It depends what you mean by ‘any size’. I am Scottish, and I looked for Scottish towns that don’t have a rail link, however I struck gold with this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_towns_with_no_railway_station

Some of whom even I have heard of.

There is still archeological evidence of railways all over the place. Cuttings and embankments and tunnels that folk dug and built and burrowed. Allowing that to be replaced with Motorways was an ignorant thing to do, I think.

Transport policy has been too much in favour of road.

The only town of any size that isn’t served by rail is Corby, and the claim that it did badly after Beeching is, well, wrong – employment grew up to 1979, plummeted when British Steel closed the steelworks, and then grew substantially from 1990 onwards. The Beeching cuts weren’t about cutting services from towns to cities – they were about cutting services from nowhere to nowhere.

“What’s the difference between trains running from Cardiff or Bristol to London now and pre 1947?”

Not much, admittedly.

What’s the difference between trains running from Bristol to Plymouth now and pre-1947? – half of them have run through from Newcastle, because that service pattern makes the most sense. What’s the difference between trains running from Brighton to London Bridge now and pre-1947? – the majority now go on to Bedford via St Pancras, because that service pattern makes the most sense.

You’re missing the point that that the sectorisation of BR in the early 1980s – under state ownership, and long before privatisation was contemplated – was what broke the track/train interface – and that it had massively positive results in terms of service quality and ridership. So did the franchise system, on the train operator side – it’s just unfortunate that the utterly stupid Railtrack sell-off (done solely to fuck things up for the incoming Labour government, which it did admirably) cancelled out the other effects.

“You don’t scrap infrastructure simply because a few mistakes were made over improvement.”

That isn’t the point. The point is that if you give someone £25bn in current money and they waste it, then you’ll be reluctant to give them any more (which is the main reason the DfT has been so culturally hostile to big rail investment over the last 50 years).

It is the bloody point. You sound like a management accountant without any conception of value. It is pretty clearly the case that towns that are served by rail have done better than towns that aren’t. Whose to say which towns would have benefitted most from retaining a rail infrastructure to major cities? There is a quite clear clustering effect around decent transport links, especially rail, as you ought to know.

On the question of running rights, sure, there is a train that runs from Glasgow to Penzance, if memory serves me correctly. Yes, it would have to pay fees for running on GWR metals. So what? It probably always did, or there was a mutual agreement about the Penzance to Glasgow train. Running alternately, obviously.

There is both a regulatory case to be made for simplification and also a business case. It would also, incidentally, help the customer

But the service pattern was completely different pre-nationalisation, because it was based on, with a very few exceptions, exclusively running along tracks that happened to belong to a particular operator.

Not really. The service pattern, which is just a buzz word or phrase, hasn’t changed an iota, especially if you look at inter city. What’s the difference between trains running from Cardiff or Bristol to London now and pre 1947? The track and the trains were both owned by the GWR. Intermediate services were also provided by them. You are thurled to the current franchising system which, deliberately, destroys the relationship between track and TOCs. True you now have a multitude of TOCs running over tracks, but that was Thatcher attempting to destroy what was left.

With the exception of freight, which was largely broken out of geographical constraints by privatisation, to no obvious beneficial effect, the train companies do provide geographical services.

You can’t, realistically, pretend that geography doesn’t exist.

Just as a by the way, it costs £21 million a mile to improve a motorway. And all you get is more pollution.

Meh, a thinko there. “Its current and former *subcontractors*”, obviously.

That isn’t the point. The point is that if you give someone £25bn in current money and they waste it, then you’ll be reluctant to give them any more (which is the main reason the DfT has been so culturally hostile to big rail investment over the last 50 years).

there are numerous examples of lines that were closed back then being re-opened at enormous cost now. My local (ish) example being the proposal to (part) re-open the Waverly route.

As I said above, the lack of route safeguarding was silly. However, only a tiny proportion of the lines closed under Beeching are being re-opened, and many of those are based on traffic and demand projections (following massive demographic and economic change) that would have been completely unimaginable in the early 1960s. When a route that makes an operating loss is safeguarded, it’s cheaper to close it and re-open it years later than to keep it running.

I don’t think cars, buses or lorries make any sort of long term environmental sense whatsoever.

To serve a village of 200 people with one shop? Of course cars and buses and lorries make more environmental sense than trains for that kind of market…

The point about having a structure of transport and maintenance under the one roof is that they are not likely to sue each other.

…which might be relevant if there were any examples of TOCs suing Network Rail, which there aren’t. The legal disputes have been between NR and its current or former subsidiaries.

Go back to pre nationalisation. Largely speaking, except for running rights, the owners of the trains owned the track. Where running rights existed they were paid for without a quibble.

But the service pattern was completely different pre-nationalisation, because it was based on, with a very few exceptions, exclusively running along tracks that happened to belong to a particular operator.

BR’s sectorisation plan allowed the introduction of the much more useful ‘grouped by business’ rather than ‘grouped by historical accident’ route system we have today. The current routes work well at meeting the demand for journeys that people actually want to make, given the tracks that are actually in palce.

And if you believe, wrongly, that the TOC/Network Rail interface is a disastrous and terrible source of inefficiency, why on earth don’t you think the same problem would come into play with ‘running rights’ between different TOCs on track managed by the other?

You don’t scrap infrastructure simply because a few mistakes were made over improvement.

Yes, it was probably a mistake to go for new steam locomotives. I’m not sure what you are talking about when you say:

After that, it’s unsurprising that cost-cutting was required. Most, although not all, of the cuts made under Beeching were essential – the lines that were cut were largely those with negative benefit/cost ratios (i.e. not just non-profitmaking ones). In a world where cars, buses and lorries exist, rural branch lines don’t even make environmental sense, much less economic sense.

Especially as there are numerous examples of lines that were closed back then being re-opened at enormous cost now. My local (ish) example being the proposal to (part) re-open the Waverly route. Your attitude matches government short termism to a tee.

I don’t think cars, buses or lorries make any sort of long term environmental sense whatsoever. Rail might do.

The point about having a structure of transport and maintenance under the one roof is that they are not likely to sue each other. It is ludicrous to assume that two branches of the same organisation would be allowed, by their Board of Directors, to sue each other.

It clearly does not work. There are cross subsidies between track and ToC whenever there is a closure for maintenance. It is frankly ludicrous.

(unlike pre-1945, almost all freight traffic and a large proportion of passenger traffic crosses any sensible ‘regional’ boundaries you could list. The East Coast Main Line includes trains run by five or six freight operators, First Capital Connect, National Express, Trans Pennine Express, Cross Country, Hull Trains and Grand Central; from starting points ranging from Plymouth and Inverness through to Liverpool and King’s Lynn. Who exactly would run the track from where to where, and how would you stop them disadvantaging other operators?)

Go back to pre nationalisation. Largely speaking, except for running rights, the owners of the trains owned the track. Where running rights existed they were paid for without a quibble.

As for the ridiculous fragmentation that we see now, who does that serve, except QCs? There wasn’t much wrong with the pre 1947 arrangement.

As far as freight is concerned there was a thing called a Road Railer. Wonder why that never saw the light of day.

Politics, huh! Road lobbyists, etc…..

Other than tax bands, HMRC have a charming habit of not index-linking exemptions and reliefs set out in statute until they effectively become useless. Arguing that a 40p per mile limit reflects economic reality is a stretch, to say the least.

The most blatant case is that of luncheon vouchers, which are tax exempt up to 15p. In the 1950s, three shillings was a reasonable lunch. Nowadays, however… (Also, they consider that in certain circumstances £8.5k pa makes one a highly-paid employee.)

I see what you mean – I’ve genuinely got very little idea how the proportion of car users breaks down between “service and depreciation based on age” and “service and depreciation based on mileage”, but the former group *should* base cost appraisals of train vs car on the cost of petrol and the latter group *should* base them on 25p/mile.

In practice, most people in the latter group probably don’t think about costs in that way, and probably do view the “car servicing” and “making journey x” budgets as distinct and unrelated. That’s a tough one for the railways to deal with – effectively for leisure trips they need *not only* to be cheaper than the actual marginal cost of the car journey, but *also* to be cheaper than the lower, perceived marginal cost…

Servicing and other such thing are also part of the wider “running a car” budget, which is separate from the journey’s budget.

I do take your point, about the wider long term costs of using a car and where that has a place in considerations…but unlike some others here I’m not talking about commuting, I’m just talking about the supposedly more sustainable option of taking a day trip or a holiday and using the train is significantly less affordable than using the car.

Agreed, which is why I’m taking the 25p figure.

“and that costs are somehow felt immediately rather than more prominently at periods of time AFTER certain mileage.”

Not quite sure where you’re at here.

Most cars are serviced on a “xxx miles or yy months” basis; I suppose if you’ve got a car you very seldom use you might find the marginal cost of extra miles is zero because you always run out of months before you run out of miles, but if you travel for work frequently enough for it to be at all important then you won’t be in that situation.

If you’re saying “I don’t have to pay the cash money for servicing my car earlier than I’d otherwise needed to have done until three months down the line, whereas I have to pay the train fare now”, that’s true but irrelevant – the liability is incurred when you make the journey (if a CFO failed to include depreciation in the public accounts, he’d find himself in jail PDQ).

Let’s charitably assume that they’re netting off the fixed cost of running a car against the first 10,000 miles, with the 25p taken as the marginal cost (after all, service intervals and depreciation both have a significant mileage component, so it’s misleading not to include them on top of the petrol).

In which case, the marginal cost is £40 for the one way journey or £80 for the return – so still significantly cheaper than one person on the train if you’re coming back (which I think it’s fair to assume most people will be).

Oh, stop it with the “prolier than thou” bollocks. Most employers will give you an interest-free season ticket loan, even if you don’t have a grand in the bank. In any case, it only costs about £50 per year more to buy monthly seasons (plus an extra £20 for a Network Railcard, which has most of the annual season ticket discounts).

“1 person, travelling single direction to Cornwall from bristol. £49. At a distance of around 160 miles this is half a tank of petrol which currently costs about £20.”

The Inland Revenue cost the car trip at £64. I believe them. Result: train wins (also, the difference between the single and return train ticket is only £1, whereas the return car trip is another £64).

No, for *one* person. I wasn’t even talking about families. When you start talking about families the car journey becomes even cheaper by comparison. Example in point, annecdotal as it may be I am honestly not for a second believing this is the only overpriced journey… 1 person, travelling single direction to Cornwall from bristol. £49. At a distance of around 160 miles this is half a tank of petrol which currently costs about £20. This is for one person remember, and it is over twice the price than traveling by car.

…whereas I view the £900ish per year that gets me unlimited travel anywhere I might want to go in London

How lovely for you, not everyone has the kind of money to front nearly a grand to pay for our shitty transport.

It’s weird in a couple of places – why the fucking hell can anyone sane think that “argument to romantic notions of rural England or the warp and weft of the train in our national identity” should have any merit in determining trapnsport policy? – but overall highlights why something akin to Beeching’s work was necessary (I’d agree with Hislop and the commentators that selling off for development, rather than mothballing, closed lines was short-sighted, although I’m sceptical that anyone could rationally have predicted that would be the case in 1964…)

No. The complete fuck-up was the Modernisation Plan of 1955, which wasted a billion pounds *in 1955 money* on a new build of steam locomotives which would be scrapped as hopelessly uneconomic within 10 years; a massive upgrade of sub-wagon-level freight facilities, which would be closed as hopelessly uneconomic within 10 years; and a build of new diesel trains specced and built for largely political reasons by different regions, which were mostly scrapped within 10 years.

After that, it’s unsurprising that cost-cutting was required. Most, although not all, of the cuts made under Beeching were essential – the lines that were cut were largely those with negative benefit/cost ratios (i.e. not just non-profitmaking ones). In a world where cars, buses and lorries exist, rural branch lines don’t even make environmental sense, much less economic sense.

“but the method, seperating track from trains was designed to fail.”

Again, this is rubbish. The disaster in privatisation was separating responsibility for track maintenance from people who understood engineering, because Railtrack was an outsourcing company not an engineering company. Operationally, outside of closed metro systems, track was separated from trains anyway (BR’s train operational sectors – Intercity, Network SouthEast, etc – were not geographically aligned with or run under the same management as its track sectors), and there’s no reason why it can’t work. Indeed, it /does/ work, and running it in any other way would be at least as problematic.

(unlike pre-1945, almost all freight traffic and a large proportion of passenger traffic crosses any sensible ‘regional’ boundaries you could list. The East Coast Main Line includes trains run by five or six freight operators, First Capital Connect, National Express, Trans Pennine Express, Cross Country, Hull Trains and Grand Central; from starting points ranging from Plymouth and Inverness through to Liverpool and King’s Lynn. Who exactly would run the track from where to where, and how would you stop them disadvantaging other operators?)

The complete fuck up was Beeching, and it all went to hell on a big lorry ever since. Of course privatisation was a load of nonsense, a twitch of a dying Thatcherite regeime, but the method, seperating track from trains was designed to fail. Or make millions for QC’s.

It stunk, and it still does.

> [it's currently showing peak trains from London to Manchester, out 7AM tomorrow and back at 6PM, for £128 return]

That’s €72.20 return on the Eurostar from Milan to Florence and back, almost the same distance to the last km. €150 would get my entire family there and back with the standard family discount.

Which is my point: *not* that we have inferior rail *services* (I’ve lived about half of the last 18 months in Italy, so I know just how shoddy regional rail can sometimes be there–and some of the Artesia services between Italy and France are totally unacceptable to a UK rail user).

The key problem that *affordability* here is shot, with a dash of idiotic complexity chucked in for good measure. Complexity that suits the beancounters and shareholders, but absolutely not passengers.

(Note, too, btw, that if I roll up at Milano Centrale tomorrow morning before departure I can get that same fare. You can’t.)

…for 5 people (or 3.5, depending on how you count kids). That isn’t how most cars are used. Train travel needs to beat average car use to drive modal shift – that’s 1 occupant at peak time, and 2 occupants off-peak – and that’s pretty much exactly what the current fares do.

“Even if you have a sudden need to travel from London to Manchester at the wrong time, and haven’t booked in advance?”

Pretty much yeah – based on taxman mileage, the fare works out the same (and you can get peak advance fares, which are about 50% the anytime single fare, right up to the night before travel). If I was travelling with a partner/kids, then the dynamics would be very different.

It’s quite clear that the bus company (stagecoach) is not being given enough of an incentive to improve services and prefers to run buses along the main roads which miss a lot of larger villages.

Definitely true. Buses outside London are by far the worst public transport disgrace the UK faces, and (unlike the rail stuff, where they’ve genuinely not done a bad job) it’s an absolute dismal failure by Labour to fail to reverse the Tories’ insane local bus deregulation.

“In the UK, I buy a ticket to manchester at the station -£300. over the internet, £45. This is simply farcical. And, as a result, I do everything possible to avoid travelling on disgusting UK rail services, with all their in-trip mindless commentary”

Lies: all ticket deals available on the Internet are also available on stations (except a couple of companies who give a 10% discount for web bookings). You need to ask the bloke for an advance ticket, not an open one, which isn’t that difficult.

Seriously, it isn’t that hard once you have a clue what you’re doing. I use http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com for all my advance ticket bookings; it books services for all operators and shows all connections; and it always provides the best price for advance tickets (it doesn’t do split-ticket-y things and doesn’t proactively suggest getting a railcard, but those are the only money-saving bits it doesn’t do). If you have internet access, which you do if you’re reading this, you can do the same.

[it's currently showing peak trains from London to Manchester, out 7AM tomorrow and back at 6PM, for £128 return]

“France may have wonderful TGV services, but I read that rural lines are being neglected”

Absolutely true – SNCF non-TGV services are notably worse than anything in the UK.