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EspañolHISTORY OF RAIL TRANSPORT IN GREAT BRITAIN 1948 - 1994
''This article is part of a series on the History of rail transport in Great Britain''
The 'History of rail transport in Great Britain 1948 - 1994' covers the period when the British railway system was nationalised under British Rail (initially known as "British Railways").
The Transport Act 1947 nationalised nearly all forms of mass transport in Great Britain, and came into effect on January 1 1948.
[1] The British Transport Commission (BTC) was formed to oversee the working of the Act. To manage the railways, the British Transport Commission Railway Executive, known as British Railways, was created.
Under the BTC's Railway Executive, the railways were organised into six regions:
★ Eastern Region (ER) — southern LNER lines ''(region later amalgamated with the North Eastern Region)''
★ North Eastern Region (NER) — northern LNER lines in England and LMS lines east of Skipton ''(region later amalgamated with the Eastern Region)''
★ London Midland Region (LMR) — LMS lines in England and Wales excluding lines east of Skipton
★ Scottish Region (ScR) — LMS and LNER lines in Scotland
★ Southern Region (SR) — Southern Railway lines
★ Western Region (WR) — Great Western Railway lines
In the post-war world, lifestyles underwent radical changes, cars became affordable to the masses, new roads and motorways were built. The railways on the other hand entered the post-war world with technologies and operating practices which had changed little since the Victorian era.
Before the war, the railway companies had formed a powerful political lobby group, but one effect of nationalisation was to effectively destroy this political influence (as they were owned by the government, they could hardly criticise its policies). Conversely the newly-privatised road haulage industry and motor interests were becoming increasingly powerful and influential over government transport policy, a trend which has dictated transport policies of every British government since.
In the immediate post-war period, most of the money spent on the railways went on clearing the enormous maintenance backlog inherited from the war effort. After that there was little left over for modernisation. At the start of the 1950s, British Railways were making a working profit, albeit a small one. However, Britain had fallen well behind the rest of Europe in terms of dieselisation and electrification of its railways. Further, under the Labour government there was a political incentive to avoid dieselisation because this would have meant a reduced demand for coal, which would have put miners out of work. The bureaucratic committee structure of the BTC and British Railways did not help matters: it slowed progress towards modernisation to a crawl.
The modernisation plan [2] was introduced in 1954, and intended to bring the railway system into the 20th century. The plan involved major projects of electrification and dieselisation of the existing network. However most railway historians now regard it as a costly failure and a missed opportunity. It failed to define what the railways were actually for; failed to take into account the impact that the motor car, road transport and a changing society would have upon the railway system; and attempted to perpetuate the railway system as it had been since the Victorian era, as if nothing had changed. The modernisation plan was hugely expensive, costing more than one billion pounds (over £10 billion in 2005 money), and failed to produce the hoped-for revival in rail traffic.
For example, massive investment was made in marshalling yards at a time when the small wagonload traffic which they dealt with was in steep decline and being lost rapidly to the roads. £85 million pounds (£1.6 billion in 2005 money) was spent on upgrading marshalling yards, many of which were closed only a few years later. The decline of wagonload traffic was exacerbated by the removal of some of BR's legal liabilities as a common carrier - in particular the requirement that general goods handling facilities must be offered at every station. This ended the tradition of having a general goods handling facility with associated rail infrastructure at practically every station, many of which were becoming under-utilised in the face of competition from road transport. However, this did have associated cost savings in staff and infrastructure, as well as causing a significant reduction in the numbers of slow stopping freight trains, which increased network capacity.
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Another element of the modernisation plan was the replacement of steam haulage with diesel and electric traction. However the dieselisation plans were rushed, and many classes of diesel locomotive were hurried into full-scale production before their prototypes had been fully tested. Predictably enough it turned out to be an expensive fiasco. Many of the new diesels were chronically unreliable, some so much so that they had to be withdrawn from service after just a few months of use, at enormous cost. This affair did little to bolster British Railways' reputation with the public or the government. Theoretically, dieselisation would produce efficiency savings, because diesel locomotives were less labour-intensive than steam. However, the unreliability of many of the new diesels wiped out much of the potential savings.
The Modernisation Plan called for extensive suburban electrification. In the Eastern region it called for electrification of many routes to the new standard of 25 kV AC OLE. These included the London, Tilbury and Southend (LTS) line; lines around Liverpool Street; extension of the Shenfield Metro (Great Eastern Main Line) electrification (recently installed at 1500v DC OLE) to Chelmsford and Southend Victoria (via Shenfield to Southend Line); the the Lea Valley Lines; and Kings Cross / Moorgate to Hitchin and Letchworth.
In the Scottish region electrification of large parts of the Glasgow Suburban was called for (again at 25 kV AC OLE), especially from Glasgow Central along the Cathcart Circle Lines and the Inverclyde Line; and from Glasgow Queen Street (Low Level) along the North Clyde Line.
In the Southern Region the extensive third rail system was called to be extended. Initially through "Kent Coast" electrification building upon the outer suburban electrification that had reached Mid Kent in the inter-war years. Two stages were proposed, initially electrify the Chatham Main Line to Dover and Ramsgate, and secondly the lines to and around Ashford based upon the SER's main line.
In addition to the suburban electrification, main line electrification was called for, starting with the West Coast Main Line in the London Midland Region. This was done in stages from 1959. Initial electrification was between Crewe, Manchesterand Liverpool, with the line south to London Euston following in stages to 1967. The line from Weaver Junction (where the route to Liverpool diverges) to Glasgow was electrified in 1974.
Two serious crashes, the Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash in 1952 (in which 112 people died), and the Lewisham rail crash in 1957 (in which 90 people died) lead to the introduction of the Automatic Warning System across the network.
Main articles: Beeching axe
By 1960, the railway's performance was low, with a deficit of £68m. This increased to £87m in 1961, and still further to £104m in 1962 [3] (over £1 billion in 2005 money). Under the Transport Act, 1962
[4], Harold Macmillan's Conservative government dissolved the British Transport Commission, and created the British Railways Board to take over its railway duties from 1 January 1963.
The railway's huge deficit meant that the government's patience with them ran out. In 1962 the transport minister Ernest Marples appointed Richard Beeching as head of British Railways with a brief to cut the spiralling losses. His report ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' issued in 1963, concluded that much of the railway network carried little traffic and should be closed down. [5] [6] His report proposed a massive closures programme which would involve 5,000 miles of track, and 2,363 small stations being closed, which came to be known as the ''Beeching axe''. The report also proposed that British Rail electrify some major main lines and adopt containerized freight traffic instead of outdated and uneconomic wagon-load traffic. However, only some of those plans were adopted, such as the electrification of the West Coast Main Line.
The closures recommended by the report were mostly implemented. They peaked in the mid 1960s and continued until the early 1970s. By 1975, the system had shrunk to 12,000 miles (19 000 km) of track and 2000 stations. The closures failed to produce the hoped for savings, or to restore the railways to profitability.
In 1965, Dr. Beeching issued a second, less well-known, report ''The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes'', widely known as "Beeching II", which singled out lines that were believed to be worthy of continued large-scale investment. [7]. It proposed that all railway lines other than major inter-city routes and important commuter lines around big cities had little future and would eventually close. If the report had been implemented, the railway system would have been cut to just 7,000 miles (11,250 km), leaving Britain with little more than a skeletal railway system, with large parts of the country entirely devoid of railways.
As the last steam locomotives were withdrawn, the corporation's public name was re-branded in 1965 as 'British Rail' (see British Rail brand names for a full history). This re-branding introduced the double-arrow logo to represent the industry as a whole; the standardised typeface (known as "Rail Alphabet") used for all communications and signs; and the "BR blue" livery, which was applied to nearly all locomotives and rolling stock.
The 1970s saw British Rail successfully introduced high speed diesel train services in 1976 with the InterCity 125 High Speed Train (HST), on some services, and adoption of the InterCity brand. This created an increase in passengers using the railways and improved British Rail's finances. British Rail also started development of the world's first tilting train - the Advanced Passenger Train (APT). However, lack of money, political pressure, and the launch of the prototype into passenger service before technical problems were fully overcome lead to the project being cancelled in the early 1980s.
The major engineering works of BR were split-off into a separate company, ''British Rail Engineering Limited'' (BREL), in 1970. This was subsequently split further, becoming British Rail Maintenance Limited (BRML), whose ownership was retained by British Rail; and British Rail Engineering (1988) Limited, which was prepared for privatisation. The latter went through a series of owners, mergers and take-overs, and now resides with Canadian transport company Bombardier.
In 1973, the TOPS computer system for managing locomotives and rolling stock owned by a rail system, was introduced. Hauled rolling stock continued to carry numbers in a separate series. The adoption of the TOPS system made for some changes in the way the railway system in Britain worked. Hitherto, locomotives were numbered in three different series. Steam locomotives carried unadorned numbers up to five digits long. Diesel locomotives carried four-digit numbers prefixed with a letter 'D', and electric locomotives with a letter 'E'. Thus, up to three locomotives could carry the same number. TOPS could not handle this, and it also required similar locomotives to be numbered in a consecutive series in terms of classification, in order that they might be treated together as a group.
The InterCity 125 was planned as a stop gap measure, meant to fill until electrification was spread across all main lines, and the Advanced Passenger Train (APT) was in service. Research had begun for the tilting but it was not possible to predict when the APT would enter service. The HST applied what had been learned so far to traditional technology - a parallel project to the APT development, based on conventional principles but incorporating the newly discovered knowledge of wheel/rail interaction and suspension design. The class holds the world record for diesel traction, achieving 148.4 mph (238 km/h) with a shortened set running speed trials between Darlington and York. Unlike the APT, the InterCity 125 was an outstanding success, and is still in widespread use in 2007.
The HST was introduced from 1976 on the Great Western Main Line between London and Bristol/South Wales, at a time when the maximum speed of British trains was 100 mph (160 km/h).
[8] A radical update of the standard BR livery was complemented by the 'InterCity 125' branding which also appeared on timetables and promotional literature. By May 1977 the full complement was in service on the GWML and they completely replaced locomotive hauled trains on the Bristol / South Wales routes.
Production continued, allowing the Intercity 125s to take over routes on the East Coast Main Line from 1977. They soon displaced the Deltics to lesser workings and reduced the journey time to Edinburgh by up to an hour. The HSTs also took over routes on other West of England services from 1979, Cross-Country express trains from 1981 and finally the Midland Main Line services. [9]
The increased speed and rapid acceleration and deceleration slashed journey times around the country. BR enjoyed a boom in patronage on the routes operated by the HSTs, and InterCity's profits jumped accordingly - with cross-subsidisation in turn safeguarding the future of rural routes which had been under threat of closure since the Beeching Axe of the 1960s.
British Rail developed the world's first tilting train - The Advanced Passenger Train (APT). The object of the tilt was to minimise the discomfort to passengers caused by taking the curves of the West Coast Main Line at high speed. The APT also included hydrokinetic brakes, which enabled the train to stop from 150mph within existing signal spacings. [10]
The introduction into service of the Advanced Passenger Train was to be a three-stage project. Phase 1, the development of an experimental APT (APT-E), was completed. The APT-E used a gas turbine-electric locomotive, the only multiple unit so powered that was used by British Rail. It was formed of two power cars (numbers PC1 and PC2), initially with nothing between them, and later two trailer cars (TC1 and TC2). [11]. The cars were made of aluminium to reduce the weight of the unit, and were articulated. The use of a gas turbine was dropped from development, due to excessive noise of the turbine and the high fuel costs of the late 1970s. [12]. The APT-E first ran on 25 July 1971. The train drivers' union, ASLEF black-listed the train due to the use of a single driver. The train was moved to the works at Derby (with the aid of a locomotive inspector). This triggered a one day strike by ASLEF that cost BR more than the research budget for the entire year. [13].
Phase 2, the introduction of three prototype trains (APT-P) into revenue service on the Glasgow - London route, did occur. Originally, there were to have been eight APT-P sets running, with minimal differences between them and the main fleet. However, financial constraints lead to only three being authorised, after two years of discussion by the British Railways Board. The cost was split equally between the Board and the Ministry of Transport. After these delays, considerable pressure grew to put the APT-P into revenue-service before they were fully ready. This inevitably lead to high-profile failures as a result of technical problems.
These failures lead to the trains being withdrawn from service while the problems were ironed out. However, by this time, managerial and political support has evaporated. Consequently, phase 3, the introduction of the Squadron fleet (APT-S), did not occur, and the project was ended in 1982.
Although the APT never properly entered service, the experience gained enabled the construction of other high speed trains. The APT powercar technology was imported without the tilt into the design of the Class 91 locomotives, and the tilting technology was incorporated into Italian State Railway's ''Pendolino'' trains, which first entered service in 1987.
In the 1980s the regions of BR were abolished and the system sectorised into five sectors. The passenger sectors were InterCity (express services), Network SouthEast (London commuter services) and Regional Railways (regional services). Trainload Freight took trainload freight, Railfreight Distribution took non-trainload freight, Freightliner took intermodal traffic and Rail Express Systems took parcels traffic. The maintenance and remaining engineering works were split off into a new company, BRML (British Rail Maintenance Limited). The new sectors were further subdivided into divisions. This ended the "BR blue" period as new liveries were adopted gradually. Infrastructure remained the responsibility of the Regions until the "Organisation for Quality" initiative in 1991, when this too was transferred to the sectors.
In the early 1980s, under the government of Margaret Thatcher, the possibility of more Beeching-style cuts was raised again briefly. In 1983 Sir David Serpell, a civil servant who had worked with Dr Beeching, compiled what became known as the Serpell Report which called for more rail closures. [14] The report was met with fierce resistance from many quarters, and it was quickly abandoned.
The rolling stock of BR was becoming increasingly obsolete and near the end of its life. An attempt at a cheap DMU replacement was made with the "Pacers" - essentially modified bus bodies placed upon a fixed wheel freight wagon wheelbase, which met with customer dissatisfaction. However more successful stock such as the 'Sprinters' DMU and Networkers (DMUs and EMUs) were introduced.
To considerable surprise the Thatcher government, which had been perceived as anti-rail, carried out the electrification of the East Coast Main Line from 1985, with the work completed in 1990. At a regional level, the New Network SouthEast introduced extensive new stock, in the form of Networkers (DMUs and EMUs). It also conducted numerous electrification projects; including the Midland Main Line to Bedford ("Bedpan"), and the Southern 750 V DC system reached Hastings and Weymouth. Thameslink, a service that connected the northern and southern halves of London's suburban network, was introduced via the re-opened Snow Hill tunnel in 1988. The Chiltern Main Line was extensively modernised to open up an additional link between London (Marylebone) and Birmingham Snow Hill Station. The service was successfully launched in 1987.
In 1988, the Clapham Junction rail crash killed 35 people when three commuter trains collided, the worst railway accident in Britain in 30 years. The recommendations of the subsequent inquiry had far-reaching effects.
The inquiry was chaired by QC Anthony Hidden, and published a report in September 1989. [15] It found that the direct cause of the disaster was sloppy work practices in which an old wire, incorrectly left in place after rewiring work and still connected at the supply end, created a false feed to a signal relay, thereby causing its signal to show green when it should have shown red. A contributing technical factor was the lack of double switching in the signal relay circuits, which would have prevented a single false feed causing an accident.
The inquiry recommended the introduction of the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system, although it is not certain this would have prevented accident. (ATP guards against driver error, not installation error). Following the Clapham Junction accident and two other fatal accidents in early 1989, British Rail was keen to implement the ATP system across the entire British railway network. However, the cost (estimated at over £1bn) was baulked at by the Conservative government, who were preparing the company for privatisation. In the end, two different proprietary systems were trialled, TBL on the Great Western Main Line and SELCAB on the Chiltern Main Line, but neither system was rolled-out across the network. Today, all First Great Western's HSTs are fitted with ATP, and are not permitted to carry passengers unless the system is functioning.
The accident also highlighted the relatively poor crashworthiness of the rolling stock, which was all of BR's Mark 1 design, dating from 1950. The carriages' superstructures detached from their underframes on impact and disintegrated in the collision. Following the inquiry's recommendations, the use of Mark 1 stock ended on the main line, and their use on low-speed commuter lines was gradually phased out. (Although some Mark 1 -based multiple units were still around as late as 2005, some 17 years later.)
The first half of the 1990s were dominated by the privatisation of British Rail by the government of John Major. The privatisation was the result of the Railways Act 1993, and the operations of the British Railways Board (BRB) were broken up and sold off. (Some "non-core" parts of the BRB's operations, such as its hotels, had already been disposed of by the administration of Margaret Thatcher as early as the first years of the 1980s.)
In 1990 Margaret Thatcher was replaced by John Major as Prime Minister. The Thatcher administration had already sold off nearly all the former state-owned industries, apart from the national rail network. In its manifesto for the 1992 General Election the Conservatives included a commitment to privatise the railways, but were not specific about details. They unexpectedly won the election on 9 April 1992, and consequently had to develop a plan to carry out the privatisation before the Railways Bill was published the next year. The management of British Rail strongly advocated privatisation as one entity, a British Rail Plc in effect. John Major favoured the resurrection of something like the "Big Four" companies that had existed before 1948. The Treasury advocated the creation of seven, later 25, passenger railway franchises as a way of maximising revenue. The Treasury view prevailed.
The Railways Bill established a complex structure for the rail industry. British Rail was broken up into over 100 separate companies. There were some regulatory mechanisms: contracts for the use of railway facilities must be approved or directed by the Office of Rail Regulation, although some facilities are exempt from this requirement. Contracts between the principal passenger train operators and the state are called "franchise agreements", which specify minimum service levels, and the amount of subsidy / premium to be paid over the course of the franchise. Franchises were first the responsibility of the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF), then its successor the Strategic Rail Authority and now with the Secretary of State for Transport. Initially, British Rail was broken up into various units frequently based on its own organisational sectors, still controlled by the British Railways Board, but which were sold off over the next few years.
The passage of the Railways Bill was controversial. The public was unconvinced of the virtues of rail privatisation and there was much lobbying against the Bill. The Labour Party was implacably opposed to it and promised to renationalise the railways when they got back into office as and when resources allowed (which in effect meant never).
The Railways Bill became the Railways Act 1993 on 5 November 1993, and the organisational structure dictated by it came into effect on 1 April 1994.
1. Transport Act 1947 Her Majesty's Government
2. Modernisation and Re-Equipment of British Rail British Transport Commission
3. British Railways Board history
4. Transport Act 1962 Her Majesty's Government
5. The Reshaping of British Railways - Part 1: Report British Transport Commission
6. The Reshaping of British Railways - Part 2: Maps British Transport Commission
7. The Development Of The Major Railway Trunk Routes British Transport Commission
8. 4 October 1976: New train speeds into service
9. British Rail 1983 Motive Power: Combined Volume, , Colin J., Marsden, Ian Allen, 1983, ISBN 0-7110-1284-9
10. Tomorrow's Train, Today British Railways Board (Promotional leaflet)
11. E Train
12. Diesel-Electric Engine Operation - NE Rails
13. APT - With Hindsight Alan Wickens
14. Railway Finances - Report of a Committee chaired by Sir David Serpell KCB CMG OBE Department of Transport
15. Investigation into the Clapham Junction Railway AccidentAct Anthony Hidden (QC)
★ The Great Railway Conspiracy: The Fall and Rise of Britain's Railways Since the 1950s, , David, Henshaw, Leading Edge Press, 1994, ISBN 0-9481-3530-1
★ British Rail: 1974-97: From Integration to Privatisation, , Terry, Gourvish, Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-19-926909-2
★ Advanced Passenger Train: The official illustrated account of British Rail's revolutionary new 155mph train, , Geoffrey, Body, Avon-Anglia Publications & Services, 1981, ISBN 0-905466-37-3
★ APT: A Promise Unfulfilled, , Hugh, Williams, Ian Allan, 1985, ISBN 0-7110-1474-4
★ On the Right Lines?: The limits of technological innovation, , Stephen, Potter, Frances Pinter, 1987, ISBN 0-86187-580-X
★ British Railways Board history
The 'History of rail transport in Great Britain 1948 - 1994' covers the period when the British railway system was nationalised under British Rail (initially known as "British Railways").
Nationalisation
The Transport Act 1947 nationalised nearly all forms of mass transport in Great Britain, and came into effect on January 1 1948.
[1] The British Transport Commission (BTC) was formed to oversee the working of the Act. To manage the railways, the British Transport Commission Railway Executive, known as British Railways, was created.
Under the BTC's Railway Executive, the railways were organised into six regions:
★ Eastern Region (ER) — southern LNER lines ''(region later amalgamated with the North Eastern Region)''
★ North Eastern Region (NER) — northern LNER lines in England and LMS lines east of Skipton ''(region later amalgamated with the Eastern Region)''
★ London Midland Region (LMR) — LMS lines in England and Wales excluding lines east of Skipton
★ Scottish Region (ScR) — LMS and LNER lines in Scotland
★ Southern Region (SR) — Southern Railway lines
★ Western Region (WR) — Great Western Railway lines
The 1950s: The post-war world
In the post-war world, lifestyles underwent radical changes, cars became affordable to the masses, new roads and motorways were built. The railways on the other hand entered the post-war world with technologies and operating practices which had changed little since the Victorian era.
Before the war, the railway companies had formed a powerful political lobby group, but one effect of nationalisation was to effectively destroy this political influence (as they were owned by the government, they could hardly criticise its policies). Conversely the newly-privatised road haulage industry and motor interests were becoming increasingly powerful and influential over government transport policy, a trend which has dictated transport policies of every British government since.
In the immediate post-war period, most of the money spent on the railways went on clearing the enormous maintenance backlog inherited from the war effort. After that there was little left over for modernisation. At the start of the 1950s, British Railways were making a working profit, albeit a small one. However, Britain had fallen well behind the rest of Europe in terms of dieselisation and electrification of its railways. Further, under the Labour government there was a political incentive to avoid dieselisation because this would have meant a reduced demand for coal, which would have put miners out of work. The bureaucratic committee structure of the BTC and British Railways did not help matters: it slowed progress towards modernisation to a crawl.
The modernisation plan
A Class 28 loco, one of the failures of the modernisation plan
The modernisation plan [2] was introduced in 1954, and intended to bring the railway system into the 20th century. The plan involved major projects of electrification and dieselisation of the existing network. However most railway historians now regard it as a costly failure and a missed opportunity. It failed to define what the railways were actually for; failed to take into account the impact that the motor car, road transport and a changing society would have upon the railway system; and attempted to perpetuate the railway system as it had been since the Victorian era, as if nothing had changed. The modernisation plan was hugely expensive, costing more than one billion pounds (over £10 billion in 2005 money), and failed to produce the hoped-for revival in rail traffic.
For example, massive investment was made in marshalling yards at a time when the small wagonload traffic which they dealt with was in steep decline and being lost rapidly to the roads. £85 million pounds (£1.6 billion in 2005 money) was spent on upgrading marshalling yards, many of which were closed only a few years later. The decline of wagonload traffic was exacerbated by the removal of some of BR's legal liabilities as a common carrier - in particular the requirement that general goods handling facilities must be offered at every station. This ended the tradition of having a general goods handling facility with associated rail infrastructure at practically every station, many of which were becoming under-utilised in the face of competition from road transport. However, this did have associated cost savings in staff and infrastructure, as well as causing a significant reduction in the numbers of slow stopping freight trains, which increased network capacity.
.jpg)
''Evening Star'': built 1960, withdrawn 1965
Another element of the modernisation plan was the replacement of steam haulage with diesel and electric traction. However the dieselisation plans were rushed, and many classes of diesel locomotive were hurried into full-scale production before their prototypes had been fully tested. Predictably enough it turned out to be an expensive fiasco. Many of the new diesels were chronically unreliable, some so much so that they had to be withdrawn from service after just a few months of use, at enormous cost. This affair did little to bolster British Railways' reputation with the public or the government. Theoretically, dieselisation would produce efficiency savings, because diesel locomotives were less labour-intensive than steam. However, the unreliability of many of the new diesels wiped out much of the potential savings.
Electrification
The Modernisation Plan called for extensive suburban electrification. In the Eastern region it called for electrification of many routes to the new standard of 25 kV AC OLE. These included the London, Tilbury and Southend (LTS) line; lines around Liverpool Street; extension of the Shenfield Metro (Great Eastern Main Line) electrification (recently installed at 1500v DC OLE) to Chelmsford and Southend Victoria (via Shenfield to Southend Line); the the Lea Valley Lines; and Kings Cross / Moorgate to Hitchin and Letchworth.
In the Scottish region electrification of large parts of the Glasgow Suburban was called for (again at 25 kV AC OLE), especially from Glasgow Central along the Cathcart Circle Lines and the Inverclyde Line; and from Glasgow Queen Street (Low Level) along the North Clyde Line.
In the Southern Region the extensive third rail system was called to be extended. Initially through "Kent Coast" electrification building upon the outer suburban electrification that had reached Mid Kent in the inter-war years. Two stages were proposed, initially electrify the Chatham Main Line to Dover and Ramsgate, and secondly the lines to and around Ashford based upon the SER's main line.
In addition to the suburban electrification, main line electrification was called for, starting with the West Coast Main Line in the London Midland Region. This was done in stages from 1959. Initial electrification was between Crewe, Manchesterand Liverpool, with the line south to London Euston following in stages to 1967. The line from Weaver Junction (where the route to Liverpool diverges) to Glasgow was electrified in 1974.
Other events in the 1950s
Two serious crashes, the Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash in 1952 (in which 112 people died), and the Lewisham rail crash in 1957 (in which 90 people died) lead to the introduction of the Automatic Warning System across the network.
The 1960s: The Beeching era
Main articles: Beeching axe
The overgrown remains of Lilbourne station in Northamptonshire, one of thousands of rural stations which were closed by the Beeching Axe.
By 1960, the railway's performance was low, with a deficit of £68m. This increased to £87m in 1961, and still further to £104m in 1962 [3] (over £1 billion in 2005 money). Under the Transport Act, 1962
[4], Harold Macmillan's Conservative government dissolved the British Transport Commission, and created the British Railways Board to take over its railway duties from 1 January 1963.
The railway's huge deficit meant that the government's patience with them ran out. In 1962 the transport minister Ernest Marples appointed Richard Beeching as head of British Railways with a brief to cut the spiralling losses. His report ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' issued in 1963, concluded that much of the railway network carried little traffic and should be closed down. [5] [6] His report proposed a massive closures programme which would involve 5,000 miles of track, and 2,363 small stations being closed, which came to be known as the ''Beeching axe''. The report also proposed that British Rail electrify some major main lines and adopt containerized freight traffic instead of outdated and uneconomic wagon-load traffic. However, only some of those plans were adopted, such as the electrification of the West Coast Main Line.
The network recommended by "Beeching II" plans, shown by the bolded lines
The closures recommended by the report were mostly implemented. They peaked in the mid 1960s and continued until the early 1970s. By 1975, the system had shrunk to 12,000 miles (19 000 km) of track and 2000 stations. The closures failed to produce the hoped for savings, or to restore the railways to profitability.
In 1965, Dr. Beeching issued a second, less well-known, report ''The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes'', widely known as "Beeching II", which singled out lines that were believed to be worthy of continued large-scale investment. [7]. It proposed that all railway lines other than major inter-city routes and important commuter lines around big cities had little future and would eventually close. If the report had been implemented, the railway system would have been cut to just 7,000 miles (11,250 km), leaving Britain with little more than a skeletal railway system, with large parts of the country entirely devoid of railways.
As the last steam locomotives were withdrawn, the corporation's public name was re-branded in 1965 as 'British Rail' (see British Rail brand names for a full history). This re-branding introduced the double-arrow logo to represent the industry as a whole; the standardised typeface (known as "Rail Alphabet") used for all communications and signs; and the "BR blue" livery, which was applied to nearly all locomotives and rolling stock.
The 1970s : HST and APT
The 1970s saw British Rail successfully introduced high speed diesel train services in 1976 with the InterCity 125 High Speed Train (HST), on some services, and adoption of the InterCity brand. This created an increase in passengers using the railways and improved British Rail's finances. British Rail also started development of the world's first tilting train - the Advanced Passenger Train (APT). However, lack of money, political pressure, and the launch of the prototype into passenger service before technical problems were fully overcome lead to the project being cancelled in the early 1980s.
The major engineering works of BR were split-off into a separate company, ''British Rail Engineering Limited'' (BREL), in 1970. This was subsequently split further, becoming British Rail Maintenance Limited (BRML), whose ownership was retained by British Rail; and British Rail Engineering (1988) Limited, which was prepared for privatisation. The latter went through a series of owners, mergers and take-overs, and now resides with Canadian transport company Bombardier.
In 1973, the TOPS computer system for managing locomotives and rolling stock owned by a rail system, was introduced. Hauled rolling stock continued to carry numbers in a separate series. The adoption of the TOPS system made for some changes in the way the railway system in Britain worked. Hitherto, locomotives were numbered in three different series. Steam locomotives carried unadorned numbers up to five digits long. Diesel locomotives carried four-digit numbers prefixed with a letter 'D', and electric locomotives with a letter 'E'. Thus, up to three locomotives could carry the same number. TOPS could not handle this, and it also required similar locomotives to be numbered in a consecutive series in terms of classification, in order that they might be treated together as a group.
The Intercity 125 High Speed Train
Prototype High Speed Train
The InterCity 125 was planned as a stop gap measure, meant to fill until electrification was spread across all main lines, and the Advanced Passenger Train (APT) was in service. Research had begun for the tilting but it was not possible to predict when the APT would enter service. The HST applied what had been learned so far to traditional technology - a parallel project to the APT development, based on conventional principles but incorporating the newly discovered knowledge of wheel/rail interaction and suspension design. The class holds the world record for diesel traction, achieving 148.4 mph (238 km/h) with a shortened set running speed trials between Darlington and York. Unlike the APT, the InterCity 125 was an outstanding success, and is still in widespread use in 2007.
The HST was introduced from 1976 on the Great Western Main Line between London and Bristol/South Wales, at a time when the maximum speed of British trains was 100 mph (160 km/h).
[8] A radical update of the standard BR livery was complemented by the 'InterCity 125' branding which also appeared on timetables and promotional literature. By May 1977 the full complement was in service on the GWML and they completely replaced locomotive hauled trains on the Bristol / South Wales routes.
Production continued, allowing the Intercity 125s to take over routes on the East Coast Main Line from 1977. They soon displaced the Deltics to lesser workings and reduced the journey time to Edinburgh by up to an hour. The HSTs also took over routes on other West of England services from 1979, Cross-Country express trains from 1981 and finally the Midland Main Line services. [9]
The increased speed and rapid acceleration and deceleration slashed journey times around the country. BR enjoyed a boom in patronage on the routes operated by the HSTs, and InterCity's profits jumped accordingly - with cross-subsidisation in turn safeguarding the future of rural routes which had been under threat of closure since the Beeching Axe of the 1960s.
The Advanced Passenger Train
Prototype Advanced Passenger Train
British Rail developed the world's first tilting train - The Advanced Passenger Train (APT). The object of the tilt was to minimise the discomfort to passengers caused by taking the curves of the West Coast Main Line at high speed. The APT also included hydrokinetic brakes, which enabled the train to stop from 150mph within existing signal spacings. [10]
The introduction into service of the Advanced Passenger Train was to be a three-stage project. Phase 1, the development of an experimental APT (APT-E), was completed. The APT-E used a gas turbine-electric locomotive, the only multiple unit so powered that was used by British Rail. It was formed of two power cars (numbers PC1 and PC2), initially with nothing between them, and later two trailer cars (TC1 and TC2). [11]. The cars were made of aluminium to reduce the weight of the unit, and were articulated. The use of a gas turbine was dropped from development, due to excessive noise of the turbine and the high fuel costs of the late 1970s. [12]. The APT-E first ran on 25 July 1971. The train drivers' union, ASLEF black-listed the train due to the use of a single driver. The train was moved to the works at Derby (with the aid of a locomotive inspector). This triggered a one day strike by ASLEF that cost BR more than the research budget for the entire year. [13].
Phase 2, the introduction of three prototype trains (APT-P) into revenue service on the Glasgow - London route, did occur. Originally, there were to have been eight APT-P sets running, with minimal differences between them and the main fleet. However, financial constraints lead to only three being authorised, after two years of discussion by the British Railways Board. The cost was split equally between the Board and the Ministry of Transport. After these delays, considerable pressure grew to put the APT-P into revenue-service before they were fully ready. This inevitably lead to high-profile failures as a result of technical problems.
These failures lead to the trains being withdrawn from service while the problems were ironed out. However, by this time, managerial and political support has evaporated. Consequently, phase 3, the introduction of the Squadron fleet (APT-S), did not occur, and the project was ended in 1982.
Although the APT never properly entered service, the experience gained enabled the construction of other high speed trains. The APT powercar technology was imported without the tilt into the design of the Class 91 locomotives, and the tilting technology was incorporated into Italian State Railway's ''Pendolino'' trains, which first entered service in 1987.
The 1980s : Sectorisation
In the 1980s the regions of BR were abolished and the system sectorised into five sectors. The passenger sectors were InterCity (express services), Network SouthEast (London commuter services) and Regional Railways (regional services). Trainload Freight took trainload freight, Railfreight Distribution took non-trainload freight, Freightliner took intermodal traffic and Rail Express Systems took parcels traffic. The maintenance and remaining engineering works were split off into a new company, BRML (British Rail Maintenance Limited). The new sectors were further subdivided into divisions. This ended the "BR blue" period as new liveries were adopted gradually. Infrastructure remained the responsibility of the Regions until the "Organisation for Quality" initiative in 1991, when this too was transferred to the sectors.
"Networker" in Network SouthEast livery.
In the early 1980s, under the government of Margaret Thatcher, the possibility of more Beeching-style cuts was raised again briefly. In 1983 Sir David Serpell, a civil servant who had worked with Dr Beeching, compiled what became known as the Serpell Report which called for more rail closures. [14] The report was met with fierce resistance from many quarters, and it was quickly abandoned.
"Super sprinter" in Regional Railways livery
The rolling stock of BR was becoming increasingly obsolete and near the end of its life. An attempt at a cheap DMU replacement was made with the "Pacers" - essentially modified bus bodies placed upon a fixed wheel freight wagon wheelbase, which met with customer dissatisfaction. However more successful stock such as the 'Sprinters' DMU and Networkers (DMUs and EMUs) were introduced.
To considerable surprise the Thatcher government, which had been perceived as anti-rail, carried out the electrification of the East Coast Main Line from 1985, with the work completed in 1990. At a regional level, the New Network SouthEast introduced extensive new stock, in the form of Networkers (DMUs and EMUs). It also conducted numerous electrification projects; including the Midland Main Line to Bedford ("Bedpan"), and the Southern 750 V DC system reached Hastings and Weymouth. Thameslink, a service that connected the northern and southern halves of London's suburban network, was introduced via the re-opened Snow Hill tunnel in 1988. The Chiltern Main Line was extensively modernised to open up an additional link between London (Marylebone) and Birmingham Snow Hill Station. The service was successfully launched in 1987.
Clapham Junction accident
Clapham Junction Accident report cover
In 1988, the Clapham Junction rail crash killed 35 people when three commuter trains collided, the worst railway accident in Britain in 30 years. The recommendations of the subsequent inquiry had far-reaching effects.
The inquiry was chaired by QC Anthony Hidden, and published a report in September 1989. [15] It found that the direct cause of the disaster was sloppy work practices in which an old wire, incorrectly left in place after rewiring work and still connected at the supply end, created a false feed to a signal relay, thereby causing its signal to show green when it should have shown red. A contributing technical factor was the lack of double switching in the signal relay circuits, which would have prevented a single false feed causing an accident.
The inquiry recommended the introduction of the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system, although it is not certain this would have prevented accident. (ATP guards against driver error, not installation error). Following the Clapham Junction accident and two other fatal accidents in early 1989, British Rail was keen to implement the ATP system across the entire British railway network. However, the cost (estimated at over £1bn) was baulked at by the Conservative government, who were preparing the company for privatisation. In the end, two different proprietary systems were trialled, TBL on the Great Western Main Line and SELCAB on the Chiltern Main Line, but neither system was rolled-out across the network. Today, all First Great Western's HSTs are fitted with ATP, and are not permitted to carry passengers unless the system is functioning.
The accident also highlighted the relatively poor crashworthiness of the rolling stock, which was all of BR's Mark 1 design, dating from 1950. The carriages' superstructures detached from their underframes on impact and disintegrated in the collision. Following the inquiry's recommendations, the use of Mark 1 stock ended on the main line, and their use on low-speed commuter lines was gradually phased out. (Although some Mark 1 -based multiple units were still around as late as 2005, some 17 years later.)
1990 - 1994 : The end of BR
The first half of the 1990s were dominated by the privatisation of British Rail by the government of John Major. The privatisation was the result of the Railways Act 1993, and the operations of the British Railways Board (BRB) were broken up and sold off. (Some "non-core" parts of the BRB's operations, such as its hotels, had already been disposed of by the administration of Margaret Thatcher as early as the first years of the 1980s.)
In 1990 Margaret Thatcher was replaced by John Major as Prime Minister. The Thatcher administration had already sold off nearly all the former state-owned industries, apart from the national rail network. In its manifesto for the 1992 General Election the Conservatives included a commitment to privatise the railways, but were not specific about details. They unexpectedly won the election on 9 April 1992, and consequently had to develop a plan to carry out the privatisation before the Railways Bill was published the next year. The management of British Rail strongly advocated privatisation as one entity, a British Rail Plc in effect. John Major favoured the resurrection of something like the "Big Four" companies that had existed before 1948. The Treasury advocated the creation of seven, later 25, passenger railway franchises as a way of maximising revenue. The Treasury view prevailed.
The Railways Bill established a complex structure for the rail industry. British Rail was broken up into over 100 separate companies. There were some regulatory mechanisms: contracts for the use of railway facilities must be approved or directed by the Office of Rail Regulation, although some facilities are exempt from this requirement. Contracts between the principal passenger train operators and the state are called "franchise agreements", which specify minimum service levels, and the amount of subsidy / premium to be paid over the course of the franchise. Franchises were first the responsibility of the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF), then its successor the Strategic Rail Authority and now with the Secretary of State for Transport. Initially, British Rail was broken up into various units frequently based on its own organisational sectors, still controlled by the British Railways Board, but which were sold off over the next few years.
The passage of the Railways Bill was controversial. The public was unconvinced of the virtues of rail privatisation and there was much lobbying against the Bill. The Labour Party was implacably opposed to it and promised to renationalise the railways when they got back into office as and when resources allowed (which in effect meant never).
The Railways Bill became the Railways Act 1993 on 5 November 1993, and the organisational structure dictated by it came into effect on 1 April 1994.
References
1. Transport Act 1947 Her Majesty's Government
2. Modernisation and Re-Equipment of British Rail British Transport Commission
3. British Railways Board history
4. Transport Act 1962 Her Majesty's Government
5. The Reshaping of British Railways - Part 1: Report British Transport Commission
6. The Reshaping of British Railways - Part 2: Maps British Transport Commission
7. The Development Of The Major Railway Trunk Routes British Transport Commission
8. 4 October 1976: New train speeds into service
9. British Rail 1983 Motive Power: Combined Volume, , Colin J., Marsden, Ian Allen, 1983, ISBN 0-7110-1284-9
10. Tomorrow's Train, Today British Railways Board (Promotional leaflet)
11. E Train
12. Diesel-Electric Engine Operation - NE Rails
13. APT - With Hindsight Alan Wickens
14. Railway Finances - Report of a Committee chaired by Sir David Serpell KCB CMG OBE Department of Transport
15. Investigation into the Clapham Junction Railway AccidentAct Anthony Hidden (QC)
★ The Great Railway Conspiracy: The Fall and Rise of Britain's Railways Since the 1950s, , David, Henshaw, Leading Edge Press, 1994, ISBN 0-9481-3530-1
★ British Rail: 1974-97: From Integration to Privatisation, , Terry, Gourvish, Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-19-926909-2
★ Advanced Passenger Train: The official illustrated account of British Rail's revolutionary new 155mph train, , Geoffrey, Body, Avon-Anglia Publications & Services, 1981, ISBN 0-905466-37-3
★ APT: A Promise Unfulfilled, , Hugh, Williams, Ian Allan, 1985, ISBN 0-7110-1474-4
★ On the Right Lines?: The limits of technological innovation, , Stephen, Potter, Frances Pinter, 1987, ISBN 0-86187-580-X
★ British Railways Board history
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