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Rail: MPs comment on Beeching Plan; ***ALSO AVAILABLE AS FS030563006*** b) ENGLAND: London: CU Sir Richard Nugent: "The Beeching plan sets out what railways can do in the way of transport to meet the needs of the day. That is commuter traffic into the cities, fast inter-city travel for passengers and fast modern freight services called the freight liner service. And it sets out the way this can be done in the next five or six years. It can't be done without shedding the services that are very little use today. That is the branch lines and the stopping services. About a third of the total rail mileage and they are only used about one percent of the total traffic. Now this is the way to carry us to get the solvency and take tne hundred million loss off the tax payers shoulders. There may be harshness in these big changes. Hardships for men who lose their jobs and for travellers who lose their services. The Government has undertaken that they will provide for this. That the men who will lose their jobs will be offered another, or if they can't be they will be offered redundancy and payed until they get a new one and the passenger will be offered a new bus service to take the rail service place". CU John Hynd: "You have to bear in mind that when the railways were nationalised in 1948, they were already in the red for seven million pounds. They made a profit in the following year after nationalisation until the Tories started their policy of de-nationalization of the road hauling. From then on began the biggest trouble. Every proposal the Tory Government have brought forward has put them into difficulties. In 1958 we were promised a modernisation plan which would put them on a level by 1962, and it hasn't. It was going to make a profit by 1970 and it certainly won't because Dr Beeching. The Government is now suggesting that this plan is going to solve the problem, but it won't. The only way you can solve it is to start off where we left off in 1951 and estab...