Richard Beeching
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The Right Honourable The Lord Beeching |
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| Born |
21 April 1913 Sheerness, Kent, England |
| Died | 23 March 1985 (aged 71) Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, West Sussex |
| Residence | "Brockhurst", Lewes Road, East Grinstead, RH19 3UN |
| Nationality | English |
| Education | Maidstone Grammar School, Imperial College London |
| Occupation | Physicist, Engineer |
| Known for | Beeching Report on railway closures |
| Height | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) |
| Title | Baron Beeching |
| Spouse(s) | Ella Margaret Tiley (m. 1938–1985) |
Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching (21 April 1913 – 23 March 1985), commonly known as Dr Beeching, was a physicist and engineer who for a short but very notable time was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the early 1960s for his report The Reshaping of British Railways, commonly referred to as "The Beeching Report", which led to far-reaching changes in the railway network, popularly known as the Beeching Axe.
As a result of the report, just over 4,000 route miles were removed from the system on cost and efficiency grounds, leaving Britain with 13,721 miles (22,082 km) of railway lines in 1966. A further 2,000 miles (3,200 km) were lost by the end of the 1960s.
Beeching was born in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, the second of four brothers. His father was Hubert Josiah Beeching, a reporter with the Kent Messenger newspaper, his mother a schoolteacher and his maternal grandfather a dockyard worker. Shortly after his birth, Beeching's family moved to Maidstone where his brothers Kenneth (who was killed in the Second World War) and John were born. All four Beeching boys attended the local Church of England primary school, Maidstone All Saints, and won scholarships to Maidstone Grammar School, where Richard was a prefect. Beeching and his elder brother Geoffrey attended Imperial College of Science & Technology in London where both read physics and took First Class honours degrees. His younger brothers both attended Downing College, Cambridge.
Beeching remained at Imperial College where he undertook a research Ph.D under the supervision of Sir George Thomson. He continued in research until 1943, first at the Fuel Research Station in Greenwich in 1936 and then the following year with the Mond Nickel Laboratories in London, where he was appointed senior physicist carrying out research in the fields of physics, metallurgy and mechanical engineering.
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