Greg Morse - British Railways in the 1970s and 80s

Greg Morse

The interior of an Inter-City 125 First Class saloon, c. 1976. These trains brought high-speed travel to Britain and were a worthy flagship in BRs Age of the Train.

SHIRE PUBLICATIONS

Deltic 55019 Royal Highland Fusilier powers an express past the Scottish border on 15 July 1978. The train is mainly made up ofMark IId carriages, whose introduction in 1971 allowed BR to provide its first non-supplementary fare air-conditioned services.

Though the railway changed rapidly in the 1970s and 80s, new and old continued to coexist in parts as at St Pancras in 1982, where a 1950s enamel name board shares entrance duties with the double-arrow logo devised the decade after.

R AIN CLOUDS LOOM on a late afternoon; the air is sharp, the concrete platforms cold. A local rasps in from the suburbs, filling the place with fumes, as a garbled message breaks from the tannoy. A ticket inspector shoves his hands in his pockets and stamps his feet to keep warm. In the distance, an express appears, its front end coated with brake dust and grime. The thrum of the diesel becomes the clunk of the coach wheels as they pass over pointwork and on to plain line. The driver eases the brake as the red signal nears, but before the train stops, doors fly open, and jumpers start running for connections appointments trysts.

Some make for Menzies, seeking Custom Car or Look-in; others wait for someone to help with cases and bags. Those with more time head to the buffet, or perhaps to the bar for a Watneys or gin. Few notice the lad studying the timetable, an all-line Rail Rover burning in his hand.

Doors slam, a whistle blows and a yellow tug rolls by to fetch trolleys of papers and parcels. One of the passengers sits on a bench, scribbling away with a pencil and pad. He makes a note here, he makes a note there and then crosses it out and starts again. Later that evening, hell open his act on a familiar tack:

British Rail sandwiches cost the earth and taste like it!

BR the butt of many such jokes was formed in 1948, when the Great Western, London Midland & Scottish, London & North Eastern and Southern Railways were taken into public ownership, together with fifty smaller concerns. It was originally divided into six regions, controlled by the Railway Executive one of five that answered to the British Transport Commission, which had been established to provide a properly integrated system of public inland transport and port facilities within Great Britain.

The Railway Executive inherited over 20,000 locomotives, 56,000 coaches, a million wagons, 43,000 road vehicles, 650,000 members of staff and nearly 9,000 horses. Much of the rolling stock and the track on which it ran was in poor condition, having been heavily used and lightly maintained during the Second World War. Modernisation and renewal followed in the 1950s, which led to some service improvements, infrastructure upgrades and the replacement of steam by diesel and electric locomotives. The latter was achieved by 1968, and had been sped by Dr Richard Beeching, a director of ICI brought in by the government to make the railways pay. His tenure as Chairman, of both the Commission and (from 1 January 1963) the British Railways Board (BRB), was best known for the publication of the infamous Reshaping of British Railways report (1963), which led to the closure of numerous loss-making lines and stations, a greater focus on the block movement of freight, and the introduction of modern management techniques. These policies only contained BRs deficit, but Beechings legacy also included better staff training and a sleek, corporate identity, featuring the famous double arrow symbol and a new name: in January 1965, British Railways became British Rail, and would remain so for just over thirty years.

Despite advances in technology, traditional card-board Edmondson tickets would survive in pockets until 1989. This one dates from July 1971 and took its purchaser from Portsmouth Harbour to Hilsea and bac for 14 new pence.

The east side of London Liverpool Street in May 1974. The station had remained much the same since the early 1960s, with the exception of the fashions, the yellow platform tugs, yellow bins and yellow ends on the trains.

A Western Region timetable from 1972. BR originally comprised six Regions: the Eastern, London Midland, North Eastern, Scottish, Southern, and Western. The North Eastern was absorbed into the Eastern from 1 January 1967, but five would become six again with the creation of Anglia in 1988.

From 1 January 1976, BR dispensed with headcodes to describe train types, replacing the four-character displays on the fronts of locomotives with two marker lights, as seen here on 50021 at Bristol Temple Meads in 1977.

A grimy Class 31 with a commuter train at Farringdon, London, in 1974. The coaches are non-corridor, and date from the early 1950s. Electrification in the late 1970s would see their replacement by open-plan electric multiple units.

The National Traction Plan of 1968 spelled the end for many of the less successful diesel designs ordered in the 1950s. By 1979, however, some of the rest were nearing the end of their lives, while others would be subject to recession-led cutbacks. Here, at Swindon on 25 October 1980, a variety of locomotives await their fate.

After several reorganisations and chairmen BR reached the end of the 1960s considerably leaner than when it began. In twenty years, locomotive numbers had fallen to just over 4,500, workshops had been halved to fourteen, and staff numbers had dropped to 296,000. But though route mileage had been cut from 20,000 to less than 11,000, the 1968 Transport Act pointed to a more stable future, setting down principles that would protect the loss-making lines that had social value and put the railway on a proper public service footing. To further this aim, it wiped out BRs debts and established Passenger Transport Executives (PTEs) in and around some of Britains major urban centres to aid the provision of local bus and rail services. It also allowed BRs workshops division to manufacture for other industries. As a result, British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) started trading on 1 January 1970, with a turnover of around 100 million and a staff of 37,000.