Abandoned: How The Beeching Report Decimated Britain's Railways | Timeline

I'm on a journey to rediscover the railways but this isn't a story of Steel and steam it's about people in 21st century Britain trying to get around without stressing themselves oh just a nightmare it's just you know you start your day and every day is like this when you think the railways been here for over a hundred years and overnight it's not very voice gone so wild life is finished it's a cock-up really it's a classic British up [Music] this is the story of how Britain's great railway heritage once the envy of the world was squandered for short-term gain by decision-makers who failed to see the long-term damage they were wreaking one man carried the can for the carve up of our railways dr. Richard beaching and now in the 21st century were still feeling the effects of the cuts he made in the 1960s in my job as a travel journalist I see at firsthand what millions of us have to put up with on the daily grind into work hundred this morning very busy traffic in this film I'm setting out to travel from Portishead to Minehead by rail where I can and buy car and bike in places where the trains don't run anymore I want to find out what happened to communities affected by the beaching report a document that led to one third of our precious railways being axed first stop a small coastal community with big town ambitions Portishead North Somerset answer to the South of France a marina with shops restaurants and a touch of glamour what more could you want well how about [Music] Portishead once had a thriving passenger rail link with the outside world but dr. beaching decided this and hundreds of other branch lines across Britain weren't paying their way the Transport Minister at the time Ernest Marples was perfectly clear dr. beech Inger that with whom Island very friendly relationship cannot close the line that's subjected to a pest is alive only the minister on behalf of the government can do that and I'm quite certain that we shan't close a line unless we're perfectly certain that there will be adequate alternative facility nearly a century after the line from Portishead to Bristol first opened the last passenger train pulled out in September 1964 in its place the people of Portishead now wake up to scenes like this this morning I'm meeting one commuter who says she has no choice but to use her car to get to work in the centre of Bristol Portishead's waterside location has made it popular with young urban professionals good morning ladies and gentlemen welcome to the 842 from Portishead to Bristol this morning's driver is Lisa Metcalfe Lisa is a marketing officer with the Soil Association based in the city just 12 miles away it is a beautiful place and I was living here before I started at the sort of satiation right in the center of town so yeah I don't think I can afford to in theory it should take me less than an hour to reach the center of Bristol by car but that's not the everyday experience facing commuters heading out of portishead okay it been going four minutes I reckon we covered about a mile and we've read a lot what's going on you know this is the one main route out of the whole of portishead just one Road just a nightmare it's just you know you start your day and every day by there's so much for 21st century progress and to think there was once a railway here leaving Lisa in the traffic I meet a man who fired the steam drains to Bristol we used to leave Portishead 880 with a steam engine and four coaches and we stopped at eight stations on the way to Bristol and we still got to Bristol at 8:52 34 minutes that is amazing and this is going back what half a century you could do it in basically half an hour yeah including yes stops traffic and travel BBC the traffic due to the roadworks continuing on the m5 Avonmouth bridge resurfaced in there both ways but on the port 3/100 it is close to gridlock I'm afraid within the next two years fast-growing Portishead is expected to become the biggest town in Britain without a railway not a good slogan this is ridiculous half an hour more or less we've been going the train would have put you into Temple Meads station in Bristol already if they had other options if they had you know like a rail network from force edge then you know I wouldn't I would not drive and Lisa wouldn't need to if the passenger train service to Portishead was brought back what's remarkable is that most of the branch line here is still intact and three miles up the track it's already back in use in 2002 the government put in 15 million pounds to help Royal port buried docks reopen a rail freight service the track was relayed between Port Fairy and Bristol and six years on it's a commercial success with up to 14 freight trains a day ferrying cars coal and other cargo throughout Britain such a pity then that the government didn't see fit to put in just a few million pounds more to relay the last three miles of track into Portishead itself the man leading the campaign to bring back rail to port his head is Alan Matthews well it's only 3 miles to be relayed the rest of the line interpreter is currently a freight line and is therefore operational ok requires a new station a pill and the new station here but it is only 3 Mars to relay but I think there's a sea change is now within local government within government itself that with high fuel prices with traffic congestion a quick easy way of getting in by rail is the answer even the port company running the freight service out of Port Bri says a reopened passenger service is overdue everywhere else in the country we're we're we're on the railway line we're sharing it with passengers so why not this railway - last year we we handled 1.7 million tons of cargo on that line and that's equated to over 9 million road miles save and that's got to be a good thing man you've got queues stretching back towards the called Dana gate roundabout and this is this is padding time now makes me want to cry I'm gonna have to you know if I can stay with a friend a few nights a week so at least I'm you know I get to work on time that's I don't know I to be stressful thing to have to do to actually have a weekend home in a week oh when the two places are only 12 12 miles apart it's ridiculous if you don't mind me saying so hello it's appalling finally we're moving okay so this has been a particularly bad morning commuter hell in fact but it's all we made worse for thousands of car drivers like Lisa because they've got no alternative to the road doctor beaching took away their trains [Music] two hours two minutes what are you doing Lisa I don't know I mean you know and I was a bit more have a respectable time than her than the two hours but it looks like I'm gonna have to move hands have a lovely day Lisa thanks a million bye-bye so it's come to this doctor beaching got rid of one third of the country's rail network as the government found our love affair with the car by building more roads now we're all paying the price a transport system that's crippled by chronic traffic congestion Oh doctor beaching what have you done Bristol Temple Meads the most magnificent station in Brunel's kingdom of the trade and the hub of the region's rail network the trouble is most of the spokes are now missing in beachings time official thinking was the railways are running out of steam that car is the future David Henshaw one of the country's leading Transport commentators says beaching ignored the importance of looking at the whole transport system and failed to predict what Britain might actually need in the future it's a cock-up really it's a classic British up and I think we're now we're now regretting it we're now a lot more people in the country travelling a lot more much more mobile population and we're now seeing the folly of closing these railway lines in the 19th century in Britain we brought the railway to the world we had brilliant engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel creating these masterpieces have we squandered our legacy yes we had the finest railway system in the world there's no doubt about it and I think in in the in the car centric mood of the 1960s it was seen as an anachronism the Beeching report was much tougher on the railways than perhaps it should have been and we're regretting it now like crazy I mean this railway station is at least twice as busy as it was in beachings era it is now overflowing with people and it could be even busier if the branch lines leading into it more branch lines leading into it stayed open I think it's a tragedy yeah in portably the reopened rail freight service has already had government backing but down the track three miles away the people have Portishead are still waiting for their passenger service to be restored yet it would cost less than the government subsidy that helped set up the freight line from the docks six years ago North Somerset Council recently bought the land where the missing three miles of track would go officials have met in secret with Network Rail both agreed to take things to the next stage whatever that means but why the delay Porter says is a particular irony because the line closed in the 60s like many others on economic unneeded would-wouldn't wouldn't be necessary in the future they derelict and then was completely rebuilt for Freight quite recently so they've got modern infrastructure they've done the signalling all they've got to do is to reopen this short bit into Portishead itself there's no political will one thing that puzzles me is that even when everybody seems to be saying it's a brilliant idea to reopen a line they are talking about three four five years before a line can actually be open why is this so much foot-dragging partly the structure of the industry nowadays privatization has made it much more difficult to reopen lines and much more expensive and if I had a franchise to run trains for seven years or ten years I wouldn't be interested in reopening a branch tram and I would see that as a very long term project and it wouldn't be something I'd want to pay for I would expect the money to come from central government but back in the 60s it was beachings view that if the railways were to have any future they had to embrace a new vision of intercity travel with high speed high frequency trains and beaching was right about that at least today intercity is more popular than ever speeding me on the next part of my journey from Bristol Temple Meads on the Great Western line towards Taunton David know that you and me we love trains we love train travel but we are in a minority as regular users of the railways can we really expect everyone else to subsidize our journeys I don't think that's true traffic congestion is so product nowadays that I believe people are coming back to the drain in numbers so it's not a case of the majority subsidizing the minority in any event no one looks at the economics of roads you don't care people say that roads losing certainly millions of pounds we need to put subsidy they don't talk about roads in the same language as they do railways and maybe that's the problem indeed Britain's intense love affair with the car simply keeps growing millions of us can't get enough for four wheels yet we can see where it's heading the daily nightmare of congestion on a scale that would have been barely conceivable in beachings day two hours to travel twelve miles from portishead into bristol what a waste of precious time for Lisa and thousands of commuters like I left David Henshaw to continue onwards to Taunton the next scheduled stop on my beaching journey once played a crucial role in the life of the local economy crew - Junction yatin yes familiar century this small North Somerset village was actually an important railway junction where three lines met today it's just a halt along the Bristol to Exeter line in its heyday the cheddar valley was home to the area's biggest export no not cheese but strawberries millions of them 50 years ago the strawberry line from Draycott to yatin ferried cheddar valley strawberries to the midlands and beyond this railway station used to be an important Junction for three different lines from 1867 when the shadow Valley railway line was opened which ran from here down through today on to the city of Wales and also the Cleveland branch line that ran from here to the popular Victoria result of Cleveland just popularly used by people and also the famous Tedder Valley strawberries they were transported along the line he gave it his name but by the early sixties use of the cheddar valley line was already declining fewer passengers were traveling by rail and more growers were choosing to use Road Transport to get their produce to market when the Beeching axe finally came down on the strawberry line it spelt the end of an era for yatin and a whole of the cheddar valley but today the trains passing through yatin run alongside the new face of the old cheddar valley railway let me take you down cuz I'm going to Strawberry Fields all the way along the strawberry line from yatin right through to cheddar tastic hey on that Penny Lane [Music] all that remains of Congress free station except the sound of a sister mostly locomotive [Music] at the end of the strawberry line in Drakon south of cheddar andrew seekers family have been growing strawberries for three generations what was it like when the line was here it was really good it we could put strawberries on the train and it would go to Gateshead Liverpool and the strawberries were hardly damaged because of the smoothness of the railway line and then it had to go by lorry and of course it it wasn't the same it damaged the fruit more than it would on the train the end of the strawberry line in the mid sixties coincided with a decline in local horticulture competition from Europe was undercutting fruit from the cheddar valley but even if beaching was right to ax this branch there's still an enormous affection today for the train service that was lost there was four special trains went out a date taking the strawberries and distributed in all over England we fought for many years to keep the line open but we lost the fight and then they're the only means left was long distance Loras and of course they would only take two towns with an economic load [Music] today David children now 80 years old is still growing strawberries for him at least this is one way of life that will never change [Music] trains leaving the cheddar Valley I ride west across the Somerset Levels tomorrow I continued my beaching journey from Taunton where the Great Western line meets the West Somerset railway built to serve the seaside resort of mine it Talton trouble is I missed the last train to Minehead by 37 years trains running along the 26 miles of track between Taunton and Minehead since 1874 but this one the 1315 to mine head-on today Saturday January the 2nd 1971 is one of the very last there's an axe come down on this very pleasant but unprofitable line now the line is still there but if I'm going to get a train to the west Somerset coast I've got a bill work to do first after beachings axe the Taunton to mine headline was almost all resurrected four years later to become a heritage railway but today there's a bit of a gap which means I have to leave Taunton station and take to the road to Bishop's lidget four miles away the a39 it's the main road - west somerset and a pretty scary place to be when you're on two wheels well it's taken me 20 uncomfortable minutes to cycle here from Taunton I saw a couple of signs along the way one was reassuring it said bishops Lydia which meant I was going in the right direction the other one wasn't it said 161 casualties in five years of course the Beeching report was never asked to take into account the cost of lives lost or shattered in road accidents train travel is far safer than going by car thanks so much more civilised bathed in steam and nostalgia plenty of us hanker after a way of life that the 21st century has all but ended West Somerset is among the most successful heritage lines in the country so far this year around a hundred and eighty thousand passengers have taken the train to my note [Music] in vain giggles oh man so civilized with me on the train to mine head the railways general manager Paul Khanna BM is the romance especially with the steam engines here wandering through the the glorious countryside that we have today Oh surely with the economy being under stress and people worrying about their household budgets must be more and more difficult for West Somerset railway to attract visitors yeah I think we've got to be very careful how we market the rail we know we did have a successful August with over 42,000 visitors so people are still coming along to support us to make sure we survive through good times and difficult times one thing we're striving for over the next two to three years to have a small two car train running from Bishop needed into Taunton to connect with our regular steam services and let's not forget West Somerset used to be a living working railway line that took children to school and people on holiday to Minehead via the track from Taunton to Bishop's Lydiard that's currently closed to passenger trains at Willetton a brief encounter with a woman desperate to see this heritage line reunited with the main network at Taunton [Music] my brief encounter is with Angela lamp load in government we hear an awful lot about joined up thinking the problem if I may with this lovely West Somerset railway is that it's not joined up to the rest of the country you're absolutely right and that's something that we have been working with partners and with West Somerset Railway to actually get that link between Bishops Lydiard and tools and up and running and it's going to be very soon happening I sincerely hope because we would actually like to get a commuter train running from Taunton to Minehead if the local people Det can demonstrate that yes they would use that service plus it would give people an opportunity to travel down from the Midlands Birmingham all the way through to Minehead for a holiday without having to use their own vehicle so gain another benefit but hang on this was a line axed because dr. beachy decided it wasn't making enough money yet now with an average of more than 500 passengers every single day taking the train to Minard this line is more popular than ever and thousands more visitors would use rail if only they could get a three train all the way across the tracks there and again the siblings their what isn't there is the political will and to some extent the railway company their finest they are they most people come to these preserved railways by car and they don't see any particular need to spend millions of pounds reconnected to network after Buckland's holiday camp West Somerset railway is the second biggest tourist attraction in the district and the local economy benefits to the tune of more than six million pounds a year nostalgia is clearly good for business and the old ways do keep the trains running blue anchor has the oldest working signal box in the country it's like a giant mechanical computer which allows the railway to run safely of course all of this could probably be operated by one little microchip not that Adam Hammond could possibly agree with such heresy there's nothing worse than just pushing a button something happens somebody here is making it happen when you've got a signal box like this with all the levers people are highly trained to do it and I think it's very very important part of our future and our past and to me it all goes into one [Music] I'm almost at the end of my beaching journey arriving on the coast that Minehead by train just as the Beatles did in 1964 the Fab Four came here to shoot part of their first film a hard day's night you know [Music] as number of places I've simply never been to because they're too inaccessible Madagascar Mozambique and until today mine head like millions of British travelers I don't have a car and I rely on the railways to get around and at the moment mine head is one end of a line to nowhere no disrespect of bishops digit I've traveled through Portishead to mine head to see for myself what happened to local communities in lost their trains in the sixties I've got here by car by bike and yes by train where I could I reckon salvaging the wreckage left behind by doctor bitching is taking far longer than it should because of politicians looking no further for the next elections Britain's given the world a great deal to be proud of Shakespeare football folding bikes but the greatest gift of all is the railway somehow though in the sixties we let the wheels fall off it's up to us to decide shall we board the Express to a brave new world of train travel or simply take the all stations to oblivion you choose but make it quick before we reach the end of the line [Music] [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 169,878

Keywords: Car, Cycling routes, Documentary journalism, Environmental conservation, Geographic exploration, Heritage preservation, Historical landscapes, History documentary service, Industrial heritage, Little Dot Studios, Local economy, Local heritage, Local history, Railway history, Railway infrastructure, Railways preservation, Rural connectivity, Social impact, TIMELINE, Timeline - World History Documentaries, Travel inspirations

Id: MH9zGMkihYA

Length: 29min 2sec (1742 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2019