Beeching rail cuts in Yorkshire demand fresh perspective – Yorkshire Post Letters
I MUST protest at the final item in your Editorial (The Yorkshire Post, July 23) regarding the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, without in any way decrying their successes.
The 1960s national railway closures were brought about by changing social habits, with more and more households owning their own cars for the first time, and using them for all their travel needs.
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Hide AdAt the same time, British Railways was slow to adopt any really innovative cost-saving measures in its methods of operation, so that costs remained high for the operation of even the smallest branch line.
The main point which you omit to take into account though is that all heritage railways of today rely very heavily on volunteer labour – a large task force of unpaid staff which the nationalised undertaking could never have forseen or from which they could never have benefitted.
If all businesses could be run by staff who did not want to be paid, what a vastly more profitable world it would become!
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