Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 11:32 am Post subject: 1963 Atomic Bomber Beeching nukes Britain's railway network
Got this by email - for me the biggest leg-up on understanding how all this works since watching Rob Newman... nence it's here - mind bendingly fascinating.
Quote:
The reason I write is the UK Transport topic and Beeching's Axe.
Having worked in the oil industry a fair part of my life, I have often wondered why this noble twat Beeching ripped our heritage up so fast. Politicians argued taxpayers losses. What nonsense. All industries owned by the nation, are manipulated by the bean counters to alter public opinion.
My thoughts were drawn to the timing of the discovery of North Sea oil, and twats axe.
My theory was American Oil Zionists telling the UK government what will happen. i.e. You have a transport infrastructure that is far too efficient Where are you going to sell your oil? The OPEC countries are under our control and we do not want your oil upsetting our cosy world market. You will have to sell it on your home market. If you agree, we will give you the zillions of bucks to build your rigs, because you can't afford to build them, and we will assist you in sucking your oil out and polluting your fishing grounds...... BUT you must rip up your tracks and build for the road lobby. Look at the taxes you can rip the public off for........ ZZZzzzzzz. The rest is history.
Hence, I live in France. Here life is not so hypocritical, and not so many Zionist scumbag pigs running the shop.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 7:33 pm Post subject:
From Richard Cottrell's forthcoming book
Dr Richard Beeching, father of the British Atom Bomb and Destroyer of the Railways
Quote:
The story begins in the mid 1930’s when British politicians started to acknowledge that playing softball with Herr Hitler needed some more effective deterrent to German designs should diplomacy fail. The spotlight falls immediately on Beeching’s future employer, Imperial Chemical Industries, whose great inventory of skills in many fields made it a natural component of a future war machine.. Beneath thick blankets of secrecy, dozens of ICI plants scattered around the country switched over to the manufacture of light metals for bombs and guns, explosive detonators and chemical weapons including internationally proscribed mustard gas and other toxic agents. Imperceptibly, ICI was dissolving into a branch of the seamless British military-industrial complex which then resulted in one extraordinary flowering. During the late 1930’s, when it appeared that conflict with Germany was probably inevitable, ICI laboratories became a lead force to create nothing less than an in-house designed imperial atomic bomb. In 1932 John Cockcroft set the chain reaction in motion when he devised some intricate alchemy with atomic nuclei, popularly but not entirely correctly known as splitting the atom. Before long it became obvious that given the deteriorating international situation, mankind would turn first to warfare in his efforts to harness the energy of the sun. ICI’s freelance exploratory work led to the sittings between 1940-41 of the ultra secret Maud Committee, composed of six glittering minds who between them were effectively masters of the universe of nuclear physics. They confirmed the bomb was not only feasible but an ineluctable necessity in the struggle with the Third Reich. ICI’s pre war cosiness with its German counterpart, I.G. Farben, furthermore offered sound intelligence that German physicists were capable of implementing a programme that could lead to a Nazi bomb. Alarmed, the British authorities turned to the Americans who seemed at first peculiarly diffident but eventually invited the United Kingdom to join the US-led Manhattan project. The Maud Committee was chaired by George Paget Thomson, the brilliant physicist whose path finding work on the properties of the electron cleared some of the chief obstacles in achieving fusion. And it was Thomson who first spotted the talents of the shy young introvert from Kent when he tutored Beeching in his pre war PhD studies at Imperial College.
From now on Beeching was surrounded by a galaxy of professional benefactors who between them accounted for the largest concentration of intellectual power concerning nuclear physics to be found anywhere on earth. He becomes visible in the story with his intriguing assignments during the war and afterwards at the top secret ordinance research centre at Fort Halstead, a venerable Napoleonic defensive redoubt located just outside Greenwich, intended to forestall the Frenchies from advancing along the London road after some assumed successful splashing ashore in Kent. Beeching arrived at the deeply camouflaged location in 1942, plucked from research work at the Mond Nickel Laboratories – another vital component of the war machine - just 29 but already sporting the characteristic behaviour of someone far older than his years, plus a premature middle age tonsure. Beeching was awarded the rank of army captain to conduct research into shell casings for highly explosive weapons. This was work to which the hands and brain of a physicist specialising in metallurgy and chemical engineering, with a singular speciality in alloys, could naturally be put. The war had raised needs for new and more effective types of weaponry casings, especially those intended to be dropped by air. The key was lightness – especially for artillery shells that armies must carry around with them and even more so to increase the efficiency payload for aerial bombardments. Beeching was then at the heart of one of the government’s most highly sensitive war research programmes. But Halstead harboured another great secret: it was also the developing nerve centre of the British nuclear weapons project innocently code-named ‘Tube Alloys’ which had followed on from the pioneering atomic efforts of ICI.
A fascinating set of chums revolving around Halstead can be found fostering Beeching’s career and subsequent high rise across large expanses of the industrial landscape in a kind of appropriate chain reaction. His principal benefactors all had powerful connections to the world of nuclear science. Bill Penny, a godparent of the British A-bomb – and of all nuclear weapons, come to that - taught Beeching maths at Imperial College and was instrumental in getting him the Mond Nickel and then Fort Halstead postings. Penny was principally a specialist in the wave effect of high explosive detonations, considered by his counterparts across the Atlantic to be the unrivalled man in his field. The wave transmitted by a high fission blast is a major factor in the success, for want of a better word, in setting off a nuclear device. The casing of the bomb must be calculated to shatter in precisely the right manner to achieve this result. That is where Beeching came in as the expert in composing alloys. Another important guardian angel was Frank Kearton, whom Beeching had known before the war, one of the core inner circle of scientists designing the bomb. Sir Frank Smith who oversaw everything at Halstead, was the former technical director of Imperial, intimately involved in the company’s own A-bomb work and whose civilian shoes Beeching ultimately filled. And not the least important piece of compelling evidence lies in the fact that Beeching was not only retained at Halstead when the war ended but raised to deputy chief engineer of the entire establishment, holding the rank of brigadier.
Beeching’s blend of physics with a specialised knowledge of metallurgy and practical mechanical engineering made him a well-nuanced choice for a specialised task such as the alloys to manufacture both casings and the tube mechanisms – the detonation channels, down which in early types of A-bomb a plunger passes to spark a chain reaction among concentrated fissionable materials. When the go ahead to build an independent British deterrent was given, the necessary raw materials had to be found and the specialised manufacture undertaken in conditions of utmost secrecy. This in turn brought in yet another prop of Beeching’s life, with remarkable consequences in fields far from the arcane world of atom physics. In 1935 an up and coming John Bull-ish businessman called Ivan Stedeford effectively gained control of Tube Investments which enjoyed a virtual monopoly in special kinds of engineering requiring tubes. Stedeford’s firm was heavily involved in wartime munitions work, and it was also the dieu ex machina behind the code name Tube Alloys shrouding British atomic ambitions. Stedeford and Beeching encountered each other first at Fort Halstead, and later when Tube Investments was given orders to make crucial parts for the A bomb, the relationship blossomed. If Stedeford did not actually warm to Beeching in a personal sense, he nonetheless developed respect for a steely sense of resolve. A decade later it was the hitherto completely unknown ‘Dr Who’ Richard Beeching to whom Stedeford turned to assist him in drawing up the future blueprint for the national railway system. (In fact Stedeford was himself the second choice: the first candidate was yet another member of the nuclear glitterati, Sir Frank Smith, who politely found himself busy on other work. He swiftly passed the poisoned chalice to Stedeford).
Beeching found himself in post during an exceptionally tense period in Anglo-American relations, the critical period when the British were unceremoniously expelled from America’s Manhattan A bomb project, on grounds of loose lips sink ships. The Americans suspected a mole passing crucial intelligence to the wartime ally of convenience, Moscow. Some suspicion clung to ICI. The finger also hovered around Patrick Blackett, a craggy, tousle-haired individualist on the Maud Committee, an extraordinary iconoclast whose intellectual sweep remains breathtaking to this day. His case is one of whispered treachery, largely because of his subsequent activities in radical politics. Nothing was ever proven, nor a charge laid. He went on to high honours. But just the same Stalin soon had the main conclusions of the Maud proceedings on his Kremlin desk and immediately ordered his scientists to get down to work.
Attlee’s socialist government decided to go it alone and immediately began rounding up the necessary expertise. Beeching was at Halstead until late 1948, during the build up to an independent deterrent which, as Ernest Bevin promised “would have the bloody Union Jack on it.” The high probability is that parts of the internal activating trigger mechanism and the alloy casing of the bomb which atomised an old British frigate anchored off the coast of Western Australia on October 3 1952, indeed bore Beeching’s autograph in the form of his experimental work on high explosive casings and projectile detonation tubes. One imagines an almost imperceptible rustle of the breakfast Times the following radioactive morn as Mrs Beeching quietly inquires if her husband would like another slice of toast before setting off for work. It ranks as impossible that the deputy most senior engineer at the Tube Alloys nerve centre was other than an intimate participant in the race to make Britain’s the world’s third nuclear power, given his particular talents in physics and blending alloys. By now Beeching had gravitated in the wake of his wartime boss at Fort Halstead, Frank Smith, to a welcoming haven at ICI, first as Smith’s closest personal assistant, and then his successor as technical director. His own private chain reaction in the world of nuclear physics had proved an astounding success
Beeching’s wartime colleagues rated him “a good brain” with a gift for cool analysis. Personal relations however could be markedly difficult. His companions in these problem cracking circles frequently found him uncomfortable as well as personally unfathomable. As far back as his studies at Imperial College he developed a tendency in group contact to crowd out intellectual conclusions that differed from his own, which invariably left him as the ‘owner’ of the final outcome. Beeching was in fact demonstrating a lifelong leaning to the old academic sickness of plagiarising the ideas and thoughts of others. .But the Halstead experience left its lasting stamp in other ways. Breeching’s already pronounced social awkwardness and icy introversion in the company of others, became further entrenched in the atmosphere which prevailed around secret work. Jerome K Jerome wrote: “A shy man means a lonely man - cut off from all companionship, from all sociability” The identikit fitted the pedantic and idiosyncratic Beeching perfectly.
Much has been made of Beeching’s fussy and seemingly obsessive mania for detail rather than the big picture. At one point early in his career at ICI he derived enormous satisfaction from measuring efficiency levels in turning out mass produced zip fasteners. This made him a natural companion figure of the notorious 18th century pedant Jeremy Bentham who believed he could produce a scale of assessment for everything from pain and pleasure to the work performance of lawyers. But behind the almost morgue-like pallor, which weekend tending the roses down at East Grinstead did little to dispel, Beeching entertained a startling fault. He was astonishingly naïve and immensely unworldly, which became obvious once he moved outside the narrow and confined milieu in which he normally swam. Thus he indulged in the bizarre courtship of the flamboyant Ernest Marples. He was unprepared for the cloak and dagger world of politics and its ever flashing knives. Once estranged from the orderly and predictable Fort Halstead-like cocoon of ICI, he was insufficiently astute in the murky realms of government to appreciate that he was really being employed as a cipher to disguise the Macmillan government’s intention to “de-unionise transport” through a massive switch away from railways in favour of an enormous nationwide road building programme. It was a task that his sponsor, Ivan Stedeford, bluntly refused to perform, on the grounds the government pretended to the fiscal objective of cleaning up the railways, while using the so-called reshaping exercise to shrink the national system to a skeletal spine network not much bigger than Belgium’s for a population six times the size and twenty times in area.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 7:32 pm Post subject:
UK MoD nuclear contractors: Weir-Group, BNFL and Rolls-Royce.
TonyGosling wrote:
From Richard Cottrell's forthcoming book
Dr Richard Beeching, father of the British Atom Bomb and Destroyer of the Railways
Quote:
Attlee’s socialist government decided to go it alone and immediately began rounding up the necessary expertise. Beeching was at Halstead until late 1948, during the build up to an independent deterrent which, as Ernest Bevin promised “would have the bloody Union Jack on it.” The high probability is that parts of the internal activating trigger mechanism and the alloy casing of the bomb which atomised an old British frigate anchored off the coast of Western Australia on October 3 1952, indeed bore Beeching’s autograph in the form of his experimental work on high explosive casings and projectile detonation tubes. One imagines an almost imperceptible rustle of the breakfast Times the following radioactive morn as Mrs Beeching quietly inquires if her husband would like another slice of toast before setting off for work. It ranks as impossible that the deputy most senior engineer at the Tube Alloys nerve centre was other than an intimate participant in the race to make Britain’s the world’s third nuclear power, given his particular talents in physics and blending alloys. By now Beeching had gravitated in the wake of his wartime boss at Fort Halstead, Frank Smith, to a welcoming haven at ICI, first as Smith’s closest personal assistant, and then his successor as technical director. His own private chain reaction in the world of nuclear physics had proved an astounding success
On August 28, 1928, in the Scottish highlands, began the secret story of oil.
Three men had an appointment at Achnacarry Castle - a Dutchman, an American and an Englishman.
The Dutchman was Henry Deterding, a man nicknamed the Napoleon of Oil, having exploited a find in Sumatra. He joined forces with a rich ship owner and painted Shell salesman and together the two men founded Royal Dutch Shell.
The American was Walter C. Teagle and he represents the Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller at the age of 31 - the future Exxon. Oil wells, transport, refining and distribution of oil - everything is controlled by Standard oil.
The Englishman, Sir John Cadman, was the director of the Anglo-Persian oil Company, soon to become BP. On the initiative of a young Winston Churchill, the British government had taken a stake in BP and the Royal Navy switched its fuel from coal to oil. With fuel-hungry ships, planes and tanks, oil became "the blood of every battle".
The new automobile industry was developing fast, and the Ford T was selling by the million. The world was thirsty for oil, and companies were waging a merciless contest but the competition was making the market unstable.
That August night, the three men decided to stop fighting and to start sharing out the world's oil. Their vision was that production zones, transport costs, sales prices - everything would be agreed and shared. And so began a great cartel, whose purpose was to dominate the world, by controlling its oil.
Four others soon joined them, and they came to be known as the Seven Sisters - - the biggest oil companies in the world.
Episode 1 - Desert Storms
In the first episode, we travel across the Middle East, through both time and space.
"We waged the Iran-Iraq war and I say we waged it, because one country had to be used to destroy the other. As they already benefit from the oil bonanza, and they’re building up financal reserves, from time to time they have to be bled."
- Xavier Houzel, an Oil trader
Throughout the region's modern history, since the discovery of oil, the Seven Sisters have sought to control the balance of power.
They have supported monarchies in Iran and Saudi Arabia, opposed the creation of OPEC, profiting from the Iran-Iraq war, leading to the ultimate destruction of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
The Seven Sisters were always present, and almost always came out on top.
Since that notorious meeting at Achnacarry Castle on August 28, 1928, they have never ceased to plot, to plan and to scheme.
Episode 2 – The Black El Dorado
At the end of the 1960s, the Seven Sisters, the major oil companies, controlled 85 percent of the world's oil reserves. Today, they control just 10 percent.
New hunting grounds are therefore required, and the Sisters have turned their gaze towards Africa. With peak oil, wars in the Middle East, and the rise in crude prices, Africa is the oil companies' new battleground.
"Everybody thought there could be oil in Sudan but nobody knew anything. It was revealed through exploration by the American company Chevron, towards the end of the 70s. And that was the beginning of the second civil war, which went on until 2002. It lasted for 19 years and cost a million and a half lives and the oil business was at the heart of it."
- Gerard Prunier, a historian
But the real story, the secret story of oil, begins far from Africa.
In their bid to dominate Africa, the Sisters installed a king in Libya, a dictator in Gabon, fought the nationalisation of oil resources in Algeria, and through corruption, war and assassinations, brought Nigeria to its knees.
Oil may be flowing into the holds of huge tankers, but in Lagos, petrol shortages are chronic.
The country's four refineries are obsolete and the continent's main oil exporter is forced to import refined petrol - a paradox that reaps fortunes for a handful of oil companies.
Encouraged by the companies, corruption has become a system of government - some $50bn are estimated to have 'disappeared' out of the $350bn received since independence.
But new players have now joined the great oil game.
China, with its growing appetite for energy, has found new friends in Sudan, and the Chinese builders have moved in. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir is proud of his co-operation with China - a dam on the Nile, roads, and stadiums.
In order to export 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the oil fields in the South - China financed and built the Heglig pipeline connected to Port Sudan - now South Sudan's precious oil is shipped through North Sudan to Chinese ports.
In a bid to secure oil supplies out of Libya, the US, the UK and the Seven Sisters made peace with the once shunned Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, until he was killed during the Libyan uprising of 2011, but the flow of Libyan oil remains uninterrupted.
In need of funds for rebuilding, Libya is now back to pumping more than a million barrels of oil per day. And the Sisters are happy to oblige.
The second part of this special series can be seen from Thursday, April 11, at the following times GMT: Thursday: 2000; Friday: 1200; Saturday: 0100; Sunday: 0600; Monday: 2000; Tuesday: 1200; Wednesday: 0100; Thursday: 0600. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
The book describes the efforts of the British Government to force the diversion of rail traffic to roads and the motor transport industry by shuttering much of the rail network. A key figure in this scheme was Doctor Who? - Doctor Richard Beeching - a physicist who it is revealed in this book for the first time helped to design the British A Bomb during his wartime work at top secret weapons establishment. Hence Atomic Bomber Beeching and his War on the Railways.
Beeching's reign of terror in the early 1960's resulted in the closure of a third of the UK rail network, mostly on on entirely specious grounds to please his political masters in the Conservative Party. Parts of the system that he closed are now being painstakingly and expensively re-opened. The railway that he saw at death's door is now carrying more passengers annually than its entire previous history.
So Beeching was wrong? Of course. But Richard Cottrell's book opens up a wide debate on why transport planners in the UK always get their knitting in a twist. Cottrell uses the Beeching cipher to explore the disasters of British airship adventures, the draw out motorway development saga, why the British motor industry produced so many dinosaurs and eventually collapsed, the long series of post war aviation maladventures including the ill-fated exploding Comet and the disastrous Concorde adventure, the drawn out fiasco of the Channel Tunnel, bizarre plots aided by Margaret Thatcher to block Docklands from getting a direct tube line connection in order to placate the City of London, the London Crossrail project and now the developing scandal of high speed rail transport. Cottrell brings in the long standing fatwa of British Airways and partner airlines to block high speed rail connections between the UK and much prized airline destinations in Europe.
He makes the contrast between the French way of get up and go and the British method of muddle and confusion which led to the utterly botched model of railway privatisation. This, he says, is nothing more than a giant roulette wheel run by the Treasury extracting huge bids to run passenger trains.
Cottrell is a passionate advocate of public transport, quite a contradiction for a former Conservative Euro MP, for which he is completely unapologetic _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon May 05, 2014 11:43 am Post subject:
Beeching's training course for destroying Britain's railways
William Penny & Richard Beeching both from Sheerness
Study together at Imperial College
Go on to develop Britain's atomic bomb together after the war
Beeching then destroys Britain's railways in a deal with the US to create new markets for oil
How we got the Strangelove world & the heroin like addiction on foreign energy we are today
Operation Hurricaine http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/operation-hurricane-2/
Published date: 3 May 2006
British scientists had been heavily involved in the US wartime Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon. After the war, the United States, keen to maintain its monopoly of A-bomb weaponry and concerned about intelligence leaks, ended all nuclear co-operation with the British. As a consequence the Labour government authorised the development of a British bomb using the scientists that had been involved in the wartime research.
One aim of building a British bomb was to maintain the United Kingdom’s influence in the world: a world in which the United States had the only such arsenal and the Soviet Union controlled most of Eastern Europe with the continent’s largest army.
The explosion of the first Soviet bomb in 1949 seemed to justify the decision by the British to develop such a weapon. Three years later, the British detonated their first bomb in ‘Operation Hurricane’ on the Australian island of Trimoulle, part of the Monte Bello island group.
The warhead, exploded from the old British frigate HMS Plym, used British and Canadian plutonium. This was later developed into the ‘Blue Danube’ weapon carried on the active British nuclear force of RAF ‘V-bombers’.
The decision to use the Monte Bellos as a test site, the treatment of aborigines in the area and compensation for those involved in the tests was explored by an Australian Royal Commission in 1986 [these records can be found in AB 40 in The National Archives’ catalogue].
This film highlights the technological achievements of the group of British and émigré scientists involved.
Author: The Central Office of Information
Duration: 33:00
Release date: 1953
Sponsor: Central Office of Information for Ministry of Supply
Quote:
The Montebello bomb was designed and most of it was made in this quiet unsuspecting countryside. Behind that screen of trees is Fort Halstead, built for defence against a French invasion, now used for research into new weapons and new explosives. The guard on patrol, the check at the gate are not mere routine.
This was the headquarters of the man who designed the bomb, Sir William Penney – the only British scientist at the bombing of Nagasaki. Britain’s leading atomic scientists were then working in partnership with the Americans. But after 1945 they had to work alone, starting afresh with basic calculations to determine the critical mass necessary to produce a chain reaction – calculations abstruse and complex, beyond the convenient compass of the human mind.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 5:34 pm Post subject:
by email wrote:
Chris Youett <chris_youett@yahoo.co.uk>
Dear All,
When I was at Uni, my economics lecturer offered a 1st Class Honours degree to anyone who could make sense of Herr Beeching's report. To date, this has not been claimed! Despite what most people think, Herr Beeching wasn't an economist; had he been then his advice would have been radically different (eg making HGV owners pay the full cost of using the roads). He was Deputy Director of Weapons Research. His only public claim to fame prior to the Beeching Report was that he invented the 5.6mm Armalite round as an academic exercise to re-design a bullet that was as effective as the vastly superior Lee Enfield .303 round.
Herr Beeching was a member of the secretive Stedeford Committee that piloted the destruction of our rail network in Northern Ireland.
The first choice for being the new chairman of the British Railways Board was Courtaulds boss Sir Frank Kearton. He said that he would only accept if he could bring his own team of accountants from Courtauls to estabilish BR's true finances (many of his accountants were trained at Coventry Technical College by the same man who taught me City & Guilds Part I in Book Keeping).
Sir Humphrey predictably refused to allow this.
Herr Beeching "was only obeying orders" when he published his report on destroying our rail network. BR actually made a profit until the Board frittered away its investment budget on largely untried diesel designs and scrapped perfectly good steam locos at least 40 years too early.
Recent discoveries I've made about DERA activities post war in the Bromley/Sevenoaks area.
I went to Langley Park school in the area in the 1970s & came across the 'Aquilla mystery' from other grammar schoolboys.
These discoveries come from two recent books: Churchill's Bomb by physicist Graham Farmelo and former journalist & MEP Richard Cotrell's Bomber Beeching (kindle)
Suffice to say that this is near Winston Churchill's Chartwell home in Westerham home and looks to have been the secret home to Britain's nuclear bomb development project which began in 1945/6 at the end of the 1943 Quebec agreement.... Main sites being Aquilla & Fort Halstead just down the A21 road under the North Downs
NB: Recorded this last week
Winston Churchills Bomb - Graham Farmelo - £200m (£7bn) for Britain's first atom bomb - YouTube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sHfLZHT1SW0 _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 11:47 am Post subject:
Directorate of Tube Alloys
1941 The Directorate of Tube Alloys was established to conduct research into the development of an atomic bomb.
Related organisations included the MAUD Committee of the Ministry of Aircraft Production, the British Commonwealth Scientific Office in Washington, and the Anglo-Canadian project at Montreal and Chalk River. Atomic research was carried out at the Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford and in other universities.
1945 After the war, responsibility was moved to other departments
Succeeded by the AERE - Atomic Energy Research Establishment, AWRE - Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, etc.
See Also
Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge)
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Directorate_of_Tube_Alloys
Campaign gathers steam to reopen branch line
The Newton Abbot to Heathfield Railway Revival Group walked the line and said that it is still in a good condition
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BY DANIEL CLARK
14:57, 13 DEC 2017
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DEVON'S TRAIN SERVICES COULD BE CHANGING
Campaigners hoping to reopen the disused Moretonhampstead railway line have been buoyed by a visit to the line and the news the Government is looking to reopen old branch lines.
Passenger trains have not travelled on the Moretonhampstead line between Newton Abbot and Heathfield since 1959. In recent years, use of the line has dwindled to the occasional freight train.
The Newton Abbot to Heathfield Railway Revival Group wants to see the line reopened as a commuter line to ease transport problems in the region - and to give the tourist industry a boost.
Last month, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said he wants to identify which routes would boost the economy, encourage house-building and ease overcrowding.
And two weeks ago, the group was invited to walk the old railway line to see its condition.
Michael Cooke, chairman of the Newton Abbot to Heathfield Railway Revival Group, said there is nothing about the line that would not be repairable.
Visit by the Newton Abbot to Heathfield Railway Revival Group to the old Heathfield line
Left to right Mark Hobbs, James Hartley, Michael Cooke, Rob Pym from N/R & Steve Warren some of us from the group
Mr Cooke said: “The walk up the line went well and we assessed the line to see what it looks like, and it is in pretty good condition. There is some work that would need to be done, but it is repairable. There is a curve that would need to be straightened, but there didn’t seem to be anything that couldn’t be done if needed.
“We will have another meeting with Network Rail in January about it, but we think they are still seriously thinking about our proposals.”
He added: “At the moment, we would definitely be hoping to have a commuter service on weekdays on the line from Newton Abbot to Heathfield, and then maybe heritage and tourism travel at weekends.”
Revived Exminster railway station and upgraded Heathfield rail line still part of ambitious council plans
And he added that the group had been given further cause for celebration by the news announced last month that Devon rail lines closed during the notorious Beeching cuts of the 1960s could be reopened.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said he wants to identify which routes would boost the economy, encourage house-building and ease overcrowding, and Mr Cooke said: “The idea of opening up lines is great and it helps our proposals as we are looking to open up this line.”
Network Rail have met to discuss their plans and among the options being considered was whether they would be prepared to sell the line to the group or whether it offered to them on a 99-year long lease.
Teign Valley railway line 'can solve Newton Abbot's traffic problems'
They stopped short of recommending that they would sell the line to the group at this stage, but did confirm that they were taking the plans were very seriously and were looking into the possibility of it.
Left to right Mark Hobbs, James Hartley, Michael Cooke, Rob Pym from N/R & Steve Warren some of us from the group
The issue of the Newton Abbot to Heathfield Railway Revival Group was also mentioned at last week’s Devon County Council meeting, when Cllr Gordon Hook asked whether the council were involved in advancing the scheme.
How Devon's historic rail line took passengers and produce across Dartmoor to the capital
But in response, Cllr Andrea Davis said: “A regular rail service between Heathfield and Newton Abbot or beyond would require very significant investment and on-going patronage/subsidy to achieve a frequency that has any kind of significant impact on traffic.
“It is very difficult to see how a suitable business case could be made given the existing locations of the stations relative to population and traffic generators. There are other potential options such as a privately owned/leased or community run line which would have to be set up by a competent rail operating body.
Read More
Reopening old Dartmoor rail route to bypass Dawlish seawall is 'very important', says minister
“The County Council is however fully committed to investing in local rail journeys with partners through the Devon Metro strategy. December 2018 will see a significant improvement in local services to and from Newton Abbot with the establishment of a half hourly frequency between Exeter and Paignton throughout the day, thereby improving local connections from stations such as Dawlish and Teignmouth. This will be supported by refurbished trains with many more seats.”
When the 50th anniversary of Britain’s ‘Beeching Report’ passed recently, magazines TV and radio all marked the occasion with retrospectives on the man who took a hatchet to half the 4,000-odd stations and 6,000 miles of Britain’s railways.
Back in 1963, Dr. Richard Beeching ripped the heart out of the world’s first and greatest railway network, but not one of those articles or programs mentioned that Beeching had no qualifications whatever for what was an accountant's job. His expertise was metallurgy and he'd just helped develop Britain's first atomic bomb. Britain was the first country to industrialize and used her manufacturing muscle to become the great empire in the 19th century. It wasn’t just technology, like the invention of the steam engine, but a national policy of mass urbanization, transferring labor from agriculture to armaments and industry that put Britain ahead of the world. Mass evictions of the peasantry, known as enclosures, kept the wheels turning in the factories, William Blake’s ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ were filled with hundreds of thousands of homeless men with hungry families to house and feed, desperate for money for rent and food. The wider empire was built on one particular invention, the railway. Moving coal, iron ore, wool and other raw materials as well as manufactured goods off the canals and uphill, down dale, cheaply and at speed gave Britain the edge as a massive shipbuilding program projected Queen Victoria’s power across the globe. Even as Britain’s influence waned between the wars and the deliberate retreat from empire post WWII to make way for the US empire, the railways underpinned everything, moving people, goods and services, wherever they were needed and with a minimum of cost or fuss. Across the Atlantic in the 1920s, though, people were about to be forced off the rails. Rockefellers’ Standard Oil Company teamed up with the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Mack Truck and General Motors automobile lobby to set up a bogus public transport firm National City Lines (NCL). Streetcar (tram) companies all over the US were taken over by NCL, which deliberately failed to maintain or replace worn out vehicles. As streetcar lines collapsed, commuters were persuaded to buy automobiles that were rolling off the new production lines. Though the Standard Oil monopoly before it had been broken up by US antitrust laws, the Rockefeller shareholding family was finding new ways to extend its influence. Part of the NCL plan was to make future governments dependent on them for fuel tax revenue. It was Nazi Germany that brought autobahns to the world, followed by US freeways and eventually European auto-routes and motorways in the 1960s. The agenda was threefold: shift travel away from unionized public transport, increase oil consumption – and therefore fuel and vehicle tax revenue - and finally to shift power, forever, into the hands of giant private oil companies like Exxon, Shell and BP. This was a brave new fossil fuel led world where a dependency on energy would drive economic growth like never before. Governments and people alike would have to get used to the car. Public transport was way too fuel-efficient. ‘Beeching Report’: Myth v reality A two-week rail strike just before the 1955 general election in Britain, which some now believe was deliberately provoked for political gain, brought the country to a halt. A 'state of emergency' was declared two weeks into June and the political classes were reminded just how reliant the nation was on the whim of transport unions. Although the oil companies hadn't made it public, North Sea Oil had also been discovered, so in order to attract US investment into the ambitious offshore drilling program there was pressure from the oil lobby behind the scenes to open up a vast new market for petrol in the UK before releasing the cash to build the rigs. The new oil stream must not be allowed to depress the world oil price and demand for the petrodollar. With consecutive governments, particularly Tory Transport Secretary Ernest Marples - who owned road-building firm Marples Ridgeway - the industrial lobby got its way. Passenger travel on the railways would in future subsidize bulk freight transport. Even the newly-constructed state-of-the-art freight marshaling yards such as Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire were phased out, with the railways only taking container traffic or entire train loads of coal, ore, etc. for big business. One third of the rail network and half the stations had been closed. Who was 'Ax Man' Dr. Richard Beeching? Retired railway manager and author Ted Gibbins explained in his ‘Blueprints For Bankruptcy’ (1995) that the government’s British Transport Commission, later the British Railways Board too, had been consistently forced to keep fares artificially low by the government. The railways had been 'regulated' into making a loss year after year, when on a looser rein they could easily have turned a profit. Both in 1963 and five decades later in 2013, commentators mused about Beeching’s credentials for the job of ‘reshaping’ Britain’s railways. And well they might. The plan was sold to public and politicians on two myths: those railways could no longer make money and that the door-to-door technology of the motor car was simply more convenient. Few seemed to envisage the long commutes and choked roads of today. So it was with the stage set for the revolutionary motor car which was already sweeping across the United States and Germany that, out of nowhere, Beeching stepped on to the national stage with the grim news that Britain’s railways’ days were numbered. In ‘Doctor Who? Atomic Bomber Beeching and His War on the Railways’ (2013 eBook), former editor of the British Aircraft Corporation’s magazine and MEP Richard Cottrell was the first to expose the Ax Man’s shadowy past. Introduced to the British public simply as chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Beeching's link to explosives and nuclear weapons was never mentioned. After a stint at the Woolwich Arsenal designing anti-tank weapons in World War II, Beeching had been moved on to the top secret ‘Tube Alloys’ project which was a cover for the development of the first British atomic weapons. At Royal Ordnance’s secret Fort Halstead base under the North Downs near Sevenoaks in Kent, Cottrell reveals, Beeching’s expertise in metallurgy made a key contribution to Britain’s rudimentary nuclear arsenal. The success of Britain’s 1950s atomic testing program brought Beeching the top job at ICI. Qualifications in metallurgy and state-of-the-art explosives were not, you might think, the ideal qualification for a man whose job was to go through the accounts of British Railways with a fine toothed comb. No, the reason Beeching was hired was because the Conservative government had already decided his job was chop up the railways to make way for the motor car and they needed a figurehead that could keep his mouth shut. With lines to be closed decided before Beeching's 'surveys' took place civil servants at the Department of Transport set about the simple but impish task of meddling with train timetables to make sure branch line trains left just before connecting trains arrived, nudging ever more passengers off the railways. Running costs of lines they wanted to close were grossly inflated, but nether rail unions nor public were allowed to see the figures to check them. Where these fraudulent figures were exposed, as in the pamphlet ‘The Great Isle Of Wight Train Robbery’ (1969) press, public and political furor led to lines earmarked for closure being reprieved, but atomic Bomber Beeching ran a tight ship and exposures of his closure orders to scrutiny were few and far between. A top secret de-industrialization plan was in place too. In late 1967, British Rail printed a secret 'Blue Book of Maps' with details of coalmines, steelworks etc. and associated rail lines secretly earmarked for closure over succeeding decades. Britain's devastating 1984/5 mine closure program and subsequent strike had been secretly anticipated by government and oil industry alike, decades before. David Henshaw in his ‘Great Railway Conspiracy’ (1991) is one of the only analysts to have understood the secret Marples/Beeching axis untruth that rural rail, and urban rail outside London, could never pay its way, was simply propaganda cooked as a cover story, to take out the competition, by the oil industry and roads lobby. Before addiction to oil & cars suffocates us all… What hapless Britons are left with now after railway privatization in 1993 is the most expensive railway network in the world to travel on. In some places 10 times dearer than an equivalent journey in Austria, for example, a whole succession of racketeers from track and rolling stock owners to platform and turnstile operators draw their pound of flesh, from the great British public’s need to get around. Banks and hedge funds own the rolling stock which is leased to deeply-indebted train operating companies such as First Group, which leases the bare minimum of carriages. This leaves trains jam-packed with standing-room only through large parts of the day. Even the minimum fares seem carefully pegged just above what it would cost in petrol to make a journey by car. A legacy, perhaps, of the energy industry's economic imperative, still nudging rail commuters to buy a car. Along with electricity, gas, water, telecommunications, defense procurement, airports, the Royal Mail postal service, home care and housing, rail travel is just another government-approved scam. With commuters lining the pockets of overpaid bosses and shareholders, and exorbitant prices for what should be national utilities, turning a profit, at home or in business, becomes almost impossible. Like energy and housing costs, travel costs by rail or car are slowly bankrupting families and small businesses alike. If policies don't change, all that will be left will be the boards of directors of the giant transnational corporations who have won the favor of what is now the ultimate power in the Western world, the banksters. New Zealand discovered state railways work for public Perhaps Britain's free post war socialist health service and social security miracle meant the British had it too good for too long? Perhaps because the London media is too close to the City's dark heart? Or perhaps it's just because all the main political parties have sold out? But the British public, it seems, will put up with anything. Not so in New Zealand, where privatization of the railways brought about a political storm as well as a split in the Labour party. It was re-nationalized in 2008. Meanwhile, as the British government sinks ever deeper into the black it will be forced to consider the astounding success of Britain's only state run East Coast Main Line region which is not only top-rated in the UK for customer satisfaction but, unlike the privately run regions, has paid over a billion pounds into the treasury. Nevertheless the government is determined to sell off the East Coast operating company two months before the general election in March 2015. "Reprivatization of the East Coast Main Line defies all economic logic and is nothing less than an act of industrial vandalism," rail union leader Mick Cash told the Guardian in September this year. It seems even with such a crystal clear example of the only state run railway being the best in the country the government still determined to overturn it and set up another racket with a Tory party donor in charge and hundreds of thousands of captive passengers as the victims. It's a tough ask, but perhaps so close to a general election, and with Labour toying with the idea of rail nationalization, they, together with the commuting public could break the combined lobby of the oil industry, road lobby, media and banks? The railway racket has come to sum up everything about Britain's post 'swinging ’60s' decline, but perhaps, as in New Zealand the angry voice of commuters, squeezed in like sardines, and the cold hard economic successes of nationalization can turn things around? Beeching's accidental stroke of genius Bomber’s legacy, though, hasn’t been all betrayal. By accident his hatchet fell at the same time that Britain’s steam locomotives, kept on well beyond their continental networks because of Britain’s plentiful supplies of coal, were being replaced by diesels. Those steam engines chuffed off to the overgrown lines that Beeching closed, and as a result many have been preserved. Now over 150 charitable steam railways, some of which are regular enough to be used by commuters, are dotted across the country on the old closed lines. It is as if those heritage rail services are biding their time, waiting for the day when the policy-makers slip out of the grip of the oil lobby, regain their sanity and re-lay the old tracks. Travelers can then once again begin to pay, for the first time since the 1960s, just a little more than it costs railway operator, to get where they need to go. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2017
Exclusive: John Major's government planned to ‘smash up the unions’ in preparation for British Rail privatisation
Declassified Cabinet Office files from the early 1990s show the government was aware that breaking up the national railway network could endanger public safety
http://development.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/splash-rail
JOHN MAJOR’S government considered “smashing the unions” as a “priority” objective of privatising British Rail, newly declassified documents reveal.
Cabinet Office files from the early 1990s, which are being released today to the National Archives, also show that the government was aware that breaking up the national railway network could endanger public safety.
The documents lay bare a rift between then transport secretary Malcolm Rifkind and Prime Minister Mr Major over the shape that the new privatised railway should take.
Mr Rifkind favoured prioritising the sell-off of British Rail’s Intercity sector as a “vertically integrated” business covering both track and trains.
But Mr Major preferred a “line of route” approach, splitting the railway up into privatised regions akin to those that existed prior to nationalisation in 1948.
In a briefing for Mr Major on December 12 1991, political adviser Jonathan Hill asked whether Mr Rifkind’s model would “really smash the power of the unions.”
In the same document, Mr Hill had already set out the need to ensure that privatisation “breaks BR up and smashes the unions.”
This form of words appears in a list of “priorities” that the adviser said Mr Major “made clear” at a summit on rail privatisation at Chequers, the prime minister’s official country residence.
On being told of the new revelations, rail union leaders said the papers confirmed what they had suspected all along.
“After 25 years in which Britain's privatised railways have been turned into a money-raking racket, the truth is now out at last,” RMT general secretary Mick Cash said.
“Privatisation was simply about busting the unions and exploiting the travelling public in the name of Tory ideology and grotesque corporate greed.
“With nearly three-quarters of the British people now supporting a return to public ownership of our railways and with Chris Grayling, Theresa May and their shambolic minority government on the ropes, it’s no longer a question of if, it’s simply a question of when.”
Other “priorities” listed by Mr Hill include ensuring that privatisation is “popular with passengers” and “is simple to explain and understand.”
The adviser, now best known for his short stint as Britain’s EU commissioner, also stressed the need to ensure that privatisation “will not allow our opponents to play the ‘safety’ card.”
In the event, the privatisation of British Rail did not follow either of the models most discussed in the files.
Instead, the government awarded 25 different franchises to private train operators. The infrastructure, including the track and most stations, was taken over by Railtrack, which, following several fatal rail accidents, was later dissolved and replaced by publicly owned Network Rail.
The files show another Downing Street official, Barry H Potter, asserting that “the smaller the number of lines linked together to form a saleable private company … the easier it becomes to break up British Rail and union control of the rail network.”
Mr Hill also criticised Mr Rifkind for proposing that railway staff should maintain their employment conditions when transferred to the private sector. “We obviously cannot tie the hands of the would-be franchisees in this way,” the prime minister’s adviser wrote. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Train fares in Britain increased by an average of 2.3 per cent
Rail passengers are spending six times more on fares than their peers in Europe - with 14 per cent of their income being spent on monthly season tickets.
Those commuting from Luton to London pay an average of £387 a month, significantly more than the £61 paid by those in Paris and Rome.
This equates to an average of 14 per cent of monthly earnings, significantly higher than the 2 per cent seen in France, 3 per cent in Germany and 4 per cent in Spain, according to Action for Rail.
How UK rail fares have risen against the cost of living since 1995
Read more
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Christmas disruption starts early for thousands of rail passengers
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said that not only are prices high but trains were “overcrowded”, “understaffed” and the infrastructure was “out-of-date”.
"British commuters are forced to shell out far more on rail fares than others in Europe. Many will look with envy at the cheaper, publicly-owned services on the continent,” he said.
"Years of failed privatisation have left us with sky-high ticket prices, overcrowded trains, understaffed services and out-of-date infrastructure. Private train companies are milking the system, and the government is letting them get away with it."
Country
From
To
Distance (miles)
Monthly season ticket cost
Monthly earnings
% of monthly earnings
UK
Luton
London St. Pancras
35
£387
£2,759
14%
UK
Liverpool Lime Street
Manchester Piccadilly
32
£292
£2,759
11%
Germany
Dusseldorf
Cologne
28
£85
£2,624
3%
France
Mantes-la-Jolie
Paris
34
£61
£2,545
2%
Italy
Anzio
Rome
31
£61
£2,015
3%
Spain
Aranjuez
Madrid
31
£75
£1,917
4%
RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said: "British passengers are paying the highest fares in Europe to travel on rammed services while the private train companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Companies like Southern Rail and their French owners are siphoning off cash to subsidise rail services in Paris and beyond."
Mick Whelan, the General Secretary of ASLEF added: "It is scandalous that the government is allowing privatised train companies to make even more money for providing an ever-poorer service. We have the most expensive railway in Europe and the train companies, aided and abetted by this government, are about to make it even more costly for people to travel."
Action for Rail
Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling said: “Thanks to action by the Government on train ticket prices, wages are growing faster than regulated fares. This commitment to cap regulated fares in line with inflation will save annual season ticket holders an average £425 in the five years to 2020.
“To improve services, we are investing more than £40billion into our railways. This will provide passengers with better trains that are faster and more comfortable.
"We are delivering the biggest rail modernisation programme for more than a century, providing more seats and services. We have always fairly balanced the cost of this investment between the taxpayer and the passenger.
"On average, 97% of every £1 of a passenger's fare goes back into the railway.”
Campaigners will be protesting outside rail stations across the country in response to the increase in rail prices.
Railway lines axed by Beeching decades ago could be reopened under Department for Transport plans
The Department for Transport is working with groups to explore re-opening lines closed in the 60s Campaigners want old railway lines to be reopened.
(Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images) Dean Kirby Wednesday December 26th 2018
The i newsletter News for free thinkers
Old train lines axed decades ago under notorious reforms designed to make Britain’s railways more cost effective could be reopened to improve services for today’s passengers. The Department for Transport is working with a number of groups to explore the possibility of reopening a number of lines that were closed when Dr Richard Beeching proposed in the 1960s that almost a third of the network should be rolled up. Chris Grayling, the Transport Secretary, announced a year ago that proposals should be submitted to his department for projects to regenerate old lines – giving hope to campaigners wanting to bring trains back to cut off communities. The Department for Transport says it is now working with groups to explore the re-opening of routes cut half a century ago under Beeching. A Department for Transport spokesman said: “We are continuing to grow the rail network to deliver improvements for passengers, unlock new housing and support the economy, including by exploring opportunities to restore previously lost capacity. ADVERTISING ”We have received a wide variety of proposals to enhance the railway from across the public and private sector, and are working with promoters to explore opportunities to re-open routes cut under Beeching.“ Play VideoPlay Unmute Loaded: 0%Progress: 0% Remaining Time -0:01 Fullscreen The department said this was on top of work to explore reopening the Northumberland line for passengers, supporting the reinstatement of stations on the Camp Hill line in Birmingham, developing new rail links to Heathrow and a new station at Cambridge South. But due to confidentiality issues around its ”market led“ approach, it was unable to release details of the proposed projects. Further details are expected to be released later this year. Thousands of stations and hundreds of local lines were closed between 1964 and 1970 on Dr Beeching’s recommendation. Campaign for Better Transport last year published a list of 12 lines that it said had the strongest economic and social case for reopening including the Ashington to Newcastle line that now only carries freight trains. Supporters of the campaign said they wanted a total of 200 lines to reopen. As a result of Beeching’s report, just over 4,000 route miles were removed from the rail system on cost and efficiency grounds. (Photo by Moore/Fox Photos/Getty Images) The most successful example of the reversal of a Beeching cut is the Borders railway in Scotland, which follows the route of the old Waverley line between Edinburgh and Carlisle. A 35-mile stretch of the track was reopened between Edinburgh and Tweedbank in the central Borders three years ago. Campaigners now want the rest of the line to be reopened. The managing director of Scotrail, which runs services on the line is supportive of efforts to expand the route. ‘We have welcomed our fourth million customer’ Alex Hynes told Sky News: ”We’ve demonstrated, when we build it, people will come. “And more than three years after the opening of the Borders Railway, we have welcomed our fourth million customer onto the route. ”You might expect that three years after opening, that growth would tail off now, it hasn’t. “On the Borders railway that growth is actually accelerating which means we are going to have to operate longer trains on this route and I think there is more growth to come as well.” He added: “Ultimately it is a matter for government, depending on where the extension goes to, UK government as well. ”But we are very happy to support continuing work to look at the feasibility of extending the Borders railway further.“
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has launched a government fund to help restore historic railway lines closed in the 1960s after the Beeching report.
The £500m fund will not be used to build new railway lines - it is only meant to fund feasibility studies of routes that could be restored.
The plan was promised in November's Conservative election manifesto.
But Labour called the initiative "meaningless", adding that £500m would help reopen just 25 miles of railway.
And the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) described the funds as a "drop in the ocean".
Conservatives pledge £4.2bn for trains, buses and trams
Work gets under way on new £8m railway station
The government will start by funding proposals for two lines - the Ashington-Blyth-Tyne line in Northumberland and the Fleetwood line in Lancashire.
Communities will also be able to apply for some of the remainder of the £500m pot to help restore their lines.
What were the Beeching cuts?
Roughly 5,000 miles of track were closed and more than 2,300 stations were axed in the 1960s, mainly in rural areas, following the Beeching report.
The aim was to cut the mounting debts of the nationalised British Rail by removing duplicated routes and closing the least-used branch lines of the railway. This became known as the Beeching cuts.
The plans drew huge opposition from rural local communities, which campaigned and successfully prevented some routes and stations from closing.
What is the government planning to do?
On Tuesday, Mr Shapps visited the Fleetwood and Poulton-le-Fylde line which was closed in 1970.
"Many communities still live with the scars that came from the closure of their local railway more than five decades ago," he said.
"Investing in transport links is essential to levelling up access to opportunities across the country, ensuring our regions are better connected, local economies flourish and more than half a century of isolation is undone."
Presentational grey line
Analysis box by Tom Burridge, transport correspondent
People in Fleetwood, a town of 25,000 that is hemmed in on the Lancashire coast, told us unanimously that reopening their defunct rail line to nearby Poulton-le-Fylde would be a good thing.
They say their town has lost so much over the years and they hope that restoring the railway would help regenerate the area and cut congestion on the roads.
The government is currently falling over itself to back policies that improve regional connectivity around the country. Just think of its bailout for the regional airline Flybe.
But today's announcement is only a tentative step towards recreating a functioning railway to Fleetwood. An assessment of the economic and social case will now be carried out. The funding for Fleetwood - £100,000 - is peanuts for now.
If the assessment is positive, more money will follow.
However, even £500m (the total funding pledged for helping to reopen lines cut during the Beeching era) is not a big sum of money in railway infrastructure terms.
Michael Byng, a railway construction consultant, believes reopening the Colne to Skipton line near Leeds would cost around £368m on its own.
He also believes that reopening the rail line to Fleetwood, which does have a tram that runs along the coast to Blackpool, would not be money well spent and other options like improving the connectivity of the tram itself should be considered.
Presentational grey line
What reaction has there been?
Commenting on the proposals, shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said: "The Conservatives claim to have been reversing Beeching cuts since 2017 despite not reopening an inch of track.
"Investing in the railway is a fantastic policy but this is meaningless without a serious funding commitment of billions of pounds."
Media captionVolunteer train driver Chris Cubitt and North Yorkshire Moors Railway general manager Philip Benham on 50 years since Beeching Axe rail report
Mick Cash, general secretary of the RMT union, was similarly sceptical about the government's plans.
"RMT welcomes any investment in our railways but £500m is a drop in the ocean compared to what's really required to connect our abandoned communities and reverse decades of cuts to infrastructure and maintenance," he said.
Dennis Fancett, chairman of South East Northumberland Rail User Group, told the BBC: "What I was really hoping for was an announcement that we're all systems go and funding for the entire reopening is provided and building can start.
"The business case for reopening this line is the economic regeneration of South East Northumberland."
Brian Crawford, chairman of the Poulton & Wyre Railway Society, said restoration of the disused railway line to Fleetwood from Poulton-le-Fylde could reinvigorate the coastal town.
"There are two aims - one of commuters going to work and the other one is to make Fleetwood a major tourist destination. It has a fantastic seafront but without a railway, we don't seem to get that many visitors," he told the BBC.
YQA logo _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
BOTH Government and the populace at large continue to wrestle with the case for or against proceeding with the proposed HS2 rail line.
By FREDERICK FORSYTH PUBLISHED: 00:01, Fri, Feb 7, 2020
I have made no secret of my view that the £106billion cost is far too much to justify, particularly when contrasted with what we could do with that staggering sum.
But increasingly a tempting alternative is being broached and our Government would be in clear default if it refused even to authorise a project study. This is the restoration of discontinued rail connections that have lain idle since the Beeching cuts of 1963.
‘Millstone around his neck’ Boris Johnson given dire HS2 warning
What is the Government hiding from public over £100BILLION project?
Richard Beeching’s draconian closedowns of the early Sixties are often accredited to an anti-train zealot but he was nothing of the sort. He was simply carrying out government instructions as our railways back then fell into disrepute with the people.
We were moving en masse into the car age and were besotted with rubber tyres and a steering wheel. But history is a fickle old bird and alters radically over the decades.
Today our roads are clogged, often with unmoving queues for hours on end. We know our vehicles emit noxious fumes.
Time for a rethink on the convenience, speed and comfort of those secondary rail lines? Why not? The Government’s main concern is the inter-connectivity of all those Northern towns and cities that were once bound together as easy-to-reach destinations by branch lines.
Dr Richard Beeching
Dr Richard Beeching (Image: Getty)
There are two great advantages to discontinued branch lines when the question of their restoration is considered. For one, land needed for them has already been acquired and belongs to the nation. Land purchase along with the devastation of great swathes of some of our most beautiful countryside, is a huge negative for HS2.
Second, all the cuttings, bridges, tunnels and embankments are still there – overgrown but still there.
Bringing back those lines would cost a small fraction of HS2.
Security fence
Bringing back old lines would cost a small fraction of HS2 (Image: Getty)
Also, it could well be that HS2 would suck more talent, investment and enterprise out of the North towards the magnet of the South than would be pumped the other way.
And as for a single North-South link, the Great Central Main Line still exists. It lies just north of London where it could be linked to Marylebone Station without landscape destruction and it goes to the heart of the North. Like the branch lines, its core aggregate track, sleepers and rails are still there. A few buildings have gone up and would have to come down, but again only a fraction of the lovely farms, granges and other residences that would be destroyed for HS2.
REFERENCE the article in Snapshots of the Past, Echo February 28 on the recent book by Philip Horton regarding the Beeching Report of 1963.
In 1964 I was working a continental boat train from Dover Marina to Victoria. A gentleman came up to the cab window and passed the time of day, and said: “Do you know who I am?”
Without any hesitation I said: “You are Doctor Beeching”.
He then asked me what I thought of plans for the British railways. I replied with: ‘Not a lot”. He then said: “Nor do I driver, but like you I had a job to do under orders.”
In 1971 I attended a forum at the Swanage Mowlem with someone representing the government to answer questions on the proposed closure.
Given the floor his first words were: “How many of you came here tonight by train?”
Four people raised their hands.
He shrugged his shoulder and said: “There you are then.”
Everyone at the meeting except myself and another four were from Swanage and did not need to travel anywhere.
A point of issue is that the footfall of people using the railways and had purchased train tickets from Swanage and Corfe Castle was not a true record. Tickets, single or return, were credited to the issuing station outside the branch.
The true numbers of passengers passing through the station was never recorded.
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