In article , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
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.

So you would have subsidised them for 50 years on the off chance they
may be useful one day.
--
bert