Lost Lines - LMR, Nigel Welbourn

Lost Lines : London Midland Region

Since the Nationalisation of Britain's railways in 1948 the nation's railway network has almost halved, with the closure of duplicate and unremunerative lines.  Although Dr Beeching is widely regarded as the perpetrator of the policy that led to many of these closures - as indeed he was in so far as he was Chairman at the time of the infamous Reshaping report in the early 1960s - it was a process that had started well before his rise to power.  The result of these closures is that Britain has a remarkable heritage of closed railways and stations, some well known and others less familiar, but all of which have a fascinating history.