traingang

Basically every last village in the UK used to have a train station.. a fucking century ago. We've only recently exceeded the absolute numbers of rail passengers back then.

A state-sanctioned private rail monopoly initially fucked stuff up for a couple decades. Then nationalisation plus neoliberal attitudes decided to do as it does and deliberately run everything into the ground for a few decades before deciding private companies could actually extract profit by gouging people. And that's how it is to the modern day.

After Beeching cuts closed 50% of stations in 1960, in the 1980s Thatcher tried to finish the job and close 80% of the remaining mileage. That was thankfully initially rejected due to public backlash, but as always it was just sneakily implemented over time in the background instead. It was all in effort to save money, and practically zero money was saved. Turned out when people need to own a car they stop using the train.

I've lived in three different villages all over the island that used to have rail stations before those cuts and now have nothing. A century ago it was economically viable to service my village that then had like 400 people in it with its own station. Now with modern technology and a hugely expanded population, you can't tell me it's not a viable idea now.

TL;DR: Every remote population centre should have its own train station and you can't convince me otherwise