Beeching's legacy

In our second report to mark the anniversary we look at a line that survived the Beeching axe and flourished and what the future holds across the East.

Many routes from our region head into London Liverpool Street. From there here's Natalie Gray.

This week fifty years ago a landmark document was published that changed the face of the railway network in this country forever.

Watch Matthew Hudson's report on the economic impact on towns that found themselves without a railway link and how many have fought back.

Although some railways were saved from Dr Beeching's axe, hundreds of others were closed, seemingly gone forever. Among them the line between Peterborough and Rugby.

ITV News Anglia reporter Claire McGlasson took a trip along a route now consigned to the history books.

Fifty years ago Dr Richard Beeching's report 'The Reshaping of British Railways' changed the country's rail network forever.

Dr Beeching had made it his job to "make the railways pay", and around 2,000 stations were axed.

Did Beeching save a bankrupt railway or did he damage them for the future? What do you think? Do you have memories of the Beeching cuts? Send all your comments to anglianews@itv.com

This week we're looking back at the cuts that Dr Richard Beeching made to Britain's rail network fifty years ago.

He recommended over two thousand stations should go, along with five thousand miles of the rail network.

Natalie Gray has been at the East Anglian Railways Museum at Wakes Colne near Colchester to find out more.

The chairman of The Mid Norfolk Railway, Barry Woodgett, grew up in Dereham in Norfolk. He remembers the shock that was felt in the community after the Beeching Report came out. It resulted in the closure of the Dereham-Wells line in October 1964.

In one of our reports coming up on ITV News Anglia (6pm tonight) Claire McGlasson is at the Nene Valley Railway in Peterborough.

The Peterborough to Rugby line was one of the railways shut down after the Beeching report in 1963.

Brian White, curator of the museum, said: "This line was principal in making Peterborough the large city that it is today.

"On the day it opened they suggest that the interest in the railway doubled the population of Peterborough. It brought a lot of people into the city and industrially it was important."

Fifty years ago Dr Beeching axed a third of the country's railways. In a series of reports on ITV News Anglia - starting tonight at 6pm - we look back at the lines which were cut in this region, and, the ones that got away.