Trains plotting: Rail expert on why reviving old lines is the way ahead

A new book about the axing of a number of Scottish train lines in the ’60s has been written by railway expert David Spaven.

Here, he tells Murray Scougall the Honest Truth about the controversial closures and why a renaissance of branch lines would be a positive development.

What is your rail background?

I began my life working on the railway at Invergordon, Inverness and Tain during student holidays in the summers of 1973 and 1974.

That got into my blood and I spent 18 years as a freight marketing manager with British Rail (BR). I didn’t fancy rail privatisation, so switched to rail consultancy. In my spare time I’ve been a rail campaigner, and spent 20 years helping the successful campaign for the re-opening of the Borders Railway.

Why did you want to write about lost branch lines?

I became intrigued that nobody had investigated why virtually every remaining branch line was axed in the 1960s, and whether there was a realistic alternative to closure.

What was the Beeching Axe?

The infamous 1963 Beeching Report, written by Dr Richard Beeching, the BR Chairman, advocated widespread closures as a way to cut BR’s losses in the face of growing car ownership.

Beeching proposed to withdraw passenger services from 5,000 route miles across Britain (one-third of the network).

The cuts were known as the Beeching Axe. In total, 150 miles of passenger railway closed in Scotland in 1964, and the cuts peaked the following year when more than 300 miles of Scottish routes lost their passenger trains.

Was the decision short-sighted?

Dozens of routes disappeared in a short-sighted, unsuccessful bid to eliminate BR’s losses.

Little or no account was taken of the environmental, social and economic impacts of forcing more traffic on to the roads, and it became apparent that a resilient and ultimately expanding rail network was crucial to our national wellbeing.

Have you unearthed any new evidence that would suggest the decision was erroneous?

The National Union of Railwaymen archive at Warwick University revealed BR always rejected sensible proposals for cost-cutting short of complete closure, such as singling double-track lines and de-staffing or closing smaller stations.

Beeching – under pressure to implement cuts quickly – ignored the scope for rationalising the infrastructure instead of destroying the whole service.

Any interesting stories about the routes in the book?

BR advised passengers faced with loss of their trains to take travel sickness pills before journeys on replacement buses – and argued that “on longer bus journeys with no toilet facilities, any juvenile incontinence may be relieved by asking bus conductors to make a short stop”.

A bus company chairman played a key part in the decision to close the Peebles line. On a threatened branch line to Kilmacolm, visiting railway managers from France told BR that in their country the route would be electrified, not axed.

Amid environmental concerns and road congestion, should branch lines have a place in today’s world?

Rail is more energy-efficient, carbon-friendly and safer than road transport, and it has to play a key part in Scotland’s response to the climate emergency.

The Levenmouth branch is now being rebuilt, belatedly, by the Scottish Government – and it deserves to be followed by re-openings in Buchan, where Fraserburgh and Peterhead are now, since the opening of the Borders Railway to Galashiels, further from the rail network than any other UK towns of their size.

ScotRail is operating fewer services than pre-pandemic – is this a sign of the public changing the way it travels or is it a temporary slump?

Rail commuting won’t return to pre-pandemic levels but the train can be attractive for business travel, shopping, leisure and holiday trips – that is where the best prospects for passenger growth lie. But the Scottish Government needs to help stimulate “modal switch” from road, for example, by speedier electrification of rail to Aberdeen and Inverness, and by providing more incentives to switch freight to trains.

Scotland’s Lost Branch Lines by David Spaven will be published on March 3 by Birlinn