Page:The Reshaping of British Railways (Beeching Report).pdf/56

 Subsequent complete closure of lines, after arrangements have been made to retain any good rail freight which they carry, will add to the number of staff displaced. A first assessment of the effect of the more obvious cases puts the number at 10,900 but, as in the case of the passenger services, reshaping will be a continuous process and further reductions will follow.

Like other changes, introduction of the freight sundries plan will be a progressive process, but when it is fully developed, it will lead to a direct reduction in supervisory, clerical and handling staff, which is estimated to be 8,600, to which must be added a longer term saving of train working and maintenance staff estimated to be 4,900.

Reductions in coaching and wagon stock, and in locomotives, may make it necessary to re-examine the workshop position, once implementation of the plan is well under way, although reductions of the order of those proposed were taken into account in the recently prepared Workshop Plan.

Indirect savings in administrative staff will accrue when reductions in services have a group effect. In addition, the wholesale re-diagramming of locomotives, multiple units, coaches and trainmen, which will be made possible when a certain stage of withdrawal has been reached, will lead to better utilisation of what remains. Determination of the future position of alternative main routes, and large termini serving the same places, will result in further savings. The manpower reductions likely to result from all these changes cannot yet be established. However, preliminary examination in some areas leads to the conclusion that the figures given for direct savings from line closures will be no more than one half of those which will ultimately be achieved.

For the financial well-being of the railways, it is necessary that changes be made as quickly as possible, but there will be many retarding factors.

Hitherto, station closures, withdrawals of passenger services and curtailments of freight facilities, have been pursued at a rate which was very largely governed by the management's capacity to investigate, document and present a succession of individual cases to both Transport Users Consultative Committees and Staff representatives. As a consequence, it has taken 12 years to withdraw unprofitable passenger or freight services from 4,236 route miles.

Effective implementation of the plan will depend upon a speedier realisation of intentions than has been found possible in the past. Even so, a staff displacement will clearly be a continuing process over a number of years, and the average rate of reduction need not be very much higher than the 1962 rate. There may, however, if the consultative procedure operates with reasonable speed, be an initial period when the closure of the passenger services and of some lines will release staff at a higher rate than the expected average. In part, this will be due to the holding back of cases which were in the pipeline last August.