The Beeching Myth

The torrid time which Stephen Byers endured as Minister of Transport in the wake of the Hatfield disaster and the subsequent collapse of Railtrack provides a salutary lesson in the pitfalls facing those responsible for transport policy; and if Alistair Darling has had a lower profile so far, we can be fairly certain that the state of Britain's transport infrastructure will become a cause for media concern again before too long. Forty years ago this month an earlier occupant of Byers' hot seat, Ernest Marples, together with Dr Richard Beeching, Chairman of the British Railways Board, unleashed the most enduring furore in British transport policy with the publication of The Reshaping of British Railways, better known as The Beeching Report. Although the report had much to say about positive measures to reduce an operating deficit that had spiralled from £16.5 million in 1956 to £104 million in 1962, its proposal to close around a third of the passenger rail network and nearly 2,500 stations attracted attention that all but obscured everything else it had to say.