Das britische Eisenbahnnetz vor und nach Beeching
Von DrDMango
Das britische Eisenbahnnetz vor und nach Beeching
Von DrDMango
24 Kommentare
What’s Beeching and why does it matter?
Coming from the South west even though some of the cuts were probably justified having a alternative line to cornwall through north devon would have been good as that stretch of line often gets threatened by the sea.
Also keeping the north-south connectivity in wales from camarthen to aberystwyth would have been nice too
BEEEEEEEECHING!!
* shakes fist at sky *
One of the greatest acts of national self harm. Ironic that Beeching had to flee the country by train in the end because his driver’s lisences was taken away lmao.
He kept the line to East Grinstead though. Where he lived
Isn’t that the the EU’s fault since it was blamed for almost everything that went wrong in the UK
This probably significantly increased the car dependency of the UK and probably made people overall poorer because energy for such cars had to be expensively imported.
This was so incredibly short sighted that they even closed an entire mainline from London to Birmingham. Now the line that’s left is over capacity.
What’s equally gutting is that these lines could have just been paved over and given the UK a globally enviable cycle network linking every village and town, completely free from cars.
Think how much healthier we would be.
Expectation: looking at a map of Beeching’s cuts.
Reality: looking at an example of the power the automotive industry had through lobbying
One of the worst decisions this country has ever made…
You could add in the electric tram network which was also in place across all major cities. A shame, 60 years of planning around cars has been a major mistake with hindsight
And Marples!
What’s beeching?
Just look how little the North East has. No wonder there’s a divide in wealth.
If one thing has been proved absolutely true about the postwar British government it’s that cuts always result in more spending, not less.
50% of the lines carried 3% of the passengers or something crazy
Still more railways, and train services per capita than the Netherlands, the ones all those NJB-apostles keep glorifying to no end.
Biggest act of sabotage in British history. Yes, the railways were haemorraging money and change was needed, but if at the very least he had mothballed the lines instead of destroying them, many of the lines could’ve been brought back into use over time as money was found or the need became too great. It was a short-sighted, idiotic destruction thst made the country poorer, slower, sicker, and more deprived.
Utter Conservative vandalism.
Less trains = more cars
I tuned into Radio 3 for the first time in months late on Christmas Eve, and heard a song called “Slow Train” which was written around the time of the Beeching cuts.
I thought it was beautifully composed. The Wikipedia article is excellent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Train_(Flanders_and_Swann_song)
Flanders and Swann were a comedy duo who usually played for laughs in the old music hall style. But “Slow Train” is a very sincere elegy to the “achingly bucolic” version of England that began to disappear when these lines were lost.
>No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat,
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street.
neoliberalism
First Beeching, then witching
Whilst many of Beeching’s cuts were incredibly short-sighted and cut off what are now relatively large towns from the rail network completely, it’s wrong to say everything was a mistake. Some rationalisation was perfectly sensible, it just went too far. And they wanted to do even more.