Reshaping of British railways

Last night on the news there was a report on the Dr Beeching’s controversial report into the reshaping of the British railways. This was published 50 years ago and a copy of this report is held in the Official Publications in the National Library of Scotland, the shelfmark is GTD.1/1.


In the foreword I noted this paragraph

“In general, people who wish to base a choice between alternative modes of transport upon consideration of quality of service and the cost of obtaining it. It must be recognised, however, that in the transport field more than in many others, the judgement of some quality factors is largely subjective, that individual convenience and total social benefit are not necessarily compatible, and that competing forms of transport cannot be costed on strictly comparable bases. For these reasons, none of the major proposals for reshaping the railway system which are made in this report is based upon attempted close judgements between ratios of quality to cost for competing systems of transport.”

This report is in two parts, the first being the report, the second containing maps including the proposed withdrawal of passenger train services.