Alan Simpson: One way to ensure a safe, green and reliable service …

Alan Simpson: One way to ensure a safe, green and reliable service is axe all trains (Image: PA) Dr Richard Beeching gets a bit of a bad rap sometimes. Well he gets a bad rap pretty much all of the time after his controversial railway cuts instigated in the 1960's.

The Beeching cuts of the 1960s was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised railway system in Great Britain. But it also spelt the end for thousands of stations and hundreds of branch lines. The Beeching report recommended taking an axe to about a third of the network - 5,000 miles of track, including hundreds of branch lines, 2,363 stations and tens of thousands of jobs.

Instead, it would concentrate on the things trains did well. Fast journeys between the cities. Now it appears that Dr Beeching is alive and well and is working somewhere within Scotrail HQ judging by the latest axing of services just announced.

Scotrail says it is planning to axe nine 'fast' trains between Gourock and Glasgow next month.