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On Fri, 21 Apr 2017 12:03:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:



Fundamentally rail doesn't work in low density areas . The track and
staffing costs need high traffic volumes to justify the outlay.

Quite, those railways were doomed when the lorry and roads got
improved enough to provide a supplier to customer service for the
smaller items and the main power source of much of the country changed
from coal delivered in railway trucks to station yards from which coal
merchants moved it on in smaller quantities to electricity and for
some gas which have their own networks to supply them.
A train may be a better experience than a bus , especially the
underpowered buses of the 1960's but you don't need all the
paraphernalia of a railway designed to carry tons at a time to carry
20 or so passengers weighing about 14 stone each.


There's lots of romantic crap talked about railways.


A lot of the branches that were kept had some people moaning about how
they were rationalized to keep costs to a minimum ,bus shelter style
buildings ,no staff at many stations with tickets sold on the train
etc.
What those people really wanted was a steam loco at the head of a
couple of coaches with a compartment to oneself and acquaintances , a
coal fire in a waiting room and a porter to greet them and make them
feel important.
It was indeed a romantic notion but far too costly to provide and had
largely been so since the 1920's . Closures had started in the 30's
under the private companies and many had taken large share holdings
in bus operators ,eg Southern Railway - Southern National, Great
Western -Western National so they could move forward to a cheaper way
of moving people in country areas. WW2 interrupted this plus
Nationalisation afterwards made it politically undesirable for a
decade till the economics got really silly. If WW2 had not happened
non of us would talk about Beeching as many of the lines would have
closed a generation or two before.

G.Harman
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wrote in message
...
A lot of the branches that were kept had some people moaning about how
they were rationalized to keep costs to a minimum ,bus shelter style
buildings ,no staff at many stations with tickets sold on the train
etc.


Weren't there branches that went straight from significant staffing (maybe
not the the extent of coal fires in waiting rooms) to closure, without
unstaffed stations and tickets sold on trains? I remember reading that this
is one of the gripes of the Beeching cuts, that reducing costs was not even
attempted on some lines.

Having said that, BR suffered a lot from unions imposing minimum staffing
levels and hence cutting their noses off to spite their faces: reduced
staffing levels (if unions had accepted this) *may* (or may not!) have saved
some lines.

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In message , Tim Streater
writes

The real shame is that the rights-of-way were not permanently held.
That would have allowed for them to be later re-used for rail, or
bus-ways or bike/walking routes f'rinstance. Such as parts of the Worth
Way in Sussex.


Oi! I own a short stretch of the WGC to Dunstable branch line.

Herts County Council purchased the bulk of it and it is open as *the
Ayot Green Way*.


--
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On Fri, 21 Apr 2017 10:35:54 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:



This was the argument used by Beeching to remove branch lines. Change the
train times so that they are useless - don't make connections, etc, and
then claim nobody uses them.


Not sure that is entirely true. The local line when I was a kid - Deeside,
from Aberdeen to Ballater, never once broke even in its entire life.


A line near where I grew up was scheduled have been built in the early
1900's but got delayed by WW1 , it finally opened in 1925 when the
scarce traffic on offer was already being handled by war surplus
lorries so it really should have been stillborne but it was completed
as a scheme to provide work in a poor area.
When it closed in 1965 the tickets for some of the stops were still
from the original batch printed at opening , travelers on the last
few services snapped them up as Souvenirs as a Southern Railway
branded ticket was not normally issued by the sixties.

Details here for those who have a deeper interest in such things.
http://colonelstephenssociety.co.uk/...way/index.html

G Harman
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In article ,
NY wrote:
wrote in message
...
A lot of the branches that were kept had some people moaning about how
they were rationalized to keep costs to a minimum ,bus shelter style
buildings ,no staff at many stations with tickets sold on the train
etc.


Weren't there branches that went straight from significant staffing
(maybe not the the extent of coal fires in waiting rooms) to closure,
without unstaffed stations and tickets sold on trains? I remember
reading that this is one of the gripes of the Beeching cuts, that
reducing costs was not even attempted on some lines.


Having said that, BR suffered a lot from unions imposing minimum
staffing levels and hence cutting their noses off to spite their faces:
reduced staffing levels (if unions had accepted this) *may* (or may
not!) have saved some lines.


Quite so. People should be delighted to give up their jobs for the sake of
the community. Or go on to zero hours contracts etc. You just know it
makes sense.

--
*A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.


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On 20/04/2017 23:17, charles wrote:
In article , Steve Walker
wrote:
On 20/04/2017 08:18, charles wrote:
In article , Dave Plowman (News)
wrote:
In article , mechanic
wrote:
On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 00:06:30 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article , mechanic
wrote:
On Tue, 18 Apr 2017 10:50:46 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

And how about those who live there? Are they to be denied owning a
car?

Do they need one? Try public transport (at least in London).

The obvious retort to that is if you need a car because of where you
live, move. Makes as much sense as you've done.

Not too much sense on here so far; many would walk/cycle/use public
transport if those alternatives were suitable.

The snag tend to be everyone wants everyone to use those far more
worthy ways of getting around - except themselves, of course. 'They'
always have excuses why only they need a car.

Where we are bus routes are being cut so such alternatives are
limited - city dwellers tend to have more choice.

Bus routes tend to be cut if they are little used.

and, by being cut, become useless and even less used. Our first bus
into town is at 10.35 and there are only two more in the day.


I can drive to work in under 20 minutes door to door.


The alternative is a 15 minute walk to the station, with a lot of pain
due to arthritic knees (10 minutes for someone else), plus allowing a
spare 5 minutes in case of meeting someone on the way or just having to
stop because of the pain.


The train then takes another 15 minutes (assuming it is on time) where I
am likely not to get a seat, so even more pain .


I then have to get from the station to work, I cannot walk it - I would
be in agony. The first bus doesn't leave the station 'til half and hour
after my train arrives and takes another 10 minutes. I can't catch a
later train without being late.


Then I have the same in reverse at the end of the day.


So 30 to 40 minutes a day by car or about 140 minutes by public
transport. That extra 100 minutes per day (ignoring the pain, the
frustration and the fact that I cannot be in and leave work at the times
I need to), adds up to over 8 hours a week less paid work time (I am
paid by the hour) or 8 hours less time with my family.


but you have a car and can drive. Not everybody is in that fortunate
position.


I am not against public transport - in fact I'd like to see all local
buses and trains made free to use, but the costs would be very high and
the surge in use would probably bring the whole system down.

I am against trying to force people not to use cars.

SteveW

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On 21/04/2017 11:57, NY wrote:
"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
The real shame is that the rights-of-way were not permanently held.
That would have allowed for them to be later re-used for rail, or
bus-ways or bike/walking routes f'rinstance. Such as parts of the Worth
Way in Sussex.


Well said. There should have been a clause which said that any former
transport route should remain a transport route (even if only for
walkers and cyclists) and BR should not have been allowed to sell off
the assets which at the time belonged to the nation (since BR was a
nationalised industry).

By all means save money by not running trains and not employing staff to
do so or to maintain the route to railway standard, but that's as far as
it should have gone. At least where lines have been closed since the
days of Beeching, it was been on the basis of mothballing, with routes
protected against development.


Our local line had the stopping services reduced to one per hour about
10 years ago to free up capacity for non-stopping expresses - making it
even more inconvenient and overcrowded for commuters. What it really
needs is fast and slow lines to allow trains to pass.

Land was reserved for that when the line was built in the 1870s. BR used
to rent the land out to homeowners to extend their gardens and they
could have been taken back at any time. However, in the 1980s they sold
it all off to the homeowners and where there was railway land (ex
sidings, coal yards, station yards, etc.) in and about the towns, they
sold it to developers to build new estates right up to the lineside.

So, once again, a short term cash grab has lead to poor service and no
easy way to improve it.

SteveW

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In message , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
In article ,
Graeme wrote:


I knew you were a Scot, Dave, but didn't realise you were from this
area. Did you know Ballater station was razed a couple of years ago?


Yes. I was there only a couple of weeks ago. And noted some of the flood
damage still not sorted.

Indeed. The village is still full of white vans, 16 months later.
People are coming from all over the place - I was chatting to guy from
Manchester a few days ago. 7 hours each way.

A scary day. Began when I was out with the dog, and predicted to peak
at lunchtime. We had water on three sides, which came up the drive to
within a couple of feet of the house. Sure enough, just after mid day,
it stopped then receded. All gone by tea time. We were very, very
lucky.
--
Graeme
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On Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:01:29 UTC+1, Another John wrote:
In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Surely there is no point in running empty buses just in case someone need
it?


That was the whole point of public services: they were there. You knew
they were there, and you knew you could rely on them, and (in the case
of buses), you could rely on a regular, frequent service. So people
used them -- and I for one would use them again, if any of those
attributes still existed around here.

Just about any country that I've visited in Europe does public transport
better -- far better -- than the UK does. Perhaps they just haven't
"caught up with us yet". They need a Thatcher to sort things out for
them.

J.


This could be the solution.

http://www.istanbultrails.com/2009/0...i-in-istanbul/

Common in many third world countries.
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On Thursday, 20 April 2017 22:33:25 UTC+1, Steve Walker wrote:
On 20/04/2017 12:34, charles wrote:
In article . com,
dennis@home wrote:
On 20/04/2017 11:31, mechanic wrote:
On Thu, 20 Apr 2017 10:03:12 +0100,
lid wrote:

On 20/04/2017 00:20, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Bus routes tend to be cut if they are little used.

As they should be, empty buses pollute more than the odd
car/taxi.

Maybe they're an essential service for some?


Its never essential to run empty buses.


but someoen might get on at the next stop.


They could certainly run much smaller, less polluting minibuses on
underused routes, as they used to do some years ago.

SteveW


http://www.istanbultrails.com/2009/0...i-in-istanbul/


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"harry" wrote in message
...
On Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:01:29 UTC+1, Another John wrote:
In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Surely there is no point in running empty buses just in case someone
need
it?


That was the whole point of public services: they were there. You knew
they were there, and you knew you could rely on them, and (in the case
of buses), you could rely on a regular, frequent service. So people
used them -- and I for one would use them again, if any of those
attributes still existed around here.

Just about any country that I've visited in Europe does public transport
better -- far better -- than the UK does. Perhaps they just haven't
"caught up with us yet". They need a Thatcher to sort things out for
them.


This could be the solution.


Nope.

http://www.istanbultrails.com/2009/0...i-in-istanbul/


Common in many third world countries.


We've had shared taxis for more than 50 years and the entire taxi
industry is about to implode completely due to uber and lyft etc.

IMO its unlikely that shared minibuses will work in the first world,
just because there is vastly better public transport there.

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In article , NY
writes
wrote in message
.. .
A lot of the branches that were kept had some people moaning about how
they were rationalized to keep costs to a minimum ,bus shelter style
buildings ,no staff at many stations with tickets sold on the train
etc.


Weren't there branches that went straight from significant staffing
(maybe not the the extent of coal fires in waiting rooms) to closure,
without unstaffed stations and tickets sold on trains? I remember
reading that this is one of the gripes of the Beeching cuts, that
reducing costs was not even attempted on some lines.

Having said that, BR suffered a lot from unions imposing minimum
staffing levels and hence cutting their noses off to spite their faces:
reduced staffing levels (if unions had accepted this) *may* (or may
not!) have saved some lines.

Just like SR today.
--
bert
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In article , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
In article ,
NY wrote:
wrote in message
...
A lot of the branches that were kept had some people moaning about how
they were rationalized to keep costs to a minimum ,bus shelter style
buildings ,no staff at many stations with tickets sold on the train
etc.


Weren't there branches that went straight from significant staffing
(maybe not the the extent of coal fires in waiting rooms) to closure,
without unstaffed stations and tickets sold on trains? I remember
reading that this is one of the gripes of the Beeching cuts, that
reducing costs was not even attempted on some lines.


Having said that, BR suffered a lot from unions imposing minimum
staffing levels and hence cutting their noses off to spite their faces:
reduced staffing levels (if unions had accepted this) *may* (or may
not!) have saved some lines.


Quite so. People should be delighted to give up their jobs for the sake of
the community.

Some people need to recognise that the community doesn't owe them a
living.
Or go on to zero hours contracts etc. You just know it
makes sense.


--
bert
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