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Selected article

The Beeching Axe is an informal name for the British Government's attempt in the 1960s to control the spiralling cost of running the British railway system by closing what it considered to be little-used and unprofitable railway lines. It was a reaction to the failed railway modernisation plan of the 1950s, which spent huge amounts of money on buying new equipment, such as new diesel and electric locomotives, without first examining the role of the railway and its requirements, recognising the implications of changing old-fashioned working practices, or tackling the problem of chronic overmanning. The result of this was to plunge the railway system deeply into debt. Since the Beeching era, a modest number of the closures have been reversed. However in many instances it would be prohibitively expensive for lines closed by the Beeching Axe to be reopened. Many bridges, cuttings and embankments have been removed and the land sold off for development; closed station buildings on remaining lines have often been either demolished or sold.

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Selected picture

A large stockpile of 27,000 wheelsets (wheel and axle assemblies) in Siberia during World War I.

Wheelsets like these would be used in freight and passenger car bogies.

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Did you know...

• ...that the tower on Union Station in Nashville, Tennessee, originally contained an early mechanical digital clock, but when replacement French silk drive belts proved unavailable during World War I, the clock was replaced with a traditional analog clock?
• ...that the Ae 6/6 heavy electric locomotive used by the SBB-CFF-FFS is sometimes also referred to as the canton locomotive ("Kantonslokomotive"), because the first 25 locomotives of this type carried the coats of arms of all Swiss cantons?
• ...that because jacobs bogies carry the weight of two adjacent cars, the cars that use this type of bogie can only be separated in the railroad shops?
• ...that Augsburg Hauptbahnhof in the Bavarian city of Augsburg has one of the oldest still existing station halls in Germany, completed in 1846 after plans by architect Friedrich Bürklein?

Selected Anniversaries

December 14

• 1794 – Erastus Corning, who established railroads in New York and was instrumental in the formation of New York Central, is born (d. 1872).
• 1896 – The Glasgow Subway (pictured), the third oldest metro system in the world, begins operations in Glasgow, Scotland.
• 1906 – John D. Spreckels announces he will form the San Diego and Arizona Railway Company and build a 148-mile (238 km) line between San Diego and El Centro, California. Spreckels has an agreement with the Southern Pacific Railroad to silently fund the project.
• 1953 – Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway discontinues extra-fare charges on the El Capitan passenger train between Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California.

Things you can do

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Todo

There are a large number of articles that need to be written giving an overview of rail transport by country. Please take some time to check Rail transport by country to see which articles still need to be started.

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Trains News

2006 in rail transport

December news · November news · October news

• 
  December 12 - Transcontinental Australian passenger train The Ghan, running from Adelaide, South Australia, to Darwin, Northern Territory, collides with a road train at a level crossing appromixately 135 km (84 miles) south of Darwin, injuring four persons. (The Age)
• 
  December 12 - John Armitt, CEO of Network Rail in the United Kingdom, announces that he will retire at the end of July 2007; he will be succeeded by Iain Coucher, the current deputy chief executive. (BBC) (Network Rail)
• 
  December 9 - Binali Yildirim, Transportation Minister of Turkey, and Wolfgang Tiefensee, Minister for Transportation, Construction and Housing of Germany (Turkey's largest trade partner), sign an agreement of cooperation at a meeting in Istanbul between the two nations on rail technology and construction. Both ministers expressed their optimism that the agreement will help bolster Turkey's application to join the European Union. (People's Daily)
• 
  December 8 - Kuibyshev Railway is named the Company of the Year in the Samara Oblast of Russia for the second year in a row. The railway beat about 2000 other companies for the title. Sergey Sychev presented the award to Vyacheslav Lemeshko, the head of the railway, at a ceremony in Samara. The railway also was listed at the top of the Master 2006 category, an award which was accepted by the Rodionovs family; the Rodionovs have been working for the railway for the last century and have accumulated 611 man years of service on the railway. (TLT)
• 
  December 8 - The Allerdale council in northern England passes its final approval on a plan to demolish the remaining structure of Silloth railway station which last saw passenger trains in 1964; the line was closed for passenger service as a result of the Beeching Axe. The development firm James Morgan Ltd. was awarded a contract to build new single-family housing on the property. Stuart Hinchliffe, director of the development firm also stated "We will be reinstating as much of the old railway platform as we can, to maintain Silloth’s Victorian history." (Cumberland News)
• 
  December 7 - Officials in Colombo, Sri Lanka, begin work on a feasibility study, which is expected to be completed in June 2007, for a new underground system in the city. Financing for the project is expected to come primarily from a multinational consortium of Siemens AG, OPUS (Malaysia), NEB Infrastructure (India) and UTI Bank. The first phase of the project is planned as a 22 km (13.7 mi) section built in the median of the city's main road. (Colombo Page)

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