From Nationalisation to Great British Railways by Fraser Pithie

A potentially exciting new Title, but as Fraser Pithie explained in an electrifying lecture, the launch of Great British Railways, having recently been put on hold, may not now happen.  After the recent political upheavals, disorganisation and uncertainty at Government level, the future of the railways is once again unclear.  But as Fraser reassured us, that is nothing new, there have always been issues, uncertainty and changes.

To put everything into perspective, Fraser gave a brilliant narrative of the history of British Railways since 1948, and their transformation.  He reminded us that the original aim of the British Transport Commission (BTC) in 1948 was to incorporate the railways (and other forms of transport) into a single public service whose diverse traffic was to be managed in the most appropriate and efficient way.  But by 1955 the financial position had worsened, aggravated by the effect of ASLEF’s two week strike when freight customers deserted the railways, halving the amount of freight traffic by 1959.  The British Railways Board (replacing the BTC) could not arrest the decline, so Dr Beeching was brought in.  Despite some clear thinking behind his “reshaping”, many would agree with Fraser that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. But there was recovery of sorts in the 1980s, led by the introduction and expansion of the innovative and revolutionary HST125 services, which Fraser credits with saving the railway.

Many RCTS members have lived through the period since 1950 and will have their own personal memories and opinions; as a child of the West Midlands, Fraser illustrated his talk with examples from that area.  In 1948 the principal station in Birmingham was Snow Hill not New Street.  After the 1955 modernisation plan, brand new Western diesels started to appear at Snow Hill, which locos would spearhead the 1960s fast Paddington expresses during the time when the Midland Region route to Euston was under electrification.  Soon after, the Blue Pullman trains arrived.  As we know, the Midland region modernisation to Euston later finished off Snow Hill’s fast passenger services; at the same time, other routes in the West Midlands were allowed to stagnate and Fraser showed a contemporaneous view of a DMU at a half demolished Henley-in-Arden station.  And on what we now call the Gloucester Warwickshire (heritage) Line, the Cornishman express from Birmingham to the south west disappeared, and by the late 1960s both Birmingham Snow Hill and Moor Street stations were dilapidated wrecks, surely never to be revived, but they have since been triumphantly renewed.  Wolverhampton Low Level was in similar terminal decline and is now no longer a railway station.

The passenger business on BR continued to decline in the 1970s, in the aftermath of Dr Beeching’s report on rationalisation and closure, despite Barbara Castle’s inspired stabilisation of ‘at risk’ urban and rural passenger services.  The aspiration of modern Britons in the 1960s and 1970s was to be able to drive a smart car along Ernest Marple’s dazzling new motorways.  Trains?  Dirty, slow and above all, unreliable!  Yet by the mid-1970s there was the start of a sea change.  British Rail, still suffering after the Beeching report, began to believe in itself.  “Intercity makes the going easy and the coming back”; “See a friend this weekend”.  The intercity brand had arrived and began to thrive, thanks to the innovative diesel electric 125 High Speed Train (HST) introduced from 1976 which, in a few years would utterly transform rail passenger figures.

There were a number of shrewd and far sighted managers in charge and if the railways could have continued under such management, what would have happened?  Fraser considers that the achievement of BR reached its pinnacle in 1991 around the time of the East Coast main line electrification with its Class 91 locos and Metro-Cammell rolling stock.  Instead, what happened?  Mrs Thatcher’s government had largely steered clear of interference with the railways but then came John Major’s government in 1992 which proceeded to “privatise” the system.  Fraser did not hold back in his criticism of the overcomplicated financial management system, often referred to as the “money go round”, as well as the muddled management and sheer wastefulness of the current method of operation (£millions written off by the Department for Transport - or DfT - following abandonment of certain proposed projects).  Fraser used a series of flowcharts to illustrate the complicated financial management system, very difficult for the layman to follow.  Neither especially for nor against privatisation in principle, he feels that the DfT have frequently retarded progress by interference and “meddling” in running the system, and they should simply step back and let the railway managers do their job unhindered.  There is simply no substitute for good clear-headed management.

As to what the future holds for the railways, we are presently viewing a blank screen, and awaiting news from the government.  As Fraser remarked, we have come full circle since nationalisation.