Parliamentary Train - Legacy of The Beeching Closures

Legacy of The Beeching Closures

In 1963 the nationalised British Railways produced a report, The Reshaping of British Railways, designed to stem the huge losses made by the railway industry. The Chairman of British Railways was Dr Richard Beeching, and the report became known as the Beeching Report. It proposed very substantial cuts to the network and to the train services in Great Britain. The Transport Act 1962 included a formal closure process allowing for objections to closures on the basis of hardship to passengers if their service were closed. As the objections gained momentum this process became increasingly difficult to implement politically, and from about 1970 closures slowed to a trickle.

In certain cases where there was exceptionally low usage, the train service was reduced to a bare minimum so that expenditure was saved but the service was not closed. In some cases the service was reduced to one train a week, and in one case it remains in one direction only.

These minimal services had resonances of the 19th-century parliamentary services, and among rail enthusiasts they came to be referred to as "parliamentary trains", often called more colloquially "parly" trains (following the abbreviation used in Victorian timetables) or "ghost trains". However this terminology is not followed in official usage.