Beeching Cuts

Richard Beeching's 1963 report recommended closing about 5,000 miles of line and 2,363 stations, roughly thirty percent of route mileage and fifty five percent of stations, at a cost of about 67,700 railway jobs.

The Beeching cuts were the closure of railway lines and stations across Great Britain in the 1960s, recommended by Richard Beeching's two reports to the British Railways Board in favor of a smaller, more intensively used trunk network. The first report, published in 1963, identified 5,000 miles of line and 2,363 stations for closure, about thirty percent of route mileage and fifty five percent of stations, at a cost of roughly 67,700 railway jobs. The second report, in 1965, framed the choice as being between an excessive and increasingly uneconomic system, with a corresponding tendency for the railways as a whole to fall into disrepute and decay, or the selective development and intensive utilisation of a more limited trunk route system.