The Beeching Axe is an informal name for the British Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running the British railway system. The name derives from the main author of the report The Reshaping of British Railways, Dr. Richard Beeching. Although this report also proposed the development of new modes of freight service and the modernisation of trunk passenger routes, it is best remembered for recommending the wholesale closure of what it considered to be little-used and unprofitable railway lines, and the removal of stopping passenger trains and closure of local stations on other lines.
The report was a reaction to the significant losses which had begun in the 1950s as the expansion in road transport began to abstract significant passenger and goods traffic from the railways; losses which continued to bedevil British Railways despite the introduction of the railway modernisation plan of 1955 . Beeching proposed that only drastic action would save the railways from increasing losses in the future.
However, successive governments were more keen on the cost-saving elements of the report rather than those elements requiring investment. Over 4,000 miles of railway and 3,000 stations were closed in the decade following the report, being a reduction of 25% of route miles and 50% in the number of stations. To this day in railway circles and amongst older people, particularly in those parts of the country that suffered most from the cuts, Beeching's name is still synonymous with the mass closure of railways and consequent loss of many local services.