Ernest Marples was appointed Minister for Transport in 1959, after revolutionising the Post Office (introducing the Postcode system amongst other innovations). 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.

At the same time tenants of his London properties were threatening legal action demanding repairs to structural faults. It was not orchestrated by people about to find their communities isolated from the national rail network, but by motorists who objected to the introduction of Traffic Wardens, drink-driving clampdowns and yellow lines.Ian Nicholls tells the story of the man who opened our motorways and had a soft spot for Minis with a twist.

He certainly succeeded in reducing the losses and of course we only got half of the proposed changes. The irony of course being that he was the Minister of Transport who had introduced these penalties for such dangerous driving. I wish more would actually go and study the Beeching Report, Beeching identified the fact those very many of those lines had revenues of a tiny fraction of operating costs, they could never pay their way!

The Photo paper has a semi-gloss finish, ideally suited to reproductions of photographs, while the Art paper has a matt textured surface that works particularly well for reproductions of drawings, etchings and some paintings. Marples’ first hand experience of the construction industry caught the attention of the Conservative Party leadership. Civil engineer and planner Professor Colin Buchanan recommended that nothing be done at all to encourage urban cycling. The problem with conspiracy theories is that people believe what they want to believe, make the facts fit their argument and, in this case, the most critical are those who detest Marples brand of politics and/or are engaged in the age-old British love affair with trains.

You simply cant dismiss as a conspiracy theory the fact the Marples made his fortune as a road builder and his family still had significant share holdings in Marples Ridgeway. In the Netherlands – a country with a strong history of cycling, where national identity was tied up with cycling – the Buchanan report inspired town planners to reign back the car in residential streets. Section 6, which listed "Passenger Services under Consideration for Withdrawal before the Formulation of the Report", included " Shrewsbury-Hartlebury", although Section 7, "Passenger Stations and Halts already under Consideration for Closure before the Formulation of the Report" included only stations and halts as far south as Northwood Halt in line with BR British Rail or British Railways's announced plans. Ernest Marples is too consequential a figure for his career to be judged on his favouring of roads over railways and end of career tax avoidance.The collection shows how Marples came under scrutiny for allegedly soliciting prostitutes and reveals the records he kept to make his defence. The Inland Revenue was demanding that he pay back nearly 30 years’ back taxes on his residence in Eccleston Street, Belgravia, London, as well as Capital Gains Tax on his properties in Kensington. Also when we hear all those claiming that he destroyed much used and essential Branch Lines, when in reality many had long since become financially unviable with more employees than passengers.

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. The book examines the Beeching Report which looked at the railway system and infamous for it cuts but also looks at transport policy around the time and then the Labour Govt took over as well. At the same time the Labour Party at last got its act together and elected Harold Wilson as its new leader.

But these aren't even the most controversial things about him as he is strongly associated with Lord Beeching whose 'reforms' devastated the British railway industry. Although nobody realised it at the time, Britain was undergoing a transport revolution that would transform the nation from public transport users to motorists, all by the time of the October 1973 energy crisis. Information presented on this page was prepared from the XML source files, together with information from the History of Parliament Trust, the work of Leigh Rayment and public sources. A stickler for historical accuracy he has recently performed the marathon task of mining the online newspaper articles for all BMC>MG related stories.