Railway spods! (BBC Beeching/railway walks programmes)

[kyser_soze]

Good show. Well-balanced, on the whole.

Maple was one corrupt fucker, eh? Road builder closes railways.

What wasn't made explicitly clear was that 200,000 people were laid off as a result of Beeching's report.

Sounds like Rod Eddington, ex Chairman of BA, saying that high speed rail links are uneconomic and that a 3rd runway at Heathrow is needed...

 

[Isambard]

Of course they didn't take seasonal holiday traffic into account - that's inherently unprofitable. They didn't ignore it so much as they didn't care.

Not that profit should be the main goal, but how are seasonal holiday traffic flows inherently unprofitable?

There were political decisions made to close railways and the research was often skewed to produce the "right" results. In the case of lines dependent on holiday traffic, it was the fact that the line / desination wasn't recognised as having generated the tevenue as the booing took place elsewhere.

Another trick was counting during August when there are fewer people travelling to work and no school children.

 

[PacificOcean]

Did Beeching just close branch lines or did he look at commuter routes too?

No lines were closed in London under Beeching, even really underused ones like Gospel Oak to Barking or the pointless Romford to Upminster line.

Were commuter lines shut in other parts of the country?

 

[Roadkill]

Did Beeching just close branch lines or did he look at commuter routes too?

Branch lines, commuter routes, cross country lines, even one major main line from London to the north ... you name it, it was closed. The railway network now has half the route mileage it did fifty years ago.

 

[_pH_]

i watched the hisplop prog on iplayer today cos i was off work poorly *cough....sniff*

very interesting!

i agree with the stuff about train travel having lost it's romance* - too much plastic! bring back rosewood and proper fluffy upholstery!!

*something me and roadie were discussing last night as we were looking at the Penzance sleeper at Paddington last night

 

[berniedicters]

Not that profit should be the main goal, but how are seasonal holiday traffic flows inherently unprofitable?

There were political decisions made to close railways and the research was often skewed to produce the "right" results. In the case of lines dependent on holiday traffic, it was the fact that the line / desination wasn't recognised as having generated the tevenue as the booing took place elsewhere.

Another trick was counting during August when there are fewer people travelling to work and no school children.

Any traffic flow that relies on massive seasonal peaks is going to be unprofitable.

Most of the cost of a railway (more so nowadays) is in the infrastructure. Track works, engines, rolling stock, signalling, all this shit costs mondo £££ to acquire and maintain, regardless of traffic flows.

A seasonal destination represents a huge local flow of traffic on lines which may well spend the remaining two thirds of the year barely being used. It displaces rolling stock and traction, and needs maintaining for the rest of the year in order to be reliably functioning at showtime.

A classic example is somewhere like Great Yarmouth - a popular Wakes Weeks destination. That place had two stations, of which only one remains. But if you look at the station, even as it is now as a shadow of its former self, it has the space for an infrastructure it needed for peak traffic flows - miles of sidings and stabling for rolling stock and locos alike.

Added to which, well, there weren't exactly dozens of first-class farepaying passengers going on those services, were there? So a narrowly-defined criterion for profitability would have easily made a holiday run look unprofitable.

 

[editor]

Most of the cost of a railway (more so nowadays) is in the infrastructure. Track works, engines, rolling stock, signalling, all this shit costs mondo £££ to acquire and maintain, regardless of traffic flows.

Trouble was that BR was still charged with maintaining viaducts, road bridges and other structures even after they'd ripped up the track.

 

[laptop]

Trouble was that BR was still charged with maintaining viaducts, road bridges and other structures even after they'd ripped up the track.

Railtrack still is, isn't it?

 

[berniedicters]

Trouble was that BR was still charged with maintaining viaducts, road bridges and other structures even after they'd ripped up the track.

Yeah, and how much do you want to bet that that little factor was quietly kept out of the calculations...?

 

[Isambard]

Course you have infrastructure expenditure and the potential to have dead capital withh seasonal traffic flows. But the same applies to road and air transport too. First class passengers between two major cities might be profitable but a holiday special is solid bread and butter turnover too.

It's ironic that Great Yarmouth got mentioned. Which routes on the rail network are now under some of the most strain? Oh yeah, those from the East Coast ports towards the Midlands and North.

Come back oh Midland and Great Northern Joint:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_and_Great_Northern_Joint_Railway