Who was Dr Beeching?
July 21, 2016 | 10 minute readMany people see Britain’s railway network as a key part of our social and cultural heritage. Our railways provided a strong driving force behind our Industrial Revolution, which has brought us to where we are today. Many people within the rail industry and rail enthusiasts will know who Dr Beeching was, and exactly how he shaped our railways, but for those of you that don’t know much about railways, this blog post will answer the question –
Who was Dr Beeching?
Dr Beeching, born in Sheerness, was a Ph. D student at Imperial College. He previously worked at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) before being hired by Marples into the Department of Transport.
The railway network we have today is not as great as it used to be. Before the First World War, Britain’s railway network was something to be proud of; it was the largest network in the world.
The Beeching Act of 1963 spelt the closure of over a third of Britain’s Railways. Dr Richard Beeching, the man behind the Beeching Act, was set with the task of making the railways pay for themselves.

In the 1960s, British Rail who was in charge of the railway network at the time was in serious debt. The Conservative minister for Transport at the time; Ernest Marples, asked Beeching to make a report on how to make the railways pay for themselves.
Despite 1/3 of Britain’s Railways being destroyed, the railways never have paid for themselves since the cuts. Some people would simply argue that this fact alone means the Beeching act was simply not effective.
The press wondered why Marples felt the need to draft in this Director from the private sector, particularly one that didn’t have any railway background. Beeching admitted that himself. During the press announcement of Beeching being hired, Beeching himself said to the press that he had no experience at railways except as a passenger, but he was a very practical man. Another thing that created an uproar in the press was the fact that Beeching insisted that the government matched his ICI salary of £24,000. This was an unprecedented amount of money in the 1960s. The Prime Minister was only earning £10,000 a year.
Dr Beeching started out by making a report on passenger levels. On the 17th April 1961, the report started being collated. Every station and every line on the network was recorded and contained passenger numbers of every train on the network.
It is worth mentioning also that at this time the UK was experiencing poor economic growth after the Second World War, especially compared to the growth of the economies of France and Germany. In 1967, the Labour government had no choice but to devalue the pound further. There was found to be no solution to poor economic growth.
Since the matter of possibly closing parts of the railway network was quite an explosive issue, and the press was eager to get leaks of this issue and be the first to get the story for the closure of lines. This was one of the possible reasons why the report was carried out in secret. The 17th April 1961 appeared to be a normal day to anyone else, and people were unaware that the report was even being carried out.
Beeching even hired in John Nunneley, the director of publicity for the express to make sure the press didn’t catch wind of the possible closures before the report was published. Nunneley hired 20 first-rate typists from the private sector to make sure that things were kept secret. Nunneley even destroyed every typewriter ribbon at the end of the day to make sure that there was a name of a station left on it.
In March 1963, the report was finally published. Titled ‘The Reshaping of British Railways’; the report was incredibly detailed, and was released along with a television announcement explaining the closures. The report bluntly spelt that 1/2 of the whole network only carried 1/20th of the traffic on the network. This was according to Beeching; not viable.
The BTC had tried to save these branch lines and make them pay by trying to attract more traffic. But this had not worked, they’d also according to Beeching; tried to modernise these branch lines by running modern DMUs. However, they couldn’t make them pay, as the traffic was not there.
The report was full of graphs and tables, including passenger usage, freight usage, and tables of running costs. But people were mainly interested in the list of closures, some newspaper reports likened it to reading a list of names on a war memorial.
Of course, the report was only a recommendation to the BTC. They were not obliged to follow Beeching’s report to the letter. The BTC, however, would be ridiculed by the press to be seen taking no notice of Beeching’s Report after the money that they had spent.

When the report was published, it was a PR disaster; Beeching would publish the report that would be a testament to the public to what an evil person he was. Not only because peoples way of transport was being slashed, but also because the cuts meant thousands of railway workers lost their jobs. There was an incredibly large opposition to the cuts, some of the public even joined the mounting opposition.
The large opposition that was growing every day against the closures meant that Beeching had no choice but to ramp up the PR campaign, so he got help. Tony Hancock, was one of Britain’s best-loved comedians, and was the star of the TV show ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’. Hancock was quickly drafted into the PR campaign. Since Beeching’s salary of £24,000 was widely known among the public, Hancock demanded that he would be paid the same. His demands were not met, but he was still employed by the BTC for £12,000.
Hancock set about creating his own spoof campaign about the railways. Named ‘The Hancock Report’, it was published in most major newspapers and included spoof reports that were aired on television.
However, there was no evidence that the Hancock report which cost the BTC a huge sum of money actually worked. The closure of the people’s local line was still a heavy blow for everyone. The BTC encouraged the people who are affected by the cuts used other forms of transport. Bus travel was promoted greatly by the BTC for the next generation of public transport. However this notion was optimistic, Bus travel was overcrowded, and simply not reliable enough for particularly isolated areas.
In the South-West, the cuts were devastating for these isolated areas. For many people in Cornwall; train travel was vital. Although the BTC said busses would replace train travel, it did not fulfil its requirements. This was not just because of the Beeching Cuts, but also because cars were becoming more affordable for families to own themselves.
The car was at the time the solution to everyone’s problems, the BTC didn’t have to spend money running them, as they were owned by an individual. People didn’t have to get on a train and a bus and go where it was going, they could instead just go where they wanted to go.
As much as the train was a symbol of the Victorian Era, some people regard the car as a symbol of the 20th century. However this again had its problems, congestion on the roads was a problem from the very beginning, and the huge uptake of the cars by the people was too much strain on the roads. Beeching was aware of this possibility, and therefore his report deliberately left the railway lines in the big cities. This meant people could still use the train to take people in and out of the bustling areas of the cities.
Although Beeching made the report, and is renowned to be the evil man who got rid of his railways. Marples, was adamant that Beeching was only recommending these cuts. He insisted he went over all the information in great detail. With cuts on this great scale, it was inevitable the people would protest. Many railway workers were left out of the job. They protested outside Downing Street to try and save their line from closure and save their jobs.
Beechings Legacy – Was it worth it?
I think that it was a mistake to close the number of lines that Beeching closed. Although British Rail was in a lot of debt and something had to be done. The fact that British Rail never paid for themselves shows that the Beeching Act although it might have saved them a lot of money never reached its objective.
Although it may seem that the public was not using half of the lines that Beeching Cut, it didn’t mean that the public didn’t need them. The massive rise in population in this country since the 1960s the railways that were cut would have been a massive help to ease the strain on the roads and other forms of transport. Also since trains are becoming more fuel-efficient. The electric trains that run on our lines nowadays are much more efficient than the steam locomotives that ran in the 1960s. It would mean that the trains would be using less fuel and reduce the strain on the UKs fuel reserves.
Also if we look back at the modernisation plan that I mentioned which happened before the Beeching Act. This was a great opportunity to make the railways pay. I think if it had been spent more wisely, and given serious thought as to what they should do with the money rather than make massive freight yards that wouldn’t guarantee any freight. During the modernisation plan, I think it would have been a good idea to review the staffing of the railways.
I think that it would have been a necessary measure to make sure that the lowest amount of railways had to be taken away. In the long run, an early cut in staff may have saved more jobs. The Beeching Act put thousands of people out of work. As more stations were closed, and I think that if British Rail had made some reductions in staff they may not have had to cut as many lines and keep the main infrastructure of the railways.
At the time of the modernisation plan, a small sleepy station such as Horam or even Heathfield would have had a dozen staff manning the station, with each of them having to be paid a salary. This was incredibly wasteful. Although the railway workers were heavily unionised, it would have been difficult to reduce the number of staff without opposition.
I also think that the BTC should have also taken more consideration to the Cultural and Economic impact the lines had on the surrounding area. Hailsham could be a larger town by now if the railway was kept. It would turn into a great town for commuters travelling to London. Although Beeching was against these types of conflicts of interests, I think that it would have been important to look at the line closure from a wider perspective rather than just looking at how much money the railway made.
I do however think that Beeching was right to close some lines such as the line from Wadebridge to Wenfordbridge. Although it may have been useful for tourists it was just not a sustainable line to keep running. In some cases though, I think that it would have been a good idea to close lines but keep the infrastructure.
If lines were not making enough money to sustain themselves in the 1960s, they may have come into good use in the decades to come. The lines could have been closed to rail traffic, and valuable equipment could have been taken away. Therefore meaning that if the time came when British Rail could find it suitable to reopen an old railway line, they wouldn’t have to do as much maintenance to get the lineup and running again.
There is no point being nostalgic about these old lines. It would have been nice to keep all of the lines that Beeching closed, but it would have meant that the railways would have fallen into even more disrepair. In order to create a more sustainable future for the railways, I think it would have been a good idea to not close as many lines.
Too many rail enthusiasts, Beeching is a very evil man. Although in truth he was only recruited to make the report, he didn’t make the decision to close the lines. His recommendation was to make the railways pay for themselves, and the fact that they didn’t makes a valid point that it was not as effective as they had hoped.