Don't blame Beeching for loss-making railways

The railway lobby has an inherent bias when criticising Beeching. It was almost inevitable that Beeching would make mistakes - this was a nationalised industry central planning board. However, out of the numerous lines he closed, there is no point in pointing to two or three that might have been slightly less loss making fifty years later and saying ‘Beeching was therefore wrong’. In general, the lines that he closed were of the type that are today vastly loss making, instead of just loss making, as is the railway as a whole. Also, any commercial enterprise has to take decisions on the basis of the information it has at the time. You cannot keep thousands of miles of railway open on the off chance that they might, one day, find a slightly less trivial use.

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Source: http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/dont-blame-beeching-for-loss-making-railways

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