Beeching - The inside track

To mark the half centenary of The Reshaping of British Railways, the famous watershed report by Dr Richard Beeching which led to lossmaking lines across Britain being axed, here is a fresh, unique and historic exclusive insight into what went on – compiled with the help of perhaps the last surviving member of his planning team who helped process the closures and plot a new future for the network. 


• Find out about what went on inside British Railways headquarters at 222 Marylebone Road while the closures were being planned and progressed. 

• Learn about the highly-confidential Blue Book of Maps which was packed with highly- sensitive information about key British industries of the day and which was used to help redraw the UK rail network in the mid-Sixties. 

• Read about Beeching’s major and lasting successes in the rail freight sector and how the Great Central Railway might have had a future as a Freightliner route. 

• Look at how Britain’s railways evolved from the huge losses of the pre-Beeching era into today’s successful network with the highest passenger levels since the Twenties. 

• Discover the lines which might, with hindsight, have been saved and why. 

• See how people power saved the Settle & Carlisle line. 

• Find out why an obscure Norfolk freight branch had top priority for retention. 

• View the last days of the Somerset & Dorset Joint system plus much, much more. 


Robin Jones is a widely published and highly respected journalist who specialises in heritage transportation and industrial archaeology subjects. 

Robin contributes news and feature material on a regular basis across a wide range of railway titles and has written many books on Britain’s railway history. 

He is currently the editor of Heritage Railway Magazine.