>>1785903>You can't start refuting something that cannot be refuted.I bet he doesn't know where to start not because he is trying to directly refute the history you detailed, but because you don't give much to figure out what history you do and don't consider leading up and going through 1963 beyond those two sentences. So starting at a point with enough context to validate a different conclusion requires [words], and they probably expect the only reaction to be pic related. I'll give my summary, but you'd have to actually be interested for me to make 3-5 2000 character posts summarizing the history I consider going from at least 1921.
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That the 1963 map even has that much track still maintained and used for passenger service in low-service regions was an economic aberration that private entities would have been disencentivized to uphold, due to low ridership, negative profit, and increasing maintenance costs. In fact, the main push for nationalization was due to both the postwar government and citizens still using those lines wanting to avoid the eventuality of an economically justified closure of both passenger service and entire lines by private owners. It was the last Hail Mary in a long series of kicking the can down the road by private and increasingly public intervention to avoid very unpopular closures, and the Beeching Cuts were the first concrete decision that this can wasn't worth kicking along in its current state any longer. Given the positive changes that happened in the 80s onwards, including both state adaptations and progress undertaken after increasing privatization, I think it inspired a better outcome than what keeping the status quo could have been.
