Richard 16378, there had been a slow decline in the rail network since the twenties when road transport started to appear as a threat and some railway lines were too unprofitable to continue. Britain as a whole had a vested interest in encouraging the growth and expansion of the motor industry and, as the manufacturers constantly pointed out, they needed a vibrant home market from which to seek out export markets. The Beeching cuts, or "Beeching Axe" that followed resulted in the major closures for both stations and lines. In 1965, Edward Heath succeeded Macmillan as leader of the Conservative Party and Marples was reassigned to a less prestigious position in the party’s Central Office.

He was however one of the first men in St Austell Cornwall to have a Volve 145 estate which he held onto thick and thin for many years. Beeching's report listed the 5000 miles of lines and related stations to be closed in Appendix 2 of the report. Fronted by Sir Ivan Stedeford, the Managing Director of Tube Investments, it also included Frank Kearton of Courtaulds, Henry Benson of Cooper Brothers, and Dr.

With war looming, in July 1939, he joined the London Scottish Regiment as a Private, transferring to the Royal Artillery in 1941 as a Second Lieutenant; in the same year, he was promoted to the rank of Captain. From 1951 to 1954, Marples served as a Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, where he was in no small measure responsible for reaching his party’s target of building 300,000 houses a year. By this time Marples’ own front-rank political career was over and BMC was now part of the British Leyland Motor Corporation. Beeching’s appointment and Marples’ penchant for road building would be controversial enough, but questionable business practices and his later abscondment to Monaco to evade a hefty tax bill did little to rescue his reputation.

It was six years before he finally agreed to let it go – and nothing had been done to it in all that time.His first report, published on 27 March 1963, recommended the closure some 5,000 miles of railway, around 30% of the network but less than twice the mileage already closed by BR British Rail or British Railways before his appointment. One name that still resonates today, over half a century since he left office, is that of Ernest Marples, Minister of Transport from 1959 to 1964. Clement Atlee’s Labour Party swept into power with a landslide victory, a mandate to create a land fit for heroes, a new Jerusalem. The paid-for publications are richly illustrated; the free versions have had the pix stripped out and replaced with adverts. Also this conspiracy theory argues that by closing rail lines, Marples and Beeching were bullying and bludgeoning a gullible population onto the roads, when the evidence was that they were doing so of their own free will.

By the end of the year Fraser was on the backbenches and in 1967 he quit politics altogether to become Chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. There had been 2 million cars on Britain’s roads in 1939, a 100 per cent increase over the previous decade. His approach was to draw up a list of railways for closure, thus continuing and extending the scope of the closures already carried out by BR British Rail or British Railways.

He both oversaw significant road construction (he opened the first section of the M1 motorway) and the closure of a considerable portion of the national railway network with the Beeching cuts. Very true, Beaching saved the railways, it could never had continued with the Victorian attitude of shifting everything to everywhere from race horses to coal, in the age of developing Road Transport. The bad news that was British Leyland, Chrysler UK and the loss of car making at Luton, Dagenham, Ryton and Longbridge has tended to overshadow the success stories in the British motor industry. In 1948 the two men founded Marples Ridgway and Partners, a civil engineering company that started with one five-ton ex-army truck and one crane.