I'm going to attempt a bit of an overview of this subject, hopefully published over the next 3 to 4 days!
Early attempts at adopting the steam locomotive for road use were failures because roads simply weren't good enough. But steam locomotives were perfect for railways, and the rail network quickly expanded, killing off a lot of the canal trade in the process. This was the first big modal shift of the industrial era.
The discovery of oil (or rediscovery to be precise) quickly led to the creation of the internal combustion engine. As more cars were produced the road network was modernised, creating a virtuous circle of development. Eventually the car challenged the railways, at least for part of the share of traffic, particularly passenger travel and some of the fiddly freight traffic.
Despite the railways' fantastic contribution during world war two post-war governments in the UK began to favour road over rail, partly because of the huge cost of restoring the rail network after war damage and wear and tear which arose from the very heavy wartime traffic. The railways were nationalized on 1 January 1948, releasing the Big Four companies from the obligation of investment.
All the time this was happening more and more oil was being discovered, petrol was generally cheap and used as if it was an infinite resource. Investment decisions on creation of new transport infrastructure seemed to also imagine that cheap oil would last forever, again as if it was an infinite resource. Motorways were constructed and railways began to be closed in a wholesale manner, particularly after the Beeching Report was published in 1963. The Beeching Report was fatally flawed in two ways, it treated railways differently from roads, requiring railways to be 'economically viable' whereas roads, no matter how remote and little used they were, were treated as a social necessity, with no need to be economically viable. The second big error was to not take into account the limited lifespan of oil. Whilst the railways were now using oil to fuel its new diesel locomotives, replacing steam that used home mined (but equally finite) coal, railways were not tied to one energy source or one delivery system the way roads were.
The effect of the Beeching Report was the wholesale destruction of the rail network, not just through closure of lines (including the S&D) but the closure of hundreds of stations on lines that stayed open and the diversion of freight from rail to road.
2 comments:
Another major flaw was the failure to protect the right of way from development. Given that France, Ireland and the US had such protection as far back as the 1930s, it beggars belief that it wasn't even considered.
I remember talk before the election about a moratorium on building on old alignments, but nothing since.
There was talk, but if I remember rightly they were only proposing a two year moratorium, which is no use at all. It needs to be as long as cheap fuel lasts - perhaps ten more years. Because at the moment we'd have a job arguing for S&D reinstatement except between Radstock and Bath, Blandford and Poole and Glastonbury to Highbridge, because the conditions that will require the reopening of the whole S&D (and many other routes) won't fully kick in until fuel becomes expensive, and then difficult to get.
I suspect I'll be covering this in part three!
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