ILikeTrains - The Beeching Report

[mysilentwake]

Amazing band - amazing song.



[truekiwijoker]

Why blame Beeching and not the previous bad management that had followed the nationalisation of rail and had botched the 1955 modernisation?

[SgtHydra]

Boo hoo.

Subsidized workers are unproductive and a drain on the economy.

Look around the world at all the mess you progressives have done.

[edbeeching]

Unlucky mates

[mimiskatr]

i need a hug so much right now

[ptpac]

@mimiskatr Toma este abraço, tb preciso.

[mimiskatr]

@ptpac sorry,but i didn't understand what did you say..english please!good morning from Greece!

[KarovaMilkyBar]

almost there.

[MeatMaggot]

What a wonderfully appropriate song for a band called "I like trains". I never heard about the history of turmoil the British Railways was going through unless Florian Opitz made a comment on the recent acts of privatisation in his movie "The Big Sellout".

[NeilTheDruid]

This song lovely. It oozes tradgedy. The short sightedness in seeing the potential of some of the lines Beeching and politicians allowed to close.

A crying shame because today we desperately need some of the branchlines that where closed.

[Femmenition]

Model murderer!

[TodayIPlayRs]

This... this.. is just the best song i've ever heard and.. yes i heard alot ; )))

[234yourstruly]

my second name is beeching

[bunnygun1]

you are taking apart

what we made

with our hands

and our hearts.

beautiful

[thalkettoth]

god i almost cried.

[left888]

He even persuaded BR to give his local steam railway more time to find the money to buy a locomotive

[ryanlim2002]

@left888 What. The Bluebell Railway?

[3rdseal]

i really love this band! and i get the stories behind the songs step by step...just because i am german...no one would tell us ever what somebody did to the british railway system...:o)...it´s really worth to take a look behind the tunes of this band! great!

[Marillionmad]

Ok i know it was a very looooong time ago, long before I was born, but its something I feel really passionate about, i even made a documentry about one line he closed. Yes it may have been the good idea at the time but now, the railways have been messed up. Personally, I think the survey on some of the lines were rigged. They're trying to close the Walsall To Wolverhampton line. Thats gonna put more strain on the roads! As if there aint enough cars on the roads already

[ryko26]

what an amazing song

[sekarius87]

theoi

[Durbs75]

Puffing on the line? Important? If it wasn't Beeching it'd be someone else. Grow up, children. Of course, you can double your income tax - if you have any - to pay for it all. But not mine. Ever. Got it?

[mekanopsis1]

"Oh! Dr. Beeching, what have you done?

There once were lots of trains to catch, but soon there will be none!

I'll have to buy a bike, 'cause I can't afford a car.

Oh! Dr. Beeching! What a naughty man you are!"

[cogidubnus1953]

(continued)

Commissioned by a pro-lorry Tory government, all the cuts were implemented by Labour politicians under pressure from road transport dominated unions - read Richard Marsh's book - Off the Rails if you don't believe me...and the investment he requested largely didn't materialise at all, and where it did it was too late.

So feel free, why don't you, to continue to besmirch the name of an honest man, whilst allowing the crooked lying politicians to get away with it...

[baconsandwich2007]

I thought the bulk of the closures were down to Joe Marples, Conservative Minister of Transport. I know Labour did their fair share too but Marples just happened to own a road contruction company so was anit-rail from the start. Buggered off the Lichstenstein after he was caught for tax evasion! Nothing changes does it? Politicians will allways talk crap and steal whatever they can before getting caught.

[cogidubnus1953]

Marples commissioned the first (blue) report, & the Tory cabinet approved it, but Labour were in before the report was (partially) implemented...it was they who ignored large chunks of the second (orange) report. Interestingly it was BRs own inability to provide some of the most elementary stats about it's passenger-base that led to some of the anomolies that were subsequently spotted.

Marples majority shareholding in the roadbuilding company had been put in his wifes name so that was OK then.

[baconsandwich2007]

I bow down to your superior knowledge! The only thing I am sure about is that the closures were nothing to do with Dr Beeching. He simply wrote the report. I guess because it was nicknamed "The Beeching Report" people assume that it was him wot did it.

[cogidubnus1953]

It's pretty obvious only one of you braindead lot has actually read the Beeching report and seen what info he acted on, what he really recommended (which included massive investment in Railfreight and big investment in improvements to key passenger corridors too) and what he saw as the future.

[kezlynaugh]

@cogidubnus1953 And its pretty obvious that you have never spoke first hand to the people who lost their jobs due to Dr Beechings axe, and you have obviously never walked old railway tracks through some of the most beautiful countryside in England and felt the emotion that these places were once alive with tourist trains and people yet now are empty with a few old buildings and overgrown railway embankments.

[raven16091985]

i love iliketrains

mfg

the ngg

[victoryplayers]

Beeching wasn't an idiot. Read the report, the evidence is pretty compelling. I travel by train a lot and on the whole I'm a pretty happy. I'd be happier still with a more extensive netwrok but its rediculous to pretend that the majority of what Beeching proposed was anything other than inevitable given the econmics of rail on lightly used routes.

[lolguy543]

i know it was for stuff like that but he shut alot of railways

[Marillionmad]

Railways which we now need

[TortoiseshellKat]

Dr Richard Beeching closed 1/3 of the network. Now we have only 2/3 of our railways. He didn't anticipate that by 2007 the number of people using the network would exceed that of the 1950s! Hence the overcrowding!

What do 'labour' do? Absolutely bugger all! The only place where real reopenings take place is in Scotland (Edinburgh-Galashiels etc.)

Beeching- what an idiot!

[EtienneBalderston]

Steam is on the main line... haha not what the doctor prescribed is it? So sad what happened to the uks once extensive, vital and overall important railway system. I think its great that a song has been made about this. As long as i can still hear puffing on the main line im happy

[DeadEndDolls]

no not the new smiths somthing equaly wonderful but not the new smiths

[joey1481]

new smiths ?