History of rail transport in Great Britain 1948–1994

:''This article is part of a series on the History of rail transport in Great Britain''

The history of rail transport in Great Britain 1948–1994 covers the period when the British railway system was nationalised under the name of 'British Railways', latterly known as ''British Rail'' until its eventual privatisation in 1994.

The railway system in this period underwent modernisation, reorganisation and rebranding, some of which proved controversial. The use of steam locomotives on the network also ended in this period. Due to falling passenger numbers, rail subsidies from the government were necessary to keep the railways financially viable. Concerns about the levels of these contributed to the Beeching cuts which closed down many less well used lines.

The 1940s: Nationalisation

The Transport Act 1947 nationalised nearly all forms of mass transport in Great Britain and came into effect on 1 January 1948. British Railways came into existence as the business name of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission (BTC) on 1 January 1948 when it took over the assets of the Big Four railway companies.

A few independent light railways and industrial railways, which did not contribute significant mileage to the system, were not included in British Railways; nor the Glasgow Underground and London Underground, already both public concerns, the Liverpool Overhead Railway, and non-railway-owned tramways. The Northern Counties Committee lines owned by the London, Midland & Scottish Railway were sold to the Northern Ireland government, becoming part of the Ulster Transport Authority as a result of the Ireland Act 1949.

Under the BTC's Railway Executive, the railways were organised into six regions:
* Eastern Region (ER) – LNER lines south of Shaftholme Junction, Doncaster ''(region later amalgamated with the North Eastern Region)''
* North Eastern Region (NER) – LNER lines in England north of Shaftholme Junction ''(region later amalgamated with the Eastern Region)''
* London Midland Region (LMR) – LMS lines in England and Wales.
* Scottish Region (ScR) – LMS and LNER lines in Scotland
* Southern Region (SR) – Southern Railway lines
* Western Region (WR) – Great Western Railway lines

The first priority of the new British Railways Board was to repair the infrastructure of the railways damaged by bombing, clear the backlog of maintenance that had built up, and make good losses in locomotives and rolling stock.

The 1950s: Modernisation

By the start of the 1950s, British Railways were making a working profit, albeit a small one. However, Britain had fallen well behind the rest of Europe in terms of dieselisation and electrification of its railways. There were political as well as practical reasons behind the resistance to dieselisation in particular: the Labour Government of Clement Attlee did not want to significantly reduce the demand for domestically-produced coal in favour of imported oil, thus both affecting the balance of payments and potentially causing unemployment. Robin Riddles, who was effectively the British Railways' Chief Mechanical Engineer, disagreed with the dieselisation programme, arguing that it would be too expensive to import oil given the large amounts of domestically available coal. He continued to order steam locomotives on a large scale and from 1948 to 1953, 1,487 steam locomotives were built.

Although the initial focus was on repairing and renewing, some pre-war capital investment schemes that had stopped upon the outbreak of hostilities were restarted, for example the Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrification over the Woodhead route and the Great Eastern suburban electrification.

The new BR regions, formed largely around the management structures of the old "Big Four" companies, remained autonomous in terms both of organisation and production of locomotives and rolling stock, mostly continuing with pre-war designs – indeed, some designs were even older: the workhorse LNER Class J17 was designed in 1898. As a whole, the equipment of the new British Railways was outdated, often unreliable, and mostly in urgent need of a refurbishment. Only the Southern Region with its large electrified suburban network in South London inherited from the Southern Railway operated a significant number of non-steam-powered trains.

In 1951, the British Transport Commission approved a new series of standard locomotives and coaches incorporating design features primarily from the London, Midland & Scottish Railway but also the other pre-nationalisation companies. These standard designs were designed to be long-lasting but in the event few served to their full potential before being withdrawn during the 1960s.

By the middle of the decade, however, it was clear that British Railways were in trouble, particularly in the freight haulage business to which they were losing ground to road and air traffic (the latter thanks to a postwar glut of available transport aircraft). The government ordered a review.

The Modernisation Plan

The report formally known as ''Modernisation and Re-Equipment of the British Railways'', more commonly the "Modernisation Plan", was published in December 1954. It was intended to bring the railway system up to date. A government white paper produced in 1956 stated that modernisation would help eliminate BR's financial deficit by 1962. The aim was to increase speed, reliability, safety and line capacity, through a series of measures that would make services more attractive to passengers and freight operators, thus recovering traffic that was being lost to the roads. The total cost of the plan was projected to be £1.24 billion (approximately £29 billion in 2020). The important areas were:

* Electrification of principal main lines, in the Eastern Region, Kent, Birmingham and Central Scotland;
* Large-scale dieselisation to replace steam locomotives;
* New passenger and freight rolling stock;
* Resignalling and track renewal;
* Closure of small number of lines which were seen as unnecessary in a nationalised network, as they duplicated other lines;
* Building of large freight marshalling yards, with automated shunting to streamline freight handling.

However, many railway historians including Christian Wolmar

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