DBWI: The Beeching Report went ahead.

In the early 60s the government commissioned a report by Dr Richard Beeching, technical director of ICI and then chair of British Rail on ways of saving money in the running of British Rail. The result was 1963's "the Reshaping of British Railways." It proposed that of Britain's 18,000 miles (29,000 km) of railway, 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of mostly rural branch and cross-country lines should close. Further, many other rail lines should be kept open for freight only, and many lesser-used stations should close on lines that were to be kept open.

The report was rejected by the Government, who said the effectiveness of British Rail would've been too badly compromised.

I ask, what differences do you think Beeching's proposed "Axe" would've made. An increase in bus usage perhaps? More Lorry based freight?

Anyway, fire way!
 
Interesting. Well, there was the argument that they needed more roads, so a more road-based infrastructure. The thing is that if the Beeching Report had, god forbid, been implemented, then it would have led to a lot of rural communities being cut off. Short answer - Beeching bad.
 
Well we'd have a much better rail network and probably much smaller subsidies. I mean under the last Labour Government BR was getting £20 billion a year to keep it afloat and since the new Tory Governments Transport Bill cutting that to £10 billion a year BR is having to lay off thousands of workers and close lots of lines.

Also by saving money on uneconomic branch lines we might have managed to get either the West or East Coast Main Lines Electrified. Instead it looks like 2030 before either is Electrified. We might even have a HSR route to the Chunnel!! Though HSR in Britain is probably ASB.

Anyway by actually cutting back on lines that nobody goes on then or now we'd have a better rail network and would have saved billions over the last 50 years. I mean by now the M25 might be two-lanes all the way around London, rather than a giant car park.
 
Another thing we might still have today though, had Beeching's reforms gone ahead, is a strong, indigenous car industry.

Can you really see BMC, Rootes, Rover and the rest failing and going to the wall if their major rival for passenger journeys had been so harshly pruned? For many rural (and indeed, not-quite-rural!) communities, travel by car would then have been the only game in town; given that at the time the vast majority of British-sold cars were also British-made, sales and revenues would surely have increased by a sizeable proportion?

Consider it - no unwise reorganisations in the 60s-70s, no horrific decline in the 70s-80s, no nationalisations, sales, resales and cutbacks in the 80s-90s - and (perhaps most importantly to me, as an Oxfordshire lad) the Cowley Works still owned by a British concern!

Happy to chew the fat with others who may see it differently - but for me, there's no way the decline of the British motor industry could have happened had the private car been given this sort of opportunity to become the dominant form of passenger transport...
 
Well it is the dominant mode of transport the plurality of journeys were by car even in 1963 and the majority of journey are by car now. What I think you mean is if they were as dominant as in the US or France, but even with a Beeching Axe I doubt that would happen. We would still have one of the densest rail nets in the world and we'd still be in a crowded island were building roads is a nightmare because of NIMBY's.
 
Another thing we might still have today though, had Beeching's reforms gone ahead, is a strong, indigenous car industry.

Can you really see BMC, Rootes, Rover and the rest failing and going to the wall if their major rival for passenger journeys had been so harshly pruned? For many rural (and indeed, not-quite-rural!) communities, travel by car would then have been the only game in town; given that at the time the vast majority of British-sold cars were also British-made, sales and revenues would surely have increased by a sizeable proportion?

Consider it - no unwise reorganisations in the 60s-70s, no horrific decline in the 70s-80s, no nationalisations, sales, resales and cutbacks in the 80s-90s - and (perhaps most importantly to me, as an Oxfordshire lad) the Cowley Works still owned by a British concern!

Happy to chew the fat with others who may see it differently - but for me, there's no way the decline of the British motor industry could have happened had the private car been given this sort of opportunity to become the dominant form of passenger transport...

I don't know. Just as in recent times both major parties have let train manufacturers such as Horbury "succumb to market forces" (If simply because they were tired of propping them up!) and car manufacturers have collapsed (although they didnt have the same level of subsidy the rolling stock companies had) I think you could see the same sort of "economic fatigue" with car manufacturers going under as theyre out competed by european and Japanese cars.

So instead of a shift towards people like Kawasaki and Waggonfabrik you;d see more companies like Nissan and BMW opening plants over here (some do, I know. but to a much greater extent)

As for Cowley, it'd probably go like Horbury with Waggonfabrik, foreign owned but by a significant British department and that was only in 2001(?), so independent up until that point.

I do think you'd still see privatisation! Just maybe a bit later, perhaps Thatcher wouldn't be so enthusiastic. Maybe someone like Heseltine or perhaps a Labour PM.
 
I don't know... *snip*

I suppose on reflection you've probably got a point - certainly a bit of wishful thinking (Morris-wanking?) there though; there's a dreamer in me which believes that things might have - should have - been so different. The car manufacturers might at least have had a fighting chance in this timeline...

Fair point re privatisation, too - of course the closure of less economically profitable lines and concerns makes the remainder much more attractive to private investment, and it's not inconceivable that a more dynamic, profitable BR (or at least, parts of it) might have been privatised by the Tories along with so many other businesses and services in the 80s.

I'm thinking it could have been put into action perhaps around the same time as the buses were deregulated under the Transport Act 1985 (so, say some time beginning in 1986 OTL?) - to have privatised BR alongside kinda makes sense to me...
 
Top