historical geography and the beeching report

12
This article was downloaded by: [Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg] On: 16 November 2014, At: 00:00 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Scottish Geographical Magazine Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsgj19 Historical geography and the Beeching report J. H. Appleton a a University of Hull , Published online: 27 Feb 2008. To cite this article: J. H. Appleton (1965) Historical geography and the Beeching report, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 81:1, 38-47, DOI: 10.1080/00369226508735952 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00369226508735952 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access

Upload: j-h

Post on 22-Mar-2017

215 views

Category:

Documents


2 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Historical geography and the Beeching report

This article was downloaded by: [Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg]On: 16 November 2014, At: 00:00Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

Scottish GeographicalMagazinePublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsgj19

Historical geography and theBeeching reportJ. H. Appleton aa University of Hull ,Published online: 27 Feb 2008.

To cite this article: J. H. Appleton (1965) Historical geography and theBeeching report, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 81:1, 38-47, DOI:10.1080/00369226508735952

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00369226508735952

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of allthe information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on ourplatform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensorsmake no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions andviews of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor& Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information.Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly inconnection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access

Page 2: Historical geography and the Beeching report

and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 3: Historical geography and the Beeching report

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHYAND THE BEECHING REPORT

J. H. APPLETON

The highly controversial document which has become known as theBeeching Report1 was published on March 27th, 1963. It is essentially ananalysis of the economic difficulties confronting British Railways and aplan for their solution. It is therefore a document which, starting with thepresent, looks forward to the future, and not unnaturally public attentionhas been turned in that direction2. There are, however, several reasons whyhistorical geographers may find interest in its pages and particularly in itsmaps, for if the patterns of the future are to arise out of those of the present,this is merely an extension of the process whereby the patterns of the presenthave arisen out of those of the past. In any examination of these patternsfull recognition must be given to the legacy of competition which prevailedbetween railway companies in Victorian England. But, as J. A. Patmore haspointed out3, this is only one reason for redundancy, and the Report confirmsthat the withdrawal of passenger services4 may well affect areas which wererelatively free from competition. Lincolnshire, for instance, between Grimsby,Lincoln and Boston, under the Plan loses its passenger service completely,yet the Great Northern Railway was never seriously challenged here by anyother company5. The North Eastern enjoyed a similar position in North-east Yorkshire, where all three railways to Whitby are to be clqsed. NorthernScotland, beyond Inverness, was the province of the Highland Railway,while all the railways east of Keith and Portessie as far as Aberdeen belongedto the Great North of Scotland. Only in the zone of contact between them,near Strathspey, was there any real competition. Yet both areas sufferdrastically, and only the Aberdeen-Inverness main line survives for trunktraffic. The difficulties of all these areas are to be attributed to the paucity ofpotential traffic rather than to the over-provision of track by rival companiescompeting for traffic from the same places.

There are admittedly parts of the country where both these factors haveworked together to produce a grossly excessive mileage of railway. In manysuch areas rationalisation has already taken place by the closure of one ofthe competing lines6. In North Norfolk the lines of the former Midlandand Great Northern Railway, which towards the end of the last centuryhad introduced an alien interest into Great Eastern territory, ceased to carrypassenger traffic on almost the whole system before Dr Beeching tookoffice, and numerous other withdrawals of local services took place in similarsituations. A few examples, however, survive. Map No. 3 in the Reportshows the "distribution of passenger traffic station receipts". Stations in thelowest category (£0-£5000 per annum) are shown in red. One of the mostconspicuous concentrations of low-receipt stations is to be found in theStrathspey area previously referred to. The measles-rash on Dr Beeching'smap testifies eloquently enough to the vigorous and protracted competitionbetween the two companies concerned which filled the sparsely-peopledvalleys of Moray and Banffshire with more railways than they ever required7.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 4: Historical geography and the Beeching report

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE BEECHING REPORT 39

A common variant of the over-provision of railways under conditionsof inter-company competition was the 'blocking-line', built to forestall rivalcompanies in their efforts to break existing monopolies. From the nature oftheir origins it is not surprising that many of these are extremelyunremunerative8.

Competition between railway companies has now been replaced by aneven more vigorous competition from mechanised road-transport, but hereagain its importance as a cause of the uneconomic plight of rural branchlines must be kept in proper perspective. Certainly road competition, bothin the form of the bus and, increasingly, the private car, has had a large sharein the decline of rural passenger-train services, as is made clear in the Report:"Buses carry the greater part of the passengers moving by public transportin rural areas, and, as well as competing with each other, both forms ofpublic transport are fighting a losing battle against private transport" (p. 15).

It would be difficult and perhaps impossible to measure accurately theousting of the train by the bus9, but the sort of situation which has arisencan be seen from the traffic of the two railways which connected Tees-sidewith Whitby in North-east Yorkshire. On the coastal route at the eightstations from Brotton to Sandsend (inclusive), there were 215,289 passengerbookings in 190610. By 1938 the figure had fallen to 21.1 per cent. On theEskdale route for the nine stations between Battersby Junction and Grosmontfell only to 71.4 per cent. By 1938 a frequent bus service ran close to andparallel with the coastal line, whereas in Eskdale there was scarcely anycompetition from buses at all. It may be objected that the coastal line wasaffected by the decline in ironstone mining, but the most spectacular falls, suchas from 37,407 to 2,687 at Sandsend, occurred outside the ironstone field.

Competition from the buses, however, cannot alone account for theplight of rural rail-services, and the Report makes it clear that their problemsgo back much farther. "Railway stopping services developed as the pre-dominant form of rural public transport service in the last century, when theonly alternative was the horse-drawn vehicle and when the availability ofprivate transport of any kind was very limited. Even in those days, whenthere was no satisfactory alternative, and when fares were the present-dayequivalent of 4|d. per mile third class, many of these services failed to pay"(p. 15). It was therefore a situation already bad which was made worse bythe impact of road transport11.

If this is correct and the British railway network was extended duringthe nineteenth century to a size at which much of its mileage wasunremunerative, one may well enquire how this happened. Here again theBeeching Report suggests an answer. If the main network was to be madeefficient, it must depend for the collection and delivery of its traffic on anextremely inefficient system of local transport or provide a better one. Thatthe railway directors chose the latter alternative does not mean that they werenecessarily under any illusion that all branch lines would be economicallyviable under the conditions of transport technology which then obtained.Thus many lines depended from the beginning on a system of cross-subsidisa-tion which was acceptable to the management, while others were built bylocal initiative to 'open up' the countryside and then sold, often at a loss, tothe larger companies. It is the obligation now placed on British Railways

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 5: Historical geography and the Beeching report

4 0 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE

to assess each line as a commercial proposition, rather than as a service,which has exposed a situation that has always existed. "Our railways weredeveloped to their fullest extent at a time when the horse and cart were theonly means of feeding to and distributing from them. Therefore, as therailway grew, because of the deficiencies of horse transport on poor roads,the main network of routes was extended by an even closer network ofbranches, with close spacing of stations over the whole system, in order toreduce road movement to a minimum" (p.24).

This is fundamentally at variance with the proper function of railwaysas understood by Dr Beeching: " . . . we should expect the provision of rail-ways to be limited to routes over which it is possible to develop dense flowsof traffic, of the kinds which lend themselves to movement in trainloadquantities, and which, in part at least, benefit from the speed and reliabilitywhich the railways are capable of achieving . . . " (pp.4-5). Bearing in mindthe apparent discrepancy between this assessment of the ideal function of arailway and the character of the network as it actually was, and in view ofthe recommendation in the Report that virtually all local passenger-servicesin the Southern Uplands of Scotland should be eliminated, it is interestingto turn to the Fourth Report of the Committee on Railway Communicationbetween London, Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow, dated 15th March, 1841.It was in this Report that the Committee recommended the route fromCarlisle to Glasgow via Beattock with a branch to Edinburgh as the bestmeans of communication between England and Central Scotland, subjectto the Lancaster-Carlisle railway being constructed.

From this Report it is clear that not only the Committee but also therailway promoters themselves were fully aware of the overwhelming import-ance of trunk as compared with local traffic in assessing the best line ofroute. It is true that the Committee places upon the promoters of eachproposed scheme the obligation to provide "a statement of the populationwithin a certain specified distance of the line" (p.239), "a statement of thepresent known traffic" and "certain other statistical information" (p.240)which included such data as annual tax assessments and Post Office revenuefrom parishes along the line of route. It is true also that a certain amount ofadvocacy was employed to make the most of these figures in the depositionsof the various promoters which are printed as an Appendix to the Report.The more far-seeing promoters, however, were under no illusion about therelative importance of trunk and local traffic. For instance, the advocatesof the route via Annandale and Clydesdale (which subsequently receivedthe recommendation of the Committee) were particularly perspicacious.Although not specifically required to do so by the Committee, theysupplemented the information on local traffic with data on existing trafficfrom Glasgow and Edinburgh to England (pp.431-2), believing that "thegeneral traffic with England . . . will doubtless, in the case of any of the threeLines, be the chief foundation on which the estimates of speculating capitalistswill be founded" (p.427). The "three lines" are those marked 11, 15 and 17

Fig. 1. Railways in the Southern Uplands.A. Railways under consideration, 1841.B. Railways shortly before the Grouping of 1923.C. Proposals under the Beeching Plan.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 6: Historical geography and the Beeching report

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE BEECHING REPORT 41

Ag iHamilton^

k «EDINBURGH

Symington#-—'

\Beottocki Summit

''Moflat

— Railways open or under construction in 1841

- - Proposals co»ered in the Fourth Report of theHot C.Committee. 1811 [numbersas allocatedby the Committee]

• - Anglo-Scottish Border. SO milts i

è Lockerbie

ick

Glasgow S South WCaledonian RailwayNorth British RoitwiNorth Eastern RoiUOther Railways

c

—— Passenger services to be retainedtrunk passenger services onlyAll possenger semces to be withdrawn

•*• -*- Southern Boundary Fault• » • Anglo-Scottish Border

SD miles

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 7: Historical geography and the Beeching report

42 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE

on the plan (Fig. la). In the view of this party these were the only three whichneeded to be taken seriously. Within ten years they had all been completed.Elsewhere they make the point with even greater emphasis. "It will be seenby drawing a line across the map of Scotland, ten miles south of Edinburghand Glasgow, and referring to the population tables, that to the northwardof that line the population is about 2,000,000 and to the south not above370,000; or, that the traffic of fully five-sixths of the population southwards toEngland, would be through either of these cities. But in fact it is well knownthat more than nine-tenths of the intercourse of Scotland with England, isfrom the northern portion alluded to, because nearly all the commercialand manufacturing interests are comprehended in, and the whole resort ofEnglish tourists is to and beyond, these two cities"12. On Dr Beeching's map(Map 9) all the railways in the Southern Uplands have their stoppingpassenger services withdrawn. Three lines only survive for trunk passengerservices (Fig. lc). They correspond almost exactly with the three projectedlines referred to in the passage quoted above.

When one looks at the pattern of trunk railways as a whole there are manydetails which invite reference to the past. Significant relationships emergebetween the circumstances of origin of trunk lines and their fate under theBeeching Plan. Since in future the emphasis is to be on large quantities oftraffic making fuller use of a more restricted network, one would expect tofind good prospects of survival among short sections of line built, even at alate date, for the purpose of materially shortening or improving trunk routes.One thinks, for instance, of the short-cuts built by the Great Western Railwayat and shortly after the turn of the century. The most important of these laybetween Wootton Bassett and Patchway (1903) on the main line to SouthWales, between High Wycombe and Aynho, near Banbury (1910) on thePaddington-Birmingham line, and in two sections on the Paddington-Exeter line, namely between Patney and Chirton and Westbury (1900) andbetween Castle Cary and Curry Rivel (1905-6). All these sections madepossible substantial mileage reductions in the respective main lines, and allsurvive, though, significantly, two of them for trunk services only.

It is interesting to contrast these with the Great Central main line, whichwas also built rather late (completed in 1899). It has a much longer mileageof track to be constructed (and maintained), and, apart from the useful linkfrom Woodford Halse to Banbury, it did not really open up an improvedroute between any important places. Shorter routes already existed fromLondon to Rugby, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham, Chesterfield andSheffield. Similarly the Settle and Carlisle line of the Midland Railway wasvery expensive to construct and maintain and was actually longer than theLonsdale route which it superseded. Deprived of the climate of competitionwhich brought them into being, and confronted also by the increased capacitywhich technical improvements have brought to parallel trunk lines, boththese railways find themselves threatened with the withdrawal of theirremaining passenger services.

Also in trouble under the Beeching Plan one finds a number of lines which,having been built as part of the trunk system, and subsequently supersededby more direct routes, have hung on to their local passenger-services. Itcomes as no surprise to find that these are now withdrawn. The southern

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 8: Historical geography and the Beeching report

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE BEECHING REPORT 4 3

end of the Grand Junction Railway of 1833 is a case in point. Forming partof the first trunk route between London and Lancashire, the line as originallybuilt looped round the northern side of Birmingham through Aston, PerryBarr and Bescot to Bushbury. The first step in its demise as a trunk linewas the opening of the Trent Valley Line from Rugby to Stafford in 184713.This provided a shorter and faster route for traffic which did not have occasionto pass through Birmingham. Birmingham traffic for the North wasnecessarily retained, but only for a short time, as the opening of the directline from New Street to Bushbury via Wolverhampton in 1852 deprived theoriginal line of this traffic too.

A similar example is to be found on the line from Southampton toDorchester. Authorised in 1845 and opened in 1847 this line described abroad salient through Ringwood and Wimborne14 round the northern sideof a Bournemouth which was not yet there. The later Bournemouth directline (1888) is not only shorter but also serves this upstart city which it helpedto create, and not unnaturally it is used by main line services to Dorchesterand Weymouth. The original line, however, has so far retained local services,and these are now to go.

There is nothing revolutionary about this process; many examples couldbe quoted of lines which, having been displaced as trunk lines, retained localservices for a time and eventually lost these too. The Midland lines fromRugby to Leicester, Chesterfield to Rotherham (via the Rother Valley) andBedford to Hitchin come to mind, as do the Lancashire and Yorkshirebranch from Askern to Knottingley and the North Eastern line northwardsfrom Ferryhill to Leamside, Co. Durham. All at various times carried trunktraffic between London and Scotland.

One of the few passages in the Report to make specific reference to thehistorical aspect of current problems concerns the multiplicity of stations intowns. "Competitive railway building in the past led not only to the duplica-tion of main arteries between some of the principal cities, but also toduplication of passenger stations . . . " (p. 14). To illustrate this, three cities,where remedial measures are at present under consideration, are then quoted.They are Leeds, Bradford and Glasgow. If, however, we are led by this tobelieve that competition has been the only factor leading to the duplicationof stations in cities, an examination of these three examples should soonconvince us to the contrary.

In Leeds (Fig. 2b) the two earliest passenger termini at Marsh Lane andHunslet Lane respectively were both inconveniently situated (though onemust remember that the city centre has tended to migrate westwards awayfrom Marsh Lane). Each was superseded at an early date for passengertraffic, which thereafter was handled in two other stations, Wellingtonand Central, but which entered Leeds on the tracks of four major companies(the Midland, London and North Western, North Eastern and GreatNorthern. A fifth, the Lancashire and Yorkshire, obtained access to bothstations by running powers). The Central Station was from its inception theproperty of no less than four separate companies (the Leeds, Dewsbury andManchester, the Great Northern, the Leeds and Thirsk and the West RidingUnion Railway)15. In spite of various amalgamations it was still ownedby four separate companies (the Great Northern, Lancashire and Yorkshire,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 9: Historical geography and the Beeching report

44 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE

Normanton\ Dewsbury

ThornhillMidland Rly. " \ June.L.SY. [Thornhill-Bradford!

Royston

' City Road \ Forster Í>n k Sq.

?-. - . xt Exchange S A.S"

Lines opened by 1868Midland RlyNorth Eastern RlyGreat Northern Rly [ /L.NW.R

= Joint Lines, , 3 miles

Under constructionin 1868

Over 250 f t .

Midland RailwayGreat Northern RailwayLancashire 8 Yorkshire Railway

YZA Over 500 ft.

AS. Adolphus Street

3 mites

Fig. 2 The Railways of Leeds and Bradford.A. The Midland Railway's approaches to Leeds and Bradford from the south-east.B. Railways in Leeds, 1868.C. Railways in Bradford shortly before the Grouping of 1923.

London and North Western and North Eastern) as late as 1922. When athird passenger station appeared in Leeds, it was built jointly by two of thecompanies (The London and North Western and North Eastern Railways)which already shared ownership of the Central Station. The need for theNew Station was created, not by the desire of the proprietors to provide newaccommodation independent of their co-owners at Central Station (whichboth companies continued to use), but rather by the need to develop andimprove through services over the two systems between South Lancashireand the North East Coast16. Using the existing layout, such services couldhave been operated (via Ripon) but only with a reversal in Leeds. To cutout this reversal and also to enable the through services to be routed via

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 10: Historical geography and the Beeching report

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE BEECHING REPORT 45

York, a short connecting line was opened through the centre of Leeds (1869),and the New Station, situated on this line, was completed at the same time.Multiplicity of stations in Leeds has therefore to be seen in relation to theavailability of routes for long-distance traffic through the city as well as themultiplicity of owning companies.

This point is even better illustrated in Bradford (Fig. 2c). The MidlandRailway owned its own station at Forster Square which could be reachedonly from the north, where a branch from the main line at Shipley followedthe only low-level route available into Bradford. From the southern sideof the city, the Lancashire and Yorkshire and the Great Northern ran theirtrains down 1 in 50 gradients into Exchange Station. (The Great NorthernRailway abandoned its own station at Adolphus Street for passenger traffic,preferring to run its trains over the L. & Y. to the more centrally situatedterminus.)

As early as 1846 the Leeds and Bradford Railway (builders of the Shipley-Bradford line) has obtained authority17 to make a connecting-link throughthe centre of the city which would have joined the West Riding Union (laterL. & Y.) line near the site of Exchange Station, but this was never completed.Later the Midland made persistent efforts to reach Bradford from the south-east18 by a branch from the main line at Royston, near Barnsley, but thisagain was never finished beyond Dewsbury. To improve their servicesbetween London and Bradford, the Midland therefore made arrangementsto run from Thornhill, near Dewsbury, over the Lancashire and Yorkshireto Bradford, where they were forced to use the Exchange Station becausetheir own station was inaccessible from this direction (Fig. 2a).

The inconvenience of station sites (cf. the early stations in Leeds) andthe inaccessibility of particular stations by rail from particular directions(cf. Bradford) are even more striking as formative factors in the urban railwaygeography of Glasgow which is far too complicated to be explained solelyby an incompatability of interest between competing companies.

In 1849 there were no fewer than four railway termini in Glasgow onthe south bank of the Clyde19, none of which has survived, at least as apassenger terminal, long enough to worry Dr Beeching. No terminus insuch a position could really be described as 'central', and, until the openingof the extensions of the Glasgow and South Western Railway to St Enochin 1876 and of the Caledonian to Central Station in 1879, the railwaycompanies whose trains approached the city from the southern side hadeither to be content with running them into a poor terminal site or to routethem circuitously into a more favourable one. The position of the CaledonianRailway as shown in Bradshaw for January, 1869, will serve to illustratethis (Fig. 3). Trains from Greenock and Wemyss Bay ran into Bridge StreetStation, which the Caledonian owned jointly with the Glasgow and SouthWestern. ("Deadly rivals though they might have been the Caledonian andthe G. & S.W. were closely interlinked, nay intertwined in the southernsuburbs of Glasgow")20. Some trains from the south-east ran into SouthSide, though some, including all the principal expresses from England,deviated at Motherwell and ran round the eastern side of the city intoBuchanan Street, which was more centrally situated. (South Side andBuchanan Street Stations were both Caledonian property.) Unfortunately,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 11: Historical geography and the Beeching report

46 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE

however, in order to reach Buchanan Street from the north-east, that isfrom the direction of Perth and Stirling, a reversal was necessary atGartsherrie, since the Hayhill Fork, from Gartcosh to GarnqueenNorth Junction, was not yet open for passenger traffic21. Rather than makethis reversal, the company preferred to route its trains on to the NorthBritish Railway at Greenhill Junction, 12 J miles out of Glasgow and runthem into the North British terminus at Queen Street. In short one companyused four separate termini, two of which it owned entirely, one jointly and theother not at all. It is true that the early acquisition of smaller companiesby the Caledonian Railway contributed to this situation; neverthelesscompetition alone can hardly be invoked to explain it.

To Stirling

Greenhill June.

GartsherrieCoatbndge

Rutherglen

No. o( C.R. passenger trains per day.aggregate, both directions

Caledonian Rly. trains on C.R. track

NBR ••

Joint •• IC.R.SG.8 S.W.I

10 mites [approxl .

Fig. 3 Route distribution of Caledonian Railway passenger trains in the Glasgow area,January 1869. Source: Bradshaw.

Inset.—Ownership of track in Glasgow, 1870. Source: Airefs Junction Diagrams, 1870.

When, therefore, we lament the evil consequences of competition infurnishing our towns with more stations than they require, we should dowell to remember the other factors involved, and to remember also the extentto which co-operation, often, it is true, enforced by Parliament, long agobrought about the 'rationalisation' and 'concentration' which in the Reportare considered so desirable (p. 14). Indeed Dr Beeching might havehad much more to worry about than he has. W. R. Lawson, for instance,writing half a century ago, thought that the concentration of railway trafficinto joint stations had gone much too far: "The muddle produced at LondonBridge by two distinct railways being tied up together in one terminal station

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014

Page 12: Historical geography and the Beeching report

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE BEECHING REPORT 4 7

was entirely due to the over caution of the Select Committees who sat on thevarious schemes for lines to the south coast. The promoters of the BrightonRailway proposed to have their terminus where the Oval is now, but theSelect Committee insisted on their coming up to London Bridge and sharingthe station already established there by the Blackwall and Dover lines. Notonly so, but they had to make joint use of the Dover Company's rails all theway down to Redhill. Everyone knows what a legacy of conflict and confusionthis arbitrary arrangement produced"22. On the changing geography oftransport J. B. Mitchell has this to say: "In some areas and in some waysthe geographical pattern of communications has great stability and oldpatterns have exerted striking long-term effects. In other areas and in otherways the pattern changes rapidly, sometimes dramatically, and thus affordsan excellent chance to see how geographical change takes place and to observethe consequences"23.

Between the two poles of stability and dramatic change the Britishrailway network has evolved. One is inclined to think of the Beeching Reportas essentially an instrument of dramatic change, and whether it is implementedin full, in part or not at all, it must be seen as the most important commentaryyet produced on the geography of British Railways. To see its realsignificance, however, we must glance backwards as well as forwards. Weshall then find instances of the anticipation of ideas which may not be asrevolutionary as they seem, and threads of continuity not all of which areto be cut.

1 British Railways Board, The Re-shaping of British Railways, 1963.2 White, H. P., The Re-shaping of British Railways: a Review, Geography, 1963, 48:

335-7.3 Patmore, J. A., "The changing network of British Railways", Geography, 1962, 47: 401-5.4 The detailed proposals affecting particular lines and stations are largely concerned with

passenger traffic. Proposals for freight traffic are couched in very general terms and arenot considered in this paper. At the time of writing it is not known how many of therecommendations of the Report will be implemented.

5 Grinling, C. H., History of the Great Northern Railway, 1898.6 Some idea of the extent of closure up to 1939 may be obtained from Greville, M. D.,

and Spence, J., A Handbook to Closed Passenger Lines of England and Wales, 1827 to 1939,1955.

7 Vallance, H. A., The History of the Highland Railway, 1938, and Barclay-Harvey, SirMalcolm, History of the Great North of Scotland Railway, 1940.

8 White, H. P., A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain, Vol. II, SouthernEngland, 1962: 91. Other examples are quoted in Appleton, J. H., "The Railway Networkof Southern Yorkshire", Trans. Inst. Brit. Geogr., 1956, 22: 159-169.

9 Thomas, D. St. John, The Rural Transport Problem, 1963.10 North Eastern Railway, Official Returns, British Railways, York.11 For a good case study see Parris, H. W., "Northallerton to Hawes, a study in branch-

line history", J. of Transport History, 1956, 2: 235-248.18 Committee on Railway Communication between London, Dublin, Edinburgh and

Glasgow, Fourth Report, 1841, Appendix: 425-426.13 Lewin, H. G., The Railway Mania and its Aftermath, 1936: 37-38.14 Its extremely circuitous course earned it the nickname of "Castleman's Corkscrew".

White, H. P., Op. cit., (1962) 154.16 Leeds Central Station Act, 11 and 12 Vic., cap. lxxi, 1848.16 Filliter, E., Report to the Parliamentary Committee of Leeds Corporation, 1864.17 Leeds & Bradford Railway Act., 9 & 10 Vic., cap. ceci, 1846.18 Appleton, J. H., The Historical Geography of Railways in Yorkshire. Unpublished M.Sc.

Thesis, King's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1955.19 Nock, O. S., The Caledonian Railway, 1962: 27.20 Ibid, 26.21 Ibid, 25.22 Lawson, W. R., British Railways: a Financial and Commercial Survey 1913: 20.83 Mitchell, J. B., Historical Geography, 1954: 287-8.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

itaet

sbib

lioth

ek H

eide

lber

g] a

t 00:

00 1

6 N

ovem

ber

2014