OFF THE SHELF
Great Central Railway: Decline and Fall
By John Evans (softback, Amberley Publishing, 96pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781 4456 95570)
WAS Dr Beeching the villain of popular perception who destroyed so much of our beloved railway network, or a hero who saved it? That is a question that will be asked in perpetuity.
When he was appointed from outside the nationalised railway and delegated with the task of stemming its soaring losses, at a time when the public was switching en masse to motor road transport, Beeching drew up fundamental principles to reshape the railway network.
Apart from closing the myriad of country branch lines, he targeted main routes which‘doubled up’, a legacy of 19th century competition between rival pre-Grouping railways to serve the same destinations, often from the same starting points.
The Great Central and its London Extension were late in the day, and, at the Grouping of 1923, it often played second fiddle to the older-established parallel routes which provided a backbone for its new owner the LNER.
