WI: Beeching Axe Never Falls

Probably leads to even more extensive closures later on. It didn't feel good, but the network was an old and tired thing after the war ended, and with the growth of roads was terribly overbuilt and haemorrhaging money. By focusing on modernising routes that still received lots of traffic, the remaining network was in a much better shape by the time it was reprivatised. Keeping everything open means much more money spend on reforms and maintenance, at diminishing returns.
 
The end result may still be largely the same over the course of time, if not as singularly defining under the Beeching name as it became. If it happens in dribs and drabs anyway, it could impact the wider modernisation efforts and thinking as well. There would also not be the "Beeching bogey-man" mythos of OTL.

On the other hand you might have a more balanced mixture of modernisation of infrastructure with fewer outright closures spread out. But the trouble is, there's going to be big changes happening as the governments of the day needs to cut expenditure somehow. Without some form of closures in the mid 60s, the entire network runs the risk of complete, eventual collapse where basic functionality is literally. Think what happened with Penn Central...
 
Beeching did what was necessary at the time. Somebody had to wield an axe and try to rationalise the railway network. Most if not all of his cuts were logical at the time. With 20:20 hindsight he should have kept the old Great Central Mainline (built to continental loading gauge, no need for HS2 if it is still operational) and the Oxford-Cambridge route (though at the time it did not seem necessary, it does now!).
 
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