page_title: Parliamentary train
section_title: Legacy of the Beeching cuts
hierarchical_section_title: Parliamentary train / Legacy of the Beeching cuts
caption_attribution_description: Photo taken at Reddish South railway station, Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. A train consisting of 142022 at the front with 142014 at the rear works the weekly service from Stockport to Stalybridge. Only the front unit 142022 is open to passengers, with 142014 closed off.
context_page_description: A Parliamentary train is a passenger service operated in the United Kingdom to comply with the Railway Regulation Act 1844 that required train companies to provide inexpensive and basic rail transport for less affluent passengers. The act required that at least one such service per day be run on every railway route in the UK. Now no longer a legal requirement, the term describes train services that continue to be run to avoid the cost of formal closure of a route or station but with reduced services often to just one train per week and without specially low prices. Such services are often called "ghost trains".
context_section_description: In 1963 under its chairman Richard Beeching, British Railways produced The Reshaping of British Railways report, designed to stem the huge losses being incurred as patronage declined. It proposed very substantial cuts to the network and to train services, with many lines closed under a programme that came to be known as the Beeching cuts. The Transport Act 1962 included a formal closure process allowing for objections to closures on the basis of hardship to passengers if their service was closed. As the objections gained momentum, this process became increasingly difficult to implement, and from about 1970 closures slowed to a trickle.
  In certain cases, where there was exceptionally low usage, the train service was reduced to a bare minimum but the service was not formally closed, avoiding the costs associated with closure. In some cases, the service was reduced to one train a week and in one direction only.
  These minimal services had resonances of the 19th-century parliamentary services and, among rail enthusiasts, they came to be referred to as "parliamentary trains" or, more colloquially, "parly" trains (following the abbreviation used in Victorian timetables) or "ghost trains". However, this terminology has no official standing. So-called parliamentary services are also typically run at inconvenient times, often very early in the morning, very late at night or in the middle of the day at the weekend. In extreme instances, rail services have actually been "temporarily" withdrawn and replaced by substitute bus services, to maintain the pretence that the service has not been withdrawn.
caption: The Stockport to Stalybridge shuttle approaches Reddish South. This is one of the most well-known parliamentary services throughout the country.
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