 His report "The Reshaping of British Railways" (commonly known simply as "The Beeching Report") issued in 1963, concluded that much of the railway network carried little traffic and should be closed down.His report proposed a massive closures programme which would involve 5,000 miles of track, and 2,363 small stations being closed, which came to be known as the Beeching axe.The report also proposed that British Rail electrify some major main lines and adopt containerized freight traffic instead of outdated and uneconomic wagon-load traffic.