Now and Then 

I see you almost everywhere

@@zodiotekgaming probably just some of my growing army of clones. Soon, we will be everywhere on RU-vid! Muh ha ha ha ha haaaaaa!

man, that would been awsome for you but annoying for everyone the train

Dan Man10 Gaming I loved it. I kept a scanner on to know when the trains were coming.

Love your videos. "Start the video, son!"

Beeching was just the hatchet man for Ernest Marples, the minister of transport who just happened to own a road building company.

Beeching did what any academic would have come to when faced with all the facts ,he also stopped some lines being closed ,when 1% of your footfall use 50% of your network it’s totally uneconomic ,he was just the guy that took the rap on behalf of the rail management at the time ,if his name had been Smith it would have been the Smith cuts...he was also payed a huge wedge to take the criticism....

Beeching just did what he was asked to do, list the lines that had to go to save the sum of money required. Not a fool, just a man doing a job.

@@MrDorbel That’s what Beeching said!

@@jerribee1 Marples used to own a Civil engineering company. When he was mead a junior cabinet minister in Oct 1951, he was required by Parliamentary law to resign his directorship which he did, and his was recorded at Company's House. The Parliamentary standards committee would also have been informed of this. From that time onwards he was not involved in the day to day running or contract negotiations of that company. Beeching as the Chairman of the newly formed BRB was responsible for pruning the rail network of all unremunerative lines that were identified in a survey of passenger traffic done in April 1962. The railways were running a deficit of £150 million and rising and something had to be done to stem these losses.

Marbles wife, had a construction company, and guess who got loads of motorway contracts. A bit like today with Covid and MPs friends getting contracts too.

Marples & Beeching could not see the future of Britain. Ok the railway system was in need of modernisation, but to destroy as much as they did was absolutely disgusting. The stations that were shut should have been provisional with a view that in say 10 20 years if the need arose they could be reopened. The infrastructure that the victorians built was a fantastic achievement, it was criminal that it was destroyed by unscrupulous people like Marples & Beeching.

Not Quite. in 1962 there was a survey done across the whole rail network to determine what the passenger usage of lines was. The results of this survey were used to produce the Railways report what is colloquially called the Beeching 1 report. Lines that did not run at a profit as specified in the 1962 Transport Act would be candidates for closure, and lines that did make a profit would be developed. Also the Railways were running at a loss, a deficit of £150 million so something had to be done, in order to stem these losses. Also the Railway itself was closing lines via the Branchline committee, and had done so with a number of unremunerative lines. It is what happened to the Bluebell line here in Sussex that was closed in 1958, reopened and closed again, then a preservation society got involved and the rest is history.

fool

what's marples got to do with it?

The problem in the UK is that no government has ever committed to the establishment of a proper integrated transport policy. Invariably, railways have some significant advantages over public and private transport in relation to the environment, social mobility, and driving economic growth. Unfortunately, our politicians are very wary of upsetting anyone or any entity involved in road transport. It's for that reason that rail transport both here and abroad is always marginalised in favour of the road lobby.

@@dougmccoy100 absolutely correct!

Unfortunately it WAS necessary. Very sad, but it had to be done. The biggest `crime` was letting the track beds go immediately afterwards.

That was not a Beeching closure so to speak as Beeching had left office in May 1965. Beeching was in favour of selling or transferring the lines on the IOW, well those that existed to the local councils, as the main spike in passenger traffic was during the summer periods. The Local Authorities refused this as they considered it to be an unnecessary financial burden on their rate payers most of whom were retired. The line to Ventnor was closed as the bulk of the footfall was to Sandown and Shanklin because that was were the bulk of the Hotels and guest Houses were. Also the budget for electrification of the line was set at £500k. Had the line been electrified down to Ventnor, this would have needed a 4th 33kV/650V DC, substation. This would have put the scheme over budget and at risk of not proceeding, and the remaining lines closing. As it was this scheme was always marginal and was tacked onto the £16 million London to Bournemouth electrification scheme that was progressing at the time. It was also rumoured that there was a rock fall within the tunnel causing closure, which we have no proof of. Having said that it is my understanding that a water pipe goes through the tunnel and provides Ventnor with some of its fresh water supplies.

@@michaelhearn3052 Many thanks for the clarification of events ... so long ago! I do remember the old Ventnor Station sitting above the town, which was a bit of a hike up from the beach. Yes, I was aware that a water pipe now runs through the tunnel, to a holding tank by the tunnel's southern portal. On a separate note ... and not sure if you would even know ... am I right in thinking that the original Ventnor kids IOW-shaped paddling pool was demolished and rebuilt, elsewhere along the promenade?

Heritage lines, brilliant as they are, only run from A to B, but don't generally join up with mainline or local line routes. The tragedy with what Marples did was to not examine the development potential of those towns that were about to start booming, house building wise. Guisborough station, N Yorks was one such location & the consequence of that is the horrific commuter traffic that now clogs up a main arterial road into central Middlesbrough, &, as current Tory Government housebuilding policy goes, viz : any field next to an existing residential dev't will get permission for housing, things are only going to get worse. ... Far, far worse!

Just about all of them are now completely erased and replaced with housing and no trace remains whatsoever. I noticed the uploader only included images of what the stations became soon after closure, because the reality is that any later would show boring photos of rows of dwellings and alike. Agreed, it is a shame what came about for 2,500 stations.

@@marknestboxyeah and sometimes they convert themselves into private residence which means you can’t access to the stations at all

MrHenryrolls congestion on roads do not cost taxpayers money, how can it? Example, many cars, trucks, useing taxed fuel, truck drivers paying tax on wages , get the idea ,try to think along these lines, o.k. simply put ....1 car collects more tax than 1 train ticket, and when did society come before profit?????never ever in england, after all, there is no such thing as society, er, that was a statement by an ex english prime minister,.....thanks for reading....

Yeah! The government is SO good at running things efficiently and cost-effectively.

Adrianpeters Peters perhaps society should come befor profit? pollution from vehicles costs millions in health care

The issue is, particularly in rural areas, railways are a hugely expensive way to get people from A to B. A car on a road to achieve the same result is around 10x cheaper. And, to boot, starts off at your front door and takes you to the front door of your destination, something the railway just can`t do.

Kevin Howard Britain is smaller than America though

In the 20th century the US rail and public transport systems were decimated by the big 3 motor vehicle manufacturers (notably Chevrolet).

And they are all completely amateur. Not one has ever run a railway, or an army or an economy etc. All they are qualified for is getting elected. All here today, gone tomorrow opportunists.

+andrea22213: There were a few far-sighted people out there preaching the need to keep these old rail lines for the resurrection of passenger rail. The problem is their message was trampled upon by others with huge pockets and lots of hot air, who said what the people wanted to hear. Then they get elected and tear everything up just so they could line their pockets with ill-gotten gold. And the railroads suffered as a rezult.

Dashcam: whilst I think you are largely correct,my local council (tmbc/manchester) have deemed to have trams installed by foreigners which zig zag the main road blocking cars and causing regular accidents. They ripped the roads up at great expense to run cables. I asked them why they had gone back to a hackneyed and out of date technology when they could gave run a brand new overhead monorail that would have been modern,not blocked the cars,not caused accidents and not have needed the roads digging up,and which could have taken advantage of modern magnetic momentum propulsion systems which push the train at intervals allowing it to run under momentum till the next push. I got no explanation or reply: because as you say the people in power have no vision and probably were putting back the trams they grew up with instead of moving to the future and saving money and power in one fell swoop.

Nonsense, I'm afraid: all Richard Beeching did was to implement the actions that BR was afraid to sanction itself. As a structured businessman Beeching soon discovered that just one of the regions - GWR - was losing 17 million pounds a year through bad practice and overmanning, so what would the final total have added up to if all the regions had similar losses?All the evidence is well recorded and out there if people care to look for it.Without Beeching the UK railway map would now look like that of France, where rural railways and branch lines just do not exist (I know - I now live there!).

And if you believe that you'll believe anything! Beeching was a hatchet man, sent in by Ernest Marples (who had extensive business interests in road building) to eviscerate the railways of Britain. "Structured" he might have been; ethical, he was not. You've obviously been living in France for too long, since you don't seem to have much of a clue as to what really happened in Britain. Beeching was a shyster, working for a crook (Marples, who eventually did a moonlight flit out of the UK - ironically by rail - before the law could catch up with him!), and used "creative" accountancy methods to fabricate a case for closing the railways down.

www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2013/03/rail-717-beeching-guilty-as-charged-but-should-not-have-been-alone-in-the-dock/

Worth reading, even if Wolmar actually concedes more ground to Beeching than he merited.

True that there were many loss-making railways that needed to be closed, but on some estimates the third of the closures could be avoided with proper management. But now our roads are choked and our cars imported. There was also a great deal of over-staffing due to union determination to preserve jobs regardless of costs. Notoriously even years after Beeching they insisted that goods trains should still carry a crew of three, a driver, assistant driver who had been the fireman and as they had no guards van a guard who sat in the back cab of the locomotive. Two of these had nothing to do but ride around so they usually just signed on for work and went home. This was discovered when there was a tragic accident and there was only one man killed instead of the three BR was paying for. Into the 1960s our local station still had a station master, porters and booking clerks now it only has ticket machines. British Rail did itself no favours because it was obvious that the railwaymen just did not give a damn about the public. On our commuter line about 1970 they occasionally overfilled the tanks on the diesel units and you had to stand back as the train was spewing diesel along the edge of the platform. The most striking thing was before catering on InterCity trains was privatised a carriage would be like a travelling rubbish dump with discarded food packaging and papers. After privatisation, someone would come along with a bin bag half an hour after the drinks trolley passed.

No they would still be losing money. The car is the way forward.

STFU. Some routes/stations would be well used today if the lines still existed. The population has increased massively since these stations closed. More people use trains today than at any other time in history.

No you are wrong, car ownership has also increased massively. Public transport in rural areas does not pay. And many of the lines closed were rural or semi-rural or they were duplicate routes. Well done to Dr Beeching, a national hero who has saved the country countless billions.

LocoScrapper you are so obviously a Troll. Go and sit in a huge traffic jam on your favourite motorway with all your roadtransport mates. The whole purpose of a nationalised railway system was to provide transport at an affordable price for the less well off people in society to enable them to travel to work/school/college etc. Beeching was a crook who was in bed with a typical crooked politician, Marples the motorway man. They just lined each others pockets - very much like modern day Tories are doing for their old mates with these so-called privatised Train Operating Crooks... er I mean Companies.

Cyberdon Blue Pull up duplicate lines and melt them for scrap charge. Rip redundant steam locos apart with cutting torches and melt them down.

Rob Tyman The line is gone and the station is now a housing estate. A cutting from the line exists under some flats with garages. The station at the end of the branch at Uxbridge vine street is now an office block.

Sustrans does what it can considering it is a charity.

@tony mush yes they did... but it happened before Labour and after too.. a lot of short sighted fixes with no understanding of the future

@@timwaywell Politicians are never naïve or short-sighted: at best, they do what the controlling vested interests tell them to do.

Yes, I bet a lot of closed lines would be well used today if the tracks/stations had just been left in place.

It's the government

Marples was a very greedy self-serving individual who made millions out of the construction of motorway contractors Taylor Woodrow, but rot his soul is a bit strong. Anyway, he was a Tory, so he probably didn't have one.

​@Colin H he had run away from UK he was so corrupt Beeching was a hard Headed realist and with intercity 125s hs2 crossrail etc he has been proved partially correct at a huge cost to some areas who were isolated meaning jobs moved etc

​@@ColinH1973Marples was also a crook.

Marples just happened to own the companies that built the motorways 😮

Phil Houldershaw would you be willing to support an organisation that was losing millions (in today's money that would be billions) of pounds per year? I think not. Not considering that every government this country has elected has promised to tax us less and spend more on us. The railways as they existed in the 1950s and 1960s had to be rationalised.

Neil Dahlgaard-Sigsworth it was the auto industry that got the government to get more people into cars, that these new roadways were created for cars. As more people got cars, people were taking the trains less. The government wasn't subsidizing trains as much. The plan was to have automobiles replace trains. Now the trend is reversing, because it was learned that trains can handle large freight and passengers over long distances, where automobiles work where trains can't go. Europe is reversing the trend by getting more commuter and passenger rail service. The United States is struggling to get Americans to go back to using trains. It may take millenials to get mass rail transit back into place, because baby boomers still prefer the automobile, even in suburban and Urban America. Automobiles are a necessity in rural America, due to lack of demand for overall public transit, and that'll remain the trend for years to come.

davenwin1973 in the UK the biggest changer was WW2. Many of the men and women who returned had been taught to drive, and by tne mid-1950s many could afford to buy their first car, so that they could recapture the freedom that a car allows. This took many away from their traditional modes of transport, in a similar way that holiday makers went to the sunny Spanish resorts rather than the rainy British seaside towns. This lost of passengers coupled with the war surplus lorries, which did the same with freight lend to loss of income for Britain's nationalised railways. The British Transport Commision ran for a while all of the nations transport infrastructure. The 2 biggest parts were the railways and British Road Services, which were allowed to compete with each other instead of working together. British Railways had to get a share of the taxes and other revenues raised by the government and that government want to see the railways earn their keep, or at least contribute something to it. But the hard part for the railways upto the mid-1950s was the rail network was worn out due to the war, the roads on the other hand were not in such a poor state. Additionally, the road builders had pick up new plant, plant that had been used in the construction of the airbases for the war, plant that was equally at home building new roads. New roads were required to relieve the crowded towns and cities as the level of car ownership increased. Whilst rail can transport freight and passengers over long distances, it is only bulk freight that it is ideally suited for. Smaller amounts as carried in a traditional freight train or on BR Speedlink services were always expensive. A locomotive, with at least one crew, would be needed at all times along with the wagons suitable for all freight loads, even if no freight was being moved that day. In some cases a single wagon would need to be moved from the freight yard to the customer or vice versa. This is where Beeching came in, and he did his best with the information and technology of the day.

The railways should be a public service - not a profit making business.

Phil Houldershaw just like they were in 1947?

Dick Holder I love the old branch lines and almost cried at this but the reason they got rid of them was because people were using more cars, the rail companies were near enough bankrupt after ww2, and the trains had lost in popularity

The motor car provided a freedom to travel when you wanted and quicker than by train. Yes there were many railway lines but services were often poor as well as being infrequent. Great if you were living in the Victorian era but the car made the railways look really old fashioned.

@@andrewlong6438 Oh YOU were there were you YOU certainly don't look old enough ! I WAS THERE before you were even thought of RESPECT my knowledge

HOmeward BOund says: "allgoo19 I don't think anyone wants to go back to the days of the empire." == Do you like it better now? Have you lived through the British empire period? What kind of job do you have now? ru-vid.com?search_query=poverty+in+Grat+Britain

indeed, very sad

france is closing most of its rail network

indeed it is

Greece, has enough rail corridors out of service, such as Peloponnese network (narrow gauge), Amyntaio-Kozani (normal gauge) and almost local networks that connect the main network with industrial zones etc.

brian faulkner yes yes

kner

Aye, it was criminal to do what the Government of the day did to the rail structure of the Country. As you say, a lost era.