I watched this man being interviewed on an old 1981 documentary this evening (BBC Four), who is still unrepentant in his views on how the network was (and should have been) changed. The British Railways answer to Himmler, he axed thousands of miles of railway line (some of which were mercifully saved) as an overzealous response to nationalisation. The trains were expensive to run, but imagine - as a motorist - having all your roads torn up with nowhere to go, which is in effect what Beeching did for the trains.
Could anyone more unsuitable have been chosen for the job? Quote:
"I didn't really want the job...I couldn't see why any normal person would want it."
As Ian Hislop points out in his accompanying documentary, Ian Hislop Goes Off the Rails, all the woes of the UK rail network - the failures, the fare rises, the privatisation, the delays, the accidents - can all be traced back to the fatally misguided Dr. Beeching.
In an era long before Thatcherite extremism, he is the epitome and the precursor of the ethos that if something isn't making money, then it has to be scrapped altogether.
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I am not sure that I would be so critical of Beeching as you are Joe. It is true that he seemed to go about his job like a 'mad axe man', a criticism that genuinely seemed to hurt him, but I think there was more to Beeching than that. It wasn't clearly stated and it is often overlooked, that Beeching saved the concept of freight on the railways with the introduction of the freightliner model, which still exists today. Also, as was pointed out, railways were hugely expensive and the majority of the traffic was concentrated on relatively few major routes, with many branches being costly to run and with little traffic. This was a legacy from the haphazard development of the railways during the railway mania of the 1840s onwards.
It should also be noted as Hislop commented, BR really had a chance to save money and reform its operations with the 1955 Modernisation Plan. Instead huge sums of money were wasted on many different types of diesel and electric traction to replace steam, much of which proved to be unreliable, inefficient or costly. Some of the designs were successful though and are still with us today. It was though a lost opportunity to transform the railways and introduce modern and efficient traction that would perhaps have saved some lines and services from their axing under Beeching.
On balance I think Beeching probably did what he thought was best for the railways in the difficult circumstances present at the time. I don't think he was a great fan of the railways but I do believe that there was a genuine belief that by cutting the network into a more profitable core, he could save what was left and make it pay its way. Yes, there were mistakes and situations where the Beeching axe was wielded a little too forcefully. Moreover, lets not forget that BR during the 1970s and 1980s was active in closing lines and stations in an economy drive, so not all of the current woes of under capacity and lost lines can be blamed on Beeching.
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