On Fri, 21 Apr 2017 10:38:15 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Tim Streater 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.

Ah was that what he did, then? You know this do you?

I suspect that would have been completely unnecessary, there was no
shortage of tiny branch lines with no traffic already.

But of course things change. With much increased road traffic and travel
times by road, some of those branch lines could well be economic today.
But once closed are almost impossible to re-instate.

Indeed. I grew up in Brighton and belong to a quite interesting FB group
which has lots of interesting photos and stuff (as an aside, it recently
featured a family run shop where I used to buy tools; it's still open and
doing well, and I bought some tools there over 50 years ago that I still
have).

Anyway, there was a branch line from near my house, running to the main
town station. It closed in 1970-ish, but that was goods; it closed for
passenger traffic in the 1930s.

There are people in the group who go on and on about how much better
things were 'back then', and want to re-open that line. However, that
would require opening an ancient single track tunnel, restoring a long
cutting that is now a school playground and a rather nice park,
rebuilding a bridge in place of new houses, and building a long viaduct
whose footprint is now occupied by Machine Mart and Sainsburys.

They also forget that the line was *never* remotely economic; it was
built by the railway company as a spoiling tactic, to stop a competing
line to London!

--
My posts are my copyright and if @diy_forums or Home Owners' Hub
wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message.
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor