Originally Posted by Rollo
Whilst the United States was busily building the biggest public works program in history, in contrast Britain was destroying another. In 1950 BR had about 21,000 miles of track. From about 1950 until 1975 almost 9000 miles had been destroyed and about 3000 railway stations were shut forever.
After a period of post-war austerity, that prize ****-head Beeching (pick a sware word, all of them are appropriate) demanded the same salary that he had at ICI and rather than make the improvements that were necessary, he more or less hacked apart BR to such an extent that it couldn't ever be rescued.