Scotland's Lost Branch Lines

What are usually called "The Beeching Cuts" stripped out the rail services connecting communities across the UK in the 1960s. In large areas of Scotland the effect was especially grim, with townspeople left with a car or bus journey of hours to reach the main line network for onward travel. Or indeed to get anywhere. Loss of amenity, loss of vigour, loss of opportunity, many towns became cut-off. As Spaven points out in this fascinating book, the postwar branch line closures had begun before Beeching and continued after. Switching between business and administrative logic, but mastering neither, the layers of British Rail's top-down management pretended to rationalise. If, as seems to have been the case, a ticket to Anstruther bought in Glasgow or London didn't register in the assessment of the economics of the Fife line, that is laughably bad management accounting (but not unfamiliar - hidden tabs in the modern spreadsheet can obscure lazy accounting). Careers were sustained, communities detrimented. In part 2, Spaven writes fair-minded assessments of 12 of the closures, whether the options, closure impact and savings were accurately assessed (even within the myopic optic of the British Rail management). For those which still have not been reversed, he concludes by suggesting what wider options might now be achievable. So very much a book of its moment; time will tell how many are followed through.