With hindsight, much of the responsibility for the contradictory policies of the 1950s and 1960s can be laid at the door of successive governments, which set the railways an impossible task. On the one hand they were expected to act commercially and be profitable, but on the other they were not allowed to raise fares in line with inflation, as this was politically sensitive, and they were required to remain as a common carrier and to transport at a fixed price whatever was dumped on them, whether it was a small parcel or a whole farm (farm removals by rail still occurred in the 1950s). There was, too, the feeling within government that cheap fuel for motoring was a permanent fixture and therefore the demand for travel by railway would inevitably fall over time.
It was not until the late 1960s that the social obligations of the railway were finally acknowledged in Barbara Castle’s 1968 Transport Act, which relieved the railways of the impossible target set by Marples of breaking even or making a profit. She recognized, for the first time, that the railways needed financial support from the government, creating a distinction between commercial services which should pay for themselves and ‘social’ ones which needed subsidy. She wiped out the accumulated debt of £153m and encouraged BR’s managerial and business flair to blossom in the ‘commercial railway’ – the trunk intercity routes mostly radiating from London. She created the Passenger Transport Executives in six conurbations which received large grants from the Ministry of Transport to pay for both new railway infrastructure and to run the services. They have subsequently been very successful in reviving the suburban networks of provincial cities and boosting usage. The pace of closures slowed dramatically with only 900 miles being shut in the four years following the passage of the 1968 Act, and thereafter there was only a trickle, which stopped completely in 1977.
British Rail30 did, however, try one last major closure in the 1980s, the spectacular Carlisle to Settle railway built at such a high cost, both financial and human, by the Midland (see Chapter 8). BR claimed, with little justification, that the Ribblehead viaduct was crumbling and would cost too much to repair. The opponents of closures, emboldened by the aftermath of Beeching and now far better armed with statistics and legal experience, were able to ensure the line’s survival – which is fortunate since it is now not only a very useful diversionary route when either the West or East Coast line is closed but has also become an important freight artery as well as carrying considerable tourist traffic. Indeed, it is so important to the network of the twenty-first century that in 2004 Network Rail embarked on a five-year improvement programme costing £60m.
The Carlisle to Settle controversy was, however, an exception. A new atmosphere was developing inside British Rail, now that the threat of closures and redundancies had receded. Growth and development were no longer dirty words. Over 300 stations were reopened between 1970 and the end of the century, a tacit admission that Beeching had gone too far. In 1963, work resumed on the West Coast Main Line electrification which was to be the flagship of British Rail and the concept of InterCity was developed.
However, the first major innovation for passengers on long-distance routes was the 90 mph Blue Pullmans, decked out in a soothing sea-blue colour and powered by huge diesel engines at each end, a novel idea, introduced in 1960, that allowed for rapid turnaround times. The trains ran on both London Midland and Western Region lines, providing limited stop services to places such as Manchester and Birmingham.31 The five train sets were luxurious and the service was an example of railway customer care at its best: for the first time on a British train, full air conditioning and armchair seats with padded foam were offered, but unfortunately the bogies were poorly designed which meant that sometimes the ride was too bumpy for comfort. The service, which was initially only for first-class passengers but was later extended to second class, proved popular, but the trains themselves were prone to breakdown and only lasted until 1973. However, the Blue Pullmans demonstrated that the concept of fast journeys in modern coaches was the way forward for the railways and the technology of having a power car – a locomotive – at each end was adopted in the High Speed Train, the InterCity 125. British Railways managers were beginning to realize that the role of the railway in the age of the motor car was no longer to act as a common carrier, trying to cater for every possible journey, but instead to focus on passenger flows where the railways had a real advantage, for example as an alternative to motorway travel for business people.
It was on the East Coast that, in the short term, speeds increased the most. With electrification shelved (and eventually carried out at the end of the 1980s), the BR manager in charge of the line, the innovative Gerard Fiennes, persuaded BR to build twenty-two high-powered diesels capable of cruising at 100 mph, the huge Deltics. Timings between London and Edinburgh were cut from seven to six hours, and Leeds was just three hours away, the best journey times since before the war – and that was on every train, whereas in the 1930s these speeds were achieved only on the daily prestige service.
Similarly, diesels were introduced on services from Paddington to Bristol, St Pancras to Nottingham and Liverpool Street to Norwich. Carriages, too, were improved. Coaches had been standardized since 1951 with the introduction of the Mark 1, which was better than its predecessors, but it was not until the arrival of the Mark 2 that there was a major improvement. It could provide a comfortable ride at 100 mph thanks to more sophisticated bogies and the interior was far superior to anything that had been offered before.
However, the standards of passenger comfort varied enormously from line to line and creating the InterCity concept was an attempt to provide a consistent level of service across the network. Modern marketing and branding techniques began to be used by the increasingly adventurous and commercially minded British Railways. The iconic twin track logo, which survived privatization, was introduced in 1965 to demonstrate the modern face of the railway, and the InterCity brand for fast services between major cities was launched in April of the following year when the West Coast electrified services began running. Instead of naming individual expresses, the whole service was branded as InterCity.32 The new timetable on the West Coast was a vast improvement on any service previously offered on the line. Trains departed at the same time every hour and many journeys were timed at an average of 80 mph, which required sustained running at 100 mph for long stretches. Stations such as Euston, Stafford and Macclesfield were completely rebuilt to give the railways a new modern image that unfortunately has not aged well (Euston’s baroque great hall was demolished and replaced with a glass and concrete monstrosity that had no seats for waiting passengers). A massive publicity campaign, including TV advertising, was launched, the first of several over the next twenty years that would establish InterCity as one of the top five brands recognized by the British public. Passenger numbers soared, with a two-thirds increase from the previous year, a phenomenon that became known as the ‘sparks effect’, and the frequency of services had to be increased to meet demand.
In the early 1970s, therefore, British Rail turned the corner. The success of the West Coast electrification and the development of InterCity marked a renewed confidence in British Rail. Under the leadership of the forward-looking former Transport Minister, Richard Marsh, growing and improving the railway, rather than continuing to run it down, was now seen as the objective. British Rail managers started to fight back, reckoning that the financial discipline to which they had been asked to conform was becoming an end in itself, rather than part of a policy to improve a vital service.
But the government was ever contemptuous of the railway managers; there was ‘a firm belief in Whitehall that railway managers were inbred, inward-looking and resistant to change’.33 In fact, when outsiders from other industries, like Batchelors Peas or Palmolive, joined the railways, they invariably discovered that running the railways was a far more difficult proposition than selling consumer goods to shoppers. British Rail was frequently at loggerheads with Edward Heath’s Tory government, which was in power for the
first four years of the 1970s. BR had learnt the lesson of Beeching and produced a strategy document in 1973 which stated there was absolutely no ‘financially viable’ network size. Moreover, the oil crisis of that year reminded the politicians of the railways’ existence and their ability to carry large numbers of people using far less fuel than road vehicles.
When the Labour government was re-elected by a tiny majority in the February 1974 election, it had to rescue the industry with another Transport Act passed that same year. Prime Minister Harold Wilson allocated £2.1bn to BR, including £1,500m for the next five years to subsidize loss-making services through a newly created mechanism, the Public Service Obligation. However, there was still no solution to the conundrum that railway managers had faced ever since nationalization between their commercial and social remits. Moreover, passenger numbers declined as fares doubled between March 1974 and May 1975, an increase which was well above even the very high rates of inflation raging at the time. Nor was there any attempt to answer the fundamental question of what the railways were for.
Despite this, thanks to a forward-looking group of railway managers, there was a radical improvement on InterCity services with the introduction of the High Speed Train. This was a similar concept to the Blue Pullmans but with a more robust design, which is why these trains have survived into the twenty-first century. In fact, the High Speed Train was not supposed to spearhead the improved services; that was to have been the Advanced Passenger Train, a tilting train that was ahead of its time but became a sad casualty of the loss of nerve by both the industry and the government in the face of a barrage of negative media coverage. The idea was to reduce journey times by enabling the train to go around curves faster using a tilting mechanism; it would also reach speeds of 155 mph on straight sections. Development by British Railways engineers started in the mid-1960s and a prototype was put in public service in 1981. However, the train received a bad press, with claims that people were made sick by the tilt. The trains also proved unreliable, with frequent failure of the tilt mechanism, and the project was soon abandoned, even though engineers claimed that the problems could have been overcome. Indeed, tilting trains became commonplace in Europe and were eventually reintroduced with Italian technology by Virgin Trains in 2003 for their Pendolinos on the West Coast Main Line. The High Speed Train was, therefore, somewhat of a fallback option, but it was to prove a lasting success. Development of a diesel train with a 125 mph capability, which could run on existing lines without tilting, started in August 1970 but then was held up for a year because of a boycott by the unions because the trains were being designed to be controlled by a single driver.
Nationalization had not brought the hoped-for industrial relations peace. Quite the opposite. Railway workers were no longer prepared to accept the trade-off between stable employment and relatively poor pay which the railways, especially outside the big cities, had offered. They were losing out compared with other industries where higher productivity benefited both workers and shareholders. The rail workforce felt they deserved better pay, even though the industry was declining, but British Railways was not allowed to put up fares without government permission, which meant they fell in real terms during the 1950s and 1960s. Not surprisingly, therefore, there were continual battles over productivity. The workforce was reduced dramatically, from over 600,000 in 1950 to 275,500 in 1979, which meant that the unions were rigidly opposed to more cuts, though the introduction of redundancy payments in 1959 had been an incentive for railway workers to leave the industry. Every aspect of railway work required fewer employees thanks to improved technology. Diesel and electric locomotives were easier to maintain and clean; signal boxes were being closed and centralized; the track was being replaced with longer stretches of continuous welded rail which was easier to look after, resulting in the replacement of the local gangs who maintained the track with fewer men in charge of longer sections. Strikes were not uncommon but rarer than myth would have it and they were all partial since there was no national rail stoppage until the 1980s. There had been a particularly damaging seventeen-day stoppage in 1955 by the drivers’ union, ASLEF, but although it made a sharp dent in the finances of the British Transport Commission, the action did not entirely paralyse the network. While there was massive inconvenience to longdistance travellers and London commuters, life in the country went on as normal, which showed the railway workers that their industrial muscle had been greatly weakened by the advent of the motor car.
The boycott was the other weapon in the unions’ armoury and was successfully deployed to ban work on the High Speed Train until BR agreed that double manning should be retained for 125 mph running, though the practice was eventually phased out with the agreement of the unions in the 1980s. The prototype of the High Speed Train, developed by BR engineers at Derby, outperformed its specifications with a record-beating speed of 143 mph on a test run in June 1973. The HST represented a significant technological breakthrough as it gave a stable ride at 125 mph thanks to the precision of the engineering and the use of disc brakes, which were much more efficient, therefore allowing the train to run at full speed without the need for a new signalling system.34 (Older readers may remember the strong smell of brake lining which permeated through the air conditioning of trains as they slowed down, until the problem was finally dealt with in the 1990s.)
The trains were introduced on the Western Region in October 1976 and on the East Coast line two years later, reducing journey times at a stroke since previously the top speed on the network had been 100 mph. Improvements to the track were also made to allow the new trains to run at high speeds for longer, further reducing journey times. Bristol could be reached from London in just seventy minutes and, on the East Coast, Newcastle was now under three hours from the capital, a saving of forty minutes. The ‘journey experience’, as the marketing people call it, was much improved too with comfortable seats with tables for most travellers, full air conditioning, and restaurant cars on every train, serving the famous Great English Breakfast in the mornings. InterCity was blessed too with a series of brilliant advertising campaigns devised by the Tories’ agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, notably the famous Jimmy Saville series ‘We’re getting there’.
The HST saved the concept of express train travel and enabled the railways to remain competitive with the car on the now completed motorway network. InterCity was a people’s train service, with no supplement for its use, and it was so successful that yield management techniques to maximize revenue (through charging higher fares at times of peak demand), now familiar in the aviation industry, had to be developed by British Railways to choke off-peak-time demand (through cheap fares aimed at leisure customers travelling off-peak and high fares at times of the day when business people wanted to travel). A new breed of long-distance commuter emerged as it was now possible to travel daily from places as far from London as Bristol, Doncaster and even York.
For a while, the InterCity High Speed Train service was a world leader. By 1979, when the timetable had been adjusted to take account of the new trains, BR’s fastest time between two stations – Reading and Swindon – was 106 mph, beaten only by the Japanese bullet trains running on their own dedicated tracks, which managed a mere 4 mph more. Sadly that position would soon be eroded as countries across Europe, and later Asia, introduced similar high-speed services on dedicated tracks. Nevertheless, the InterCity name and concept spawned a number of imitators around the world, from Cameroon and New Zealand to Spain and Austria. Indeed, in 1989 the Deutsche Bundesbahn in West Germany christened their new 300 km/h highspeed trains, InterCityExpress or ICE.
Peter Parker, another outsider, who took over as head of the British Railways Board from Richard Marsh in 1976, was quick to exploit the improved image of the railway resulting from the introduction of HST. He managed to get several electrification schemes under way, including the Bedford–St Pancras (BedPan, as it was known) line, where the work was completed in 1982 (though causing major ructions with the unions, a
gain over single manning). This was also the year of the ASLEF dispute over ‘flexible rostering’, a term that briefly attracted national attention and which essentially meant the right of BR to roster workers for shifts other than the standard eight hours.
Overall, however, the 1980s were a far better time for the railways than the previous decade, despite the government’s continued stop-start policy which prevented the industry planning its long-term future. On the one hand, Mrs Thatcher’s Tory government set up a commission in 1982 to investigate the future of the railways, headed by a former civil servant, Sir David Serpell, whose recommendations made the Beeching cuts look remarkably modest; on the other, the government gave the go-ahead for the modernization and electrification of the East Coast line, the biggest project on the railways since the West Coast scheme in the 1960s.
The trigger for the establishment of the Serpell Commission was the financial crisis suffered by the railways soon after Mrs Thatcher’s election in 1979. Part of the report was sensible, suggesting, for example, that BR should divest itself of its workshops, which still accounted for half of spending (no other railway, other than that in India, still built its own trains). However, the second part of the report lacked any political nous and caused an almighty furore that ensured it was quickly consigned to the dustbin. Serpell produced six options for a pruned-down British railway for the twenty-first century, ranging from the culling of just a couple of hundred miles to the infamous option A which proposed reducing the 10,370 route miles to just 1,630, comprising only the West Coast Main Line, the East Coast as far as Newcastle, and the routes from the capital to Norwich and Bristol, and a few key commuter lines. Implementing this scheme would have left whole swathes of Britain such as north and mid-Wales, the West Country and much of Scotland without a railway. By highlighting the worst option and mounting an aggressive counter-attack, the British Railways Board soon ensured that Serpell’s ideas were never further considered.
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