Beeching report

[Mickey]

Deleted

[strang steel]

There is an illustrated thread on them here:-

http://www.trucknetuk.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=56182

It appears that NCL were merged into Lynx Express, who then acquired Red Star and then were subsequently taken over by UPS.

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

I always considered Red Star to be a great idea. I remember HST guards picking up/dropping off parcels at various stations, and that particular service was at no extra cost to the railways, as originally it was customer collect/delivery.

[Mickey]

Deleted

[1H was 2E]

Regarding the notes about Red Star, I'm not sure there was much to be sold to Lynx. Around 1980 I worked on Parcels Marketing at WR HQ Paddington. Red Star was a great service for field engineers - we had a few big customers. The engineer would attend to a broken down piece of kit, find it needed a new spridgit, and contact his firms HQ. They'd get the spridgit out of the stores, take it to their local Inter City station and it would be met by the engineer at the nearest station to the job. You had to hand it in half an hour before the train left, but you knew the service it would get - it was in the passenger timetable. These packages were put on the train by parcels staff and carried in the guards compartment. The cost was entirely marginal, but because the service was so quick we could extract a premium price from the customer. Avoided service staff having to carry loads of bits, improved their service, reduced capital tied up in parts. Then the passenger operators came along and reckoned we were delaying "their" trains loading these packages. Sometimes by as much as 2 minutes. So we were kicked off passenger trains and had to set up our own network. A class 31 and ?5 (too many for the traffic, but min no. for braking) 100mph BGs raced around the WR. The costs became enormous (specific loco, train crew etc.), and, because the service was much poorer, big drop in receipts. I moved on (Freight costing on SR - I liked lost causes) before it all collapsed. Of course "Sundries" (small freight consignments) > National Carriers in the late '60s > National Freight Corporation (=BRS) in ca '69 (?)who unsurprisingly didn't use rail much for that business. Sorry to go on, but Red Star was a brilliant profitable product killed by thoughtlessness. And there's lots of interesting things on railways beyond loco liveries.......

[StevieG]

" .... Of course "Sundries" (small freight consignments) > National Carriers in the late '60s > National Freight Corporation (=BRS) in ca '69 (?)who unsurprisingly didn't use rail much for that business. Sorry to go on, but Red Star was a brilliant profitable product killed by thoughtlessness. And there's lots of interesting things on railways beyond loco liveries......."

I was a junior clerk in 'Parcels' at St.P., 1971-72.
'Sundries', definitely wasn't by then : Instead I'm pretty sure it was still NCL (National Carriers Ltd.) working in/out of Somerstown depot next door at that time, though cartage notes etc. from the C&D operations (road vehicle Collection & Delivery) there still came into our 'accounts' office for processing and filing. - Didn't NCL market a 'Yellow Diamond' service at some time? : But was NCL perhaps already a part of the National Freight Corporation [NFC] by then?)

Red Star seemed still alive and well [for which we dealt with the consignment notes and the TCF (To be Called For) office's (was on the station) record sheets], and we were still also dealing with paperwork for RPT (Registered Parcel Transit): And I think, PLA (Passenger's Luggage in Advance), though I've a feeling they were few and far between by then.
I also heard of the 'Collico Case' service, though I'm pretty sure that had already ended.

It was all far from my ideal sort of work aspirations; but as usual, good experience, great people, and some fond memories.

To reinforce '1H's comment, it's good to remember that there was(/is!) more to 'the railway' than locos/sheds, carriages, wagons, passengers, stations and signals/signal boxes, track, bridges and buildings.

( And now, back to Beeching?...... )

[sandwhich]

Cant quite remember if Beeching wanted to end "railway delivery vans" or not, I know he suggested that non railway activities should perhaps be sold off, I remember it was a Labour government that created National Carriers and a Tory one that privatised it.

[mr B]

by by fans !.jpg (6.3 KiB) Viewed 5848 times

[Mr Bunt]

Pullman stock I notice. The Doctor couldn't mix with the plebs could he?

[cambois]

National Carriers was a product of Barbara Castle's 1968 Transport Act. They got loss making Sundries and all the road delivery vehicles and a lot of land, ofter landlocked inside BR land. BR had to use them for all their road activity and NCL use BR for trunking. That soon stopped, with NCL moving to road trunking, but BR went on using NCL into the 1980s. I had a struggle moving to local haulage in the early 80s for full loads delivery but it was so much cheaper I won in the end.

Anither typical rip off by the powers that be, and a weak railway management that did not tell them to get stuffed.

[Mr Bunt]

I have also been on coach tours where we were told Beeching closed this railway and that line, but I knew that some of it was before his time. Very good info on the Marples interests. I believe that after he left parliament and became a tax exile there was talk of investigating his business interests but I don't think that anything came of it.

Ernest Marples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Marples

Flight to Monaco
Early in 1975 Marples suddenly fled to Monaco. Among journalists who investigated his unexpected flight was Daily Mirror editor Richard Stott:
"In the early 70s ... he tried to fight off a revaluation of his assets which would undoubtedly cost him dear ... So Marples decided he had to go and hatched a plot to remove £2 million from Britain through his Liechtenstein company ... there was nothing for it but to cut and run, which Marples did just before the tax year of 1975. He left by the night ferry with his belongings crammed into tea chests, leaving the floors of his home in Belgravia littered with discarded clothes and possessions ... He claimed he had been asked to pay nearly 30 years' overdue tax ... The Treasury froze his assets in Britain for the next ten years. By then most of them were safely in Monaco and Liechtenstein."
As well as being wanted for tax fraud, one source alleges that Marples was being sued in Britain by tenants of his slum properties and by former employees. He never returned to Britain, living the remainder of his life at his Fleurie Beaujolais château and vineyard in France.

Use of prostitutes
When Lord Denning made his 1963 investigation into the security aspects of the Profumo Affair and the rumoured affair between the Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, and the Duchess of Argyll, he confirmed to Macmillan that a rumour that Ernest Marples was in the habit of using prostitutes appeared to be true. The story was suppressed and did not appear in Denning's final report.

So I guess he did to a few women what he did to the railway network.

[seacoaler]

There has certainly being a lot of ill informed baloney in the Media about the Beeching report.
He did not close a single mile of track, the government did. I personally think the report in the main said what had to be done. If it wasn't done I believe much greater cuts would have happened later.
It's interesting that people say he was wrong on the basis of TODAYS demands , do we know what 2063 will be like ?

[sandwhich]

In the main you are right seacoaler, even without Beeching line closures were inevitable, but it is a fact that some closures during and after his period in office were steamrollered through some of course have since reopened or will do so. At the run up to the last election the Lib Dems advocated the reopening of several thousand miles of railway. I think that most of us knew that was never going to happen but i think over a period of time their will be some more reopenings although nowhere near the thousands of miles that some talk about. One report in the press talked about the Bluebell Railways extension to East Grinstead as one of the lines he closed, it originally closed in 1958 three years before he came along. There have been line closures going back to Edwardian times, there were many during the 1920s/30s. If the world changes yet again there could certainly be another Beeching in 2063. But thats for another generation.

[strang steel]

I think the fact that there were many line closures prior to the Beeching report is a bit of a red herring in the debate over the rights and wrongs of the case.

Factually, it is correct that many lines did close prior to March 1963, not least being the majority of the M&GN system which closed in 1959. However, Beeching brought the whole idea of rail closures into mainstream public opinion, and made it almost 'trendy' (to use a word from that era) to think of rural branch lines as anachronistic, and candidates for closure.

Once Beeching had been published, then the objectors to closures were almost seen as standing in the way of progress, which in the 'space age' (another 60s phrase) was not to be tolerated.

In short, I think that Beeching is associated with making rail closures acceptable to the general public.

[PinzaC55]

I think the fact that there were many line closures prior to the Beeching report is a bit of a red herring in the debate over the rights and wrongs of the case.

Factually, it is correct that many lines did close prior to March 1963, not least being the majority of the M&GN system which closed in 1959. However, Beeching brought the whole idea of rail closures into mainstream public opinion, and made it almost 'trendy' (to use a word from that era) to think of rural branch lines as anachronistic, and candidates for closure.

Once Beeching had been published, then the objectors to closures were almost seen as standing in the way of progress, which in the 'space age' (another 60s phrase) was not to be tolerated.

In short, I think that Beeching is associated with making rail closures acceptable to the general public.

I agree except that I don't think (admittedly I was only 4 at the time) the closures were necessarily "acceptable" but in fact the government(s) didn't care what the public thought. The media certainly sells ideas to the public as happened with privatisation. Whenever anyone whinges to me about high rail fares or the shambolic privatised railway in general I ask them if they
a) Voted Tory when the Tories said they would privatise the railways.
b) Bought shares in Railtrack as many did, making large profits.
c) Voted Labour when Blair said he would renationalise.

If they did any of these things (I did "c") they are the ones to be blame.

[sandwhich]

Its true enough that rail closures before 1963 were carried out fairly quietly compared to the aftermath of the Beeching Report, but the coming of the car with its freedom of the open road with cheap petrol which pushed its way ahead during the 1950s doomed many lightly used lines, how some of them lasted so long is a bit of a puzzle. Its of course a bit different now with people wary of even starting up the car because of current petrol prices. The clock is being turned back just a little with re-openings in London, Birmingham, Wales, Scotland and now across from Oxford - Bletchley and of course the probable coming of HS2, lets be thankful for that at least.