parsfan wrote:In 1950 the British Rail board took a decision to keep using steam while they upgraded the whole railways network to electricity, they didn't want to use diesel at all. They ordered new steam trains and expected to be using them till at least the end of the 1970's and maybe into the early 1980's. Then in 1950 they scrapped that idea and decided that steam was not appropriate for a modern rail network. They decided that diesel would be the quickest way to end steam and so very quickly went on a programme of buying diesel trains. They replaced steam very quickly, quicker than even they had hoped for.
Personally I think they should have remained with the 1950 policy and gone straight to electric railways, it was pure folly to change from steam to diesel.
Alas you miss the real factor.
By getting rid of steam they cut out several layers of types and grades of job and were able to save money on wages (
although I doubt many of my union brothers from the rail unions of the time would claim to have been overpaid???
) and even "better" (from an employers point of view) they were able to recruit new young (cheap) fitters to maintain their new fangled diesels!
Put this together with the thousands of jobs that must have been pruned when stations and "drop off freight" were abandoned and you see how nuch they must have saved. The wisdom of hindsight.... no wisdom at all!
shows that modern technology in trains, ticketing and labour practices would have made many of the services that Beeching cut a more viable proposition?
The motor car and package holidays really "did for" the railways. The greed and stupidity of targeting premium business users was IMHO the final nail in the coffin.
In all fairness to the rail industry they have had to survive with the lowest subsidies (I stand to be corrected) of any rail network in Europe... the world?
The bit that really pisses me off is that their still seems to be an invisible barrier to stop the preservation lines, that want to, becoming a service again. The Swanage line has had huge success as a service with "park & ride" but still cannot link to the national rail network at Wareham. What's that all about?
The fact is that labour is the main cost. Not the trains. Electrification may have given us some long haul intercity systems that work economically in the long run, but the idea of a rail "network or service" seems to be dead as a Dodo?
Geoff
