Is this obvious or a good idea?

[edwardmk]

Originally Posted by stevestrat

Rail freight companies, in the UK anyway, are only interested in moving bulk loads from A to B for individual customers, gone are the days of moving individual wagon loads for smaller companies. When I started on the railways back in 1980 trains would arrive in big marshalling yards, one located near most cities and individual wagon loads would be delivered to local yards where the customer unloaded/reloaded etc, all those local yards are gone, redeveloped, as for that matter are the big marshalling yards. The infrastructure to move more by rail simply isn't there now and to even come close to restoring it would require a massive investment.

Yes. Dr Beeching saw to that. A great pity, but has to be seen in the context of the rail unions having too great a monopoly at the time. They regularly exercised that monopoly. Every year there was a demand for more pay. The strikes were often politically motivated in an attempt to make the government of the day look bad. It was a tragedy for the country and would indeed require massive investment to reverse the loss of rail infrastructure.