us).

Questions were asked in the House about the closure of the Somerset and Dorset, and BR were forced to re-instate a temporary service for a short while.

Uckfield to Lewes, according to the reinstatement campaign, trains were generally busier South of Uckfield than North of it up until closure.

 

[A0wen]

Really ?

I've never advocated all closed routes being reopened. I can reel off several routes that they probably had a point about closing at the time. Hythe in Kent, the Meon Valley, the Bluebell, the K&ESR. This is just the area of the country I have more knowledge of - there are undoubtedly others. Some of these could have (or did) make good preserved railways - not all of them would have.

Yes, the Big 4 had to have a commercial outlook. However, they wouldn't have manipulated traffic or data to justify the closure of a well used route (such as York - Beverley). My big problem with the closure programme from Beeching onwards was that they went from looking at the usefulness of each route on a route by route basis, to a more ideological drive to justify closures.

2 of those you cite were being considered for closure by the Southern Railway in the 1930s - Hythe and the K&ESR - it was only the fact WW2 intervened that they got a stay of execution.

I think claiming Beeching "manipulated" data is disingenuous. It's easy to forget that using large data sets, even 50 years ago, was a fairly new science and its only been with the advent of computers that it has been improved and refined.

And the line had a number of level crossings and would have required modernisation - that cost would not have been recovered by the revenue - it was already losing money. Add in it only served one place en route - Market Weighton, which still isn't that big. Even Beverley isn't particularly big. And Hull - York could be handled via Selby.

 

[yorksrob]

2 of those you cite were being considered for closure by the Southern Railway in the 1930s - Hythe and the K&ESR - it was only the fact WW2 intervened that they got a stay of execution.

I think claiming Beeching "manipulated" data is disingenuous. It's easy to forget that using large data sets, even 50 years ago, was a fairly new science and its only been with the advent of computers that it has been improved and refined.

And the line had a number of level crossings and would have required modernisation - that cost would not have been recovered by the revenue - it was already losing money. Add in it only served one place en route - Market Weighton, which still isn't that big. Even Beverley isn't particularly big. And Hull - York could be handled via Selby.

Nevertheless, the pre-Beeching regime was making plans to upgrade and rationalise the route, a sort of "invest to save" project to bring down operating costs in the longer term. It was a political choice that this sort of approach wasn't taken forward more.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I remember that there was a torrent of closure proposals in the 1963-64 period following Beeching, only advertised locally.
There was no real concerted campaign to stop the closures beyond very generic political complaints, as local opposition could be marginalised into the small "unavoidable hardship" bracket and addressed by extra bus services.
BR always had a primitive financial analysis to hand which came down to local revenue versus local costs and gave a negative answer.
There was no real "network" analysis about connections and loss to main line traffic of local closures.

There were also too many concurrent closure proposals in the pipeline to be able to oppose each one, as BR and the government were in a hurry.
The closures didn't stop after Labour won both elections in 1964, although they began to spread out and eventually some of the stragglers had enough traction to stop the closure process.
But Labour generally (the modernisers anyhow) knew that major surgery to the railway business was needed, and had no better ideas until Barbara Castle arrived.

People also forget that a large number of branch-line closures were implemented before Beeching, under existing regulations.
Both grouping (1923) and nationalisation (1948) also resulted in rationalisation of some duplicate routes, though not enough to keep the economic wolves at bay.
The severe down-grading of the GW Paddington-West Midlands-Chester and GC Marylebone-East Midlands-Manchester routes were a direct consequence of the 1950s decision to electrify the LNW route.
After the Beeching years, rationalisation without major line closures was the order of the day through the next decade, when we lost much city centre capacity by closing "spare" stations in Manchester/Liverpool/Leeds/Sheffield/Birmingham/Glasgow etc, many of which we have come to regret.

I'm surprised that the Great Central closure does not appear in the list of 1960s controversial closures - it certainly had national attention.
I'm in the camp that thinks the whole GC Extension enterprise was doomed from the start in the 1890s, when a sane railway policy would have spent the capital on improving the existing lines to London and the connections between them.

 

[tbwbear]

It I understood the OP's question correctly we have over 50 posts and I think on post #35 on the Waverley line has actually addressed the question. Are there any documented cases where: the TUCC meeting was well attended, questions asked in parliament, local councils objected etc..?

Correct.

With respect to the OP, although it was a very interesting question, it is actually very difficult to quantify a level of controversy.

For many of the 60s closures, you certainly got a lot of local protesting, questions being asked in parliament and even coffins being delivered to Dr Beeching, but it is actually difficult to quantify one against the other and say which ones aroused more controversy than the others.

I agree that (of the ones that actually closed) the Waverley Line is the one to beat. As stated above, that is probably because of the size and the nature of the protests (blocking the line etc..) which were probably also due to the fact that it happened later after the effects of losing a line on a community could be seen elsewhere.

 

[Helvellyn]

I guess it might be a case of going through contemporary magazines, e.g. Modern Railways and The Railway Magazine to see what, if anything, they picked up about controversy at the time.

The thing with questions like this is that most of us are too young to remember it ourselves, so we look at (consciously or not) with hindsight. We look at road traffic levels of the last decade versus clock face timetables on many routes and say route X would have been viable if it was open today, with hourly connections at Y, etc.

BR was closing many intermediate stations on routes to speed up the long distance trains between major centres. That in turn meant duplicate routes were "easier" to justify closing. For example, why keep the Great Central to link Sheffield-Nottingham-Loughborough-Leicester-London when you had another route that did that and had other traffic? Twenty plus years of privatisation has transformed the MML and it is easy to say the GC would have a role now, but at one point in the mid 1980s the best InterCity was offering was a train to Nottingham and Sheffield every 90 minutes with an infill turn to Leicester to give a train every 30 minutes on the Southern part of the route.

So I'd imagine controversial closures would potentially be more localised, where traffic levels might have been quite high but politics played a role, e.g. local suburban routes going over to buses because local authorities supported them.