The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps
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FREETHE RESHAPING OF BRITISH RAILWAYS: PART 1: REPORT & PART 2: MAPS EBOOK British Railway Board | 176 pages | 31 Jan 2013 | HarperCollins Publishers | 9780007511969 | English | London, United Kingdom The Reshaping of British Railways - Part 1: Report :: The Railways Archive British Railways BRwhich from traded as British Railwas the state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain between and It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Railin stages between and Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commissionit became an independent statutory corporation in designated as the British Railways Board. The period of nationalisation saw sweeping The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps in the national railway network. A process of dieselisation and electrification took place, and by steam locomotion had been entirely replaced by diesel and electric traction, except for the Vale of Rheidol Railway a narrow-gauge tourist line. Passengers replaced freight as the main source of business, and one third of the network was closed by the Beeching Axe of the s in an effort to reduce rail subsidies. On privatisation, responsibility for track, signalling and stations was transferred to Railtrack which was later brought under public control as Network Rail and that for trains to the train operating companies. The British Rail "double arrow" logo is formed of two interlocked arrows showing the direction of travel on a double track railway and was nicknamed "the arrow of indecision". The rail transport system in Great Britain developed during the 19th century. During World War I the railways were under state control, which continued until Complete nationalisation had been considered, and the Railways Act [5] is sometimes considered as a precursor to that, but the concept was rejected. This Act made provision for the nationalisation of the network, as part of a policy of nationalising public services by Clement Attlee 's Labour Government. There were also joint railways between the Big Four and a few light railways to consider see list of constituents of British Railways. Excluded from nationalisation were industrial lines like the Oxfordshire The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps Railway. The London Underground — publicly owned since — was also nationalised, becoming the London Transport Executive of the British Transport Commission. The Bicester Military Railway was already run by the government. The The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps Liverpool Overhead Railway was also excluded from nationalisation. The Railway Executive was conscious that some lines on the then very dense network were unprofitable and hard to justify socially, and a programme of closures began almost immediately after nationalisation. However, the general financial position of BR became gradually poorer, until an operating loss was recorded in The Executive itself had been abolished in by the Conservative government, and control of BR transferred to the parent Commission. Other changes to the British Transport Commission at the same time included the return of road haulage to the private sector. British Railways was divided into regions which were initially based on the areas the former Big Four operated in; later, several lines The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps transferred between regions. Inthe regions were abolished and replaced by "business The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps, a process known as sectorisation. The Anglia Region was created in lateits first General Manager being John Edmonds, who began his appointment on 19 October Full separation from the Eastern Region — apart from engineering design needs — occurred on 29 April The report, latterly known as the "Modernisation Plan", [10] was published in January It was intended to bring the railway system into the 20th century. A government White Paper produced in stated that modernisation would help eliminate BR's financial deficit bybut the figures in both this and the original plan were produced for political reasons and not based on detailed analysis. Important areas included:. Not all the modernisations would be effective at reducing costs. The dieselisation programme gave contracts primarily to British suppliers, who had limited experience of diesel locomotive manufacture, and rushed commissioning based on an expectation of rapid electrification; this resulted in numbers of locomotives with poor designs, and a lack of standardisation. During the late s, railway finances continued to worsen, whilst passenger numbers grew after restoring many services reduced during the war, and in the government stepped in, limiting the amount the BTC could spend without ministerial authority. A White Paper proposing reorganisation The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps published in the following year, and a new structure was brought into effect by the Transport Act These included a British Railways Board, which took over on 1 January Following semi-secret discussions on railway finances by the government-appointed Stedeford Committee inone of its members, Dr Richard Beechingwas offered the post of chairing the BTC while it lasted, and then becoming the first Chairman of the British Railways Board. A major traffic census in Aprilwhich lasted one week, was used in the compilation of a report on the future of the network. A third of all passenger services and more than 4, of the 7, stations would close. Beeching, who is thought to have been the author of most of The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps report, set out some dire figures. Of the 18, passenger coaches, 6, were said to be used only 18 times a year or less. Most of the closures were carried out between and including some which were not listed in the report while other suggested closures were not carried out. The closures were heavily criticised at the time. The fate of the rest of the network was not discussed in the report. The basis for calculating passenger fares changed in Ina " Whites only " recruitment policy for guards at Euston Station was dropped after the case of Asquith Xaviera migrant from Dominicawho had been refused promotion on those grounds, was raised in Parliament and taken up by the then Secretary of State for Transport, Barbara Castle. Passenger levels decreased steadily from to the late s, [26] and reached a low in A main line route closure during this period of relative network stability was the V DC-electrified Woodhead Line between Manchester and Sheffield: passenger service ceased in and goods in The s and s saw the closure of some railways which had survived the Beeching Axe a generation earlier, but which had seen passenger services withdrawn. This included the bulk of the Chester and Connah's Quay Railway inthe Brierley Hill to Walsall section of the South Staffordshire The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps inwhile the Birmingham to Wolverhampton section of the Great Western Railway was closed in three phases between and The Serpell Report made no recommendations as such, but did set out various options for the network including, at their most extreme, a skeletal system of less than route km. This report was not welcomed, and the government decided to quietly leave it on the shelf. Meanwhile, BR was gradually reorganised, with the regional structure finally being abolished and replaced with business-led sectors. Provincial was the most subsidised per passenger km of the three sectors; upon formation, its costs were four times its revenue. Because British Railways was such a large operation, running not just railways but also ferries, steamships and hotels, it has been considered difficult to analyse the effects of nationalisation. Following nationalisation inBritish Railways began to adapt the corporate liveries on the rolling stock it had inherited from its predecessor railway companies. Initially, an express blue followed by GWR -style Brunswick green in was used on passenger locomotives, and LNWR -style lined black for mixed-traffic locomotives, but later green was more widely adopted. Development of a corporate identity for the organisation was hampered by the competing ambitions of the British Transport Commission and the Railway Executive. The Executive attempted to introduce a modern an Art Deco -style curved logo which could also serve as the standard for station signage totems. BR eventually adopted the common branding of the BTC as its first corporate logo, a lion astride a spoked wheel, designed for the BTC by Cecil Thomas ; on the bar overlaid across the wheel, the BTC's name was replaced with the words "British Railways". This logo, nicknamed the "Cycling Lion", was applied from to to the sides of locomotives, while the oval style was adopted for station signs across Great Britain, each coloured according to the appropriate BR region, using the Gill Sans The Reshaping of British Railways: Part 1: Report & Part 2: Maps first adopted by LNER in BR's second corporate logo —designed in consultation with Charles Franklynadapted the original, depicting a rampant lion emerging from a heraldic crown and holding a spoked wheel, all enclosed in a roundel with the "British Railways" name displayed across a bar on either side. This emblem soon acquired