British Rail's ability to innovate compared with modern day train companies

[chorleyjeff]

Hmm, I’ve seen plenty of contractors propping up shovels doing nothing, all being paid for by private engineering companies working on behalf of a private railway company...

Not a good idea to work on track as a train passes.
Reminds me of the lady in working hours nursing a cup of coffee in an office overlooking the WCML in Lancs in BR when it was snowing and blowing a gale. She commented that those men ( trackworkers ) have done nothing for the fifteen minutes she had been watching them.

 

[LowLevel]

The only innovations I can think of in the railways coming from the TOCs post privatisation are:- 1) Virgin Trains' ramping up of ticket prices and aggressive discounting for advance purchase (discussed on another thread); 2) Chiltern's Project Evergreen II; 3) Open Access Operators; 4) New routes by TOCs almost all of which were quickly dropped when the Strategic Rail Authority came into being as they considered on-rail competition to be "ORCATS raiding" (getting disproportionate extra revenue without justification).

When the franchises were first let, under what was then called OPRAF (Office of Passenger Rail Franchising), there were two categories. The short franchises, who were let to do their own thing pretty much, and the longer ones (Connex South East, South West Trains, LTS, Virgin off the top of my head).

The longer ones had specific requirements to introduce new trains or timetables, in return for longer franchise periods. Unlike the shorter contracts, the longer franchises were more prescriptive about what was to be done. Nothing of what these franchises did was just "innovation" - they were specified in the contracts and effectively agreed based on existing plans already provided to OPRAF. Evergreen I on Chiltern, Slam-Door replacement, LTS upgrading, Pendolinos on West Coast - these were all Franchise commitments which in reality were planned to happen no matter which private company won the respective franchises.

Who do you think provided these plans to OPRAF? Where did they get the idea from that the WCML could be upgraded to run 140MPH tilting trains with in-cab signalling, do you suppose? (Which it turn out in the end wasn't possible anyway, but they didn't know that). It was people who worked for the railway and would formerly have worked for BR. Some now in private consultancy, and some hired by TOC / Railtrack / OPRAF teams. But these were very much off the shelf plans.

Without privatisation, and with sufficient funding, these plans could have been put into operation, but rather than a four-five year hiatus during the privatisation programme, work could have been underway by 1992 (which is when new plans were shelved pending the Railways Act of 1993).

[Now would BR have got sufficient funding? Probably not under the Major administration, since one of the benefits of privatisation from that government's point of view was that borrowing to fund the investment would be off the government's books. The Blair administration from 1997 onwards also had the same views (no doubt the same civil servants in the Treasury giving the same advice), but they got around it by massively ramping up their "Public Private Partnership" scheme. What happened on London Underground is probably a fair arbiter of how a non-privatised BR may have worked, and it still involved quite a lot of privatisation even under Labour].

The shorter franchises, like Valley Lines, Regional Railways North East, Merseyrail, etc., did nothing of any significance whatsoever. North West did try a service to London and bought the 175s as an add-on order to the 180s procured by Great Western, but as I said above, none of that lasted so it's hard to see it as a "benefit" of privatisation. I don't know if the Midlands Turbostars were a TOC innovation. Even if so, they were just the latest model of British Rail's Networkers, and had been mandated in the Chiltern Franchise agreement, so it's not really a wild innovation.

The Blair Government's Strategic Rail Authority came into being in the late 1990s and pledged to both encourage innovation at the same time as being far more restrictive in obligations of TOCs. This was never going to work (and indeed didn't). The TOCs as we know in hindsight gamed the system, by bidding for 25 year franchises, promising to rebuild all the stations in solid gold encrusted with diamonds, but only in year 24 and only on the basis that the franchise support subsidies were paid up-front in years 1 to 4. Of course they took the money in years 1 to 4 and when it got to year 5 decided that passenger forecasts weren't up to scratch after all and handed the keys (but not the money) back.

So no benefit to that era of privatisation either.

And meanwhile the SRA became ever more prescriptive starting, effectively, to write the timetables and route maps, curtailing Cross-Country, specifying individual units to be used by individual TOCs, etc. And meanwhile Hatfield happened and Railtrack was made insolvent by Steven Byers, and privatisation has been dead in the water ever since.

[It just took a bizarre combination of a left-leaning Tory government with a large majority and a popular policy agenda (Brexit) to sign the death certificate. Gordon Brown couldn't do it, because he'd have been made out to be a communist. George Osborne couldn't do it because it's against his very nature. Theresa May couldn't do it, because her government struggled to do anything. The current government (whatever your views of them) have a large majority and enacted Brexit (which whatever you think of that is popular with the public, hence the government's popularity ratings still being unusually high at this point in the election cycle). Politically, this means they can do whatever they want - even if it's virtually the same thing that Jeremy Corbyn was advocating for and got slaughtered for it.]

But moving back to the topic at hand, nothing done on the Railway since circa 2005 has been done without the Government of the day directing it to be done. Indeed, the rationale for abolishing the Strategic Rail Authority and creating Control Period Funding Settlements, High Level Output Statements, and the like was that the Government are running the show anyway, so let's drop the pretence and bring the people directly into the Department for Transport. That being the case, anything done since 2005 would have almost certainly been done in an alternate world where BR still existed.

Midland Mainline were always held to have been hugely innovative both in service provision and rolling stock strategy - the acquisition of their class 170 fleet to provide a standard stopping service on a route that had been a skip stopping Intercity only operation since the 80s/early 90s was one of the most understated success stories of the era I think, and of course things moved on with them being replaced with the Intercity standard 222 fleet.

They were good at the "make all of the passengers feel special" bit of the service proposition too - free cheap tea or coffee to all passengers was a big PR win - rather than being accused of paying lots of attention to first class and not enough to standard as is levelled at GNER. That carried on through to EMT with their "treats" idea - giving people a little freebie like some cakes or a themed meal on board or in stations every now and then that made them feel appreciated for very little outlay. That being said they also opened some great first class lounges and their on board food offer in first was superb.

I think being a small TOC they had the ability to provide attention to detail and innovation without huge cost and they ceased to be before the NX centralisation and stagnation that affected National Express Anglia and East Coast.

 

[SargeNpton]

The jey thing about BR is that it had its research department which was able to pool resources and research all aspects of the railway, such as engineering, ergonomics etc.

Nowadays everything seems to be bought off the shelf from somewhere.

And selling that expertise overseas via its Transmark consultancy.

 

[WesternLancer]

NSE did with its Network days.

plus a whole new Railcard to make travel off peak cheaper at all times (then subsequently undermined post privatisation by TOCs who required the imposition of minimum fare regs)

 

[yorksrob]

plus a whole new Railcard to make travel off peak cheaper at all times (then subsequently undermined post privatisation by TOCs who required the imposition of minimum fare regs)

And selling that expertise overseas via its Transmark consultancy.

Yes, indeed.

 

[nw1]

The honest answer is I don't know.

However, in defence of British Rail during the short period I was using it (1982-95) it did implement a not-insignificant modernisation in the late 80s-very early 90s period (around 1986-90; basically the days of NSE). Several electrifications were done in this period, some minor, some large-scale (ECML), a good deal of new rolling stock was introduced, and this also seemed to be the period in which 'sensible' frequencies and clock-face patterns were introduced on a lot of routes, particularly away from the London area, but even in some Home Counties towns such as Newbury, which previously had irregular and infrequent service patterns (Newbury in 1981, a two hourly DMU to Reading plus peak through trains to London and occasional stops by HSTs going to the West Country)

The counter point is that BR appeared to be very sensitive to whether the government wanted to spend money on the railways or not, and were very vulnerable to recessions. After that rosy 1986-90 period, 1991-93 was a period of cutbacks.

 

[WesternLancer]

Would they have produced a 125mph tilting WCML with Pendolinos within 5 years?
Inter-city Bi-modes (769s don't count)
ETCS and ROCs
HS1 and St Pancras/King's Cross development
How long would it have taken them to develop a retail ticketing web site and ATMs to match
Trainline/Realtime trains (ie releasing operational information for 3rd parties to develop added value apps)
Delay-repay (when did BR ever refund any money for poor performance?)
5-year route/service development plans for public consultation (Route utilisation strategies)
Rapid LT&S upgrade (the BR misery line)
Rebuilt Reading and Birmingham New St.
Electrification blitz (GW, NW, Scotland)

I don't doubt some of this would have happened, but would it all have happened in 25 years?
And would HMG have signed off these projects under BR?
It was very difficult for BR to get more than one major project at a time, or one fleet replacement at a time, funded.
BR had a hierarchy of lines, IC at the top and Regional at the bottom.
Franchises meant a degree of equality of franchises, and they all got a bite of the cherry, notably the Regional routes.
How would BR have handled Devolution (Wales, Scotland and within England).
Ditto Independent freight operators, Open Access and new entrants (all mandated by EU regs)

It's too easy to say that BR would have done as well or better than the semi-private railway we have had since 1996.
I don't think they would ever have been given the money to do it "their way".
A lot of external events have happened since then, all affecting the railway.

For all of your list it's pretty easy to find 25 year windows of time where BR delivered equivalent projects of equal or better success, almost certainly for less money in many cases. Some of your examples include projects that have received eye watering sums of govt money, sums BR folk would find beyond their wildest dreams....

For the top example on your list I raise you the original WCML electrification project - mostly done in 5 years, complete with various station rebuilds, new loco fleet etc etc.

I guess the lesson of that is that it took privatisation to make the politicians holding the purse strings find the money in ever more desperate attempt to make it look like privatisation was working!

Because there is surely no record of the private sector taking significant financial risks to obtain rewards from railways since 1996.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Because there is surely no record of the private sector taking significant financial risks to obtain rewards from railways since 1996.

Chiltern is probably it.

 

[Devonian]

I have no doublt that the post privatisation railway has brought a whole host of innovations. But BR's ability to innovate was probably more different than more restricted: notably having a 'whole system' view rather than just control over one small region or line's trains offered scope for cost-effective innovation that could be rolled out effectively. Having said that, a desire for consistency might have made regional innovations less likely.

Would they have produced a 125mph tilting WCML with Pendolinos within 5 years?

No: but they had been developing the next generation of high-speed trains in the form of the Intercity 250, intended to run at 150 mph+ with upgrades to the track and signalling on the West Coast Main Line. The project was quashed by the recession of the early '90s - which had also temporarily suppressed passenger numbers, which had previously been increasing since about 1982 at roughly the same rate that they increased after (but not necessarily due to) privatisation as the economy recovered. I suspect that when passenger numbers picked up, the project could have been revived, but with better co-ordination between track upgrades and rolling stock.

Inter-city Bi-modes (769s don't count)

Probably not: but since BR continued to develop push-pull trains, it would have been possible to move from diesel to electric or bi-mode locomotives without waiting to change the carriages.

How long would it have taken them to develop a retail ticketing web site and ATMs to match

BR operated increasingly complex Ticket Vending Machines extensively in the South East, and it would have been a logical progression to upgrade them and roll them out more widely as technology changed.

Delay-repay (when did BR ever refund any money for poor performance?)

John Major's Citizen Charter brought in refunds or extensions to season tickets linked to delays and poor performance on British Rail.

The Passengers' Charter of 1992 (before the General Election of that year sealed BR's fate) introduced specific compensation, both for single-journey and season tickets: a refund of 20% of the single leg for a delay of an hour, and season ticket discounts that went broadly unchanged until Delay Repay arrived.

How would BR have handled Devolution (Wales, Scotland and within England).

BR already had its ScotRail division and Network South East, so it would not have been any skin off their nose to set up a region for Wales. They already worked with PTEs.

I don't think they would ever have been given the money to do it "their way".

That is an interesting point: the cut backs in the 1990s recession is a case in point, suggesting BR being at the mercy of Treasury restrictions; but I suspect there would have been better co-ordination between track and train upgrades, leading to fewer examples of trains being ordered that didn't match track upgrade schedules (the Desiro fleet was delayed due to needing more power than was available and those Pendolinos still don't reach 140mph, if I remember rightly) and possibly better overall use of resources leading to greater overall improvements.

A lot of external events have happened since then, all affecting the railway.

External events were always happening, and BR responded to them. We will never know what their response would have been to more recent events, but they would not have stood still. Notably during the '90s recession they tried both to cut costs and improve customer experiences to attract more leisure passengers: why does that sound familiar?

Possibly an extreme example of this is Northern's £10 (£17.50 weekend) rover ticket. Go anywhere off-peak for a day (or two). But only on Northern services.
1: How would you similarly define which routes (and in some cases, which services on those routes) this would be limited to, absent disparate TOCs?

British Rail did offer some regional rangers: they were simply specified in terms of lines and geographical area. Even in today's railways, this is commonplace, such as a whole host of rangers and rovers in the Great Western region that are limited to specific lines or even counties, sometimes across TOCs.

BR had a website? Really? The World Wide Web was only starting to take off with the general public in 1994 when BR was on the way out.

Unofficial websites appeared, and the residuary British Rail Board got a website, but not BR itself: BR concentrated on introducing regional timetable enquiry telephone bureaux. However, given the speed with which both the Railtrack online timetable and individual TOC websites appeared - including those run by ex BR managers - I see no reason why BR would not have done the same.

One thing that BR did do instead is third-party ticket agents: I used to buy tickets on tractor-feed stock from travel agents, and I wonder if this experience might have led to different ticketing options such as tickets through PayPoint or Post Offices at some stage.

Virgin trains on board shop instead of buffet? First class lounges (or did these in sectorisatuon days?). Engineering innovation would probably have got there sooner or later whether public, unified, private, or fragmented, but marketing innovation was a bit different.

BR's marketing was top notch in its last years, and they were putting significant efforts into improving the passenger experience and actively attracting passengers. I suspect that we would have seen different innovations: for example, they were already attempting to have trains ready for boarding in the platforms at certain terminal stations rather than needing to provide separate lounges; and there were a few Sleeper Lounges, so First Class lounges might also have arrived once platforms became too busy to have trains waiting. As for on-board shops: having used both shops and buffets, I really didn't feel that the shop offered anything that the buffets couldn't (and often offered a lot less than the buffets did), and I suspect that BR would have come to the same conclusion. Other innovations that feel like post-privatisation things such as audio entertainment sockets and scrolling information displays in carriages, at-seat catering on inter-city services, cheap advance purchase fares, reward schemes and intermediate travel classes were already either in use, on trial or in the pipeline under BR.

 

[WesternLancer]

Suggest that you really need to look up the Inter City 225. Reportedly drew up to 80% of it's engineering from the APT Operated in non-tilt mode on the ECML but was designed to take tilt and operate at 140mph with in-cab signalling. The latter version was at least in part intended for the WCML.

Indeed. And also worth looking up Intercity 250 project for WCML.

 

[Annetts key]

Not a good idea to work on track as a train passes.

Yes, obviously. But there can only be engineering trains or on track machines in a T3 worksite and this is what I was referring to. The contractors were in a T3 worksite and at that at the time there were no engineering trains or on track machines in that area of the T3.

Reminds me of the lady in working hours nursing a cup of coffee in an office overlooking the WCML in Lancs in BR when it was snowing and blowing a gale. She commented that those men ( trackworkers ) have done nothing for the fifteen minutes she had been watching them.

As the railway moves away from ‘red zone working’ using lookout protection and instead uses more line blocks during the normal service period, observers will see staff stood doing nothing, as they wait in a safe place until a line block is granted. Even if there has been no visible train movements for some time...

 

[WesternLancer]

Chiltern is probably it.

Interesting thought, thanks.

I have no doublt that the post privatisation railway has brought a whole host of innovations. But BR's ability to innovate was probably more different than more restricted: notably having a 'whole system' view rather than just control over one small region or line's trains offered scope for cost-effective innovation that could be rolled out effectively. Having said that, a desire for consistency might have made regional innovations less likely.

No: but they had been developing the next generation of high-speed trains in the form of the Intercity 250, intended to run at 150 mph+ with upgrades to the track and signalling on the West Coast Main Line. The project was quashed by the recession of the early '90s - which had also temporarily suppressed passenger numbers, which had previously been increasing since about 1982 at roughly the same rate that they increased after (but not necessarily due to) privatisation as the economy recovered. I suspect that when passenger numbers picked up, the project could have been revived, but with better co-ordination between track upgrades and rolling stock.

Probably not: but since BR continued to develop push-pull trains, it would have been possible to move from diesel to electric or bi-mode locomotives without waiting to change the carriages.

BR operated increasingly complex Ticket Vending Machines extensively in the South East, and it would have been a logical progression to upgrade them and roll them out more widely as technology changed.


The Passengers' Charter of 1992 (before the General Election of that year sealed BR's fate) introduced specific compensation, both for single-journey and season tickets: a refund of 20% of the single leg for a delay of an hour, and season ticket discounts that went broadly unchanged until Delay Repay arrived.

BR already had its ScotRail division and Network South East, so it would not have been any skin off their nose to set up a region for Wales. They already worked with PTEs.

That is an interesting point: the cut backs in the 1990s recession is a case in point, suggesting BR being at the mercy of Treasury restrictions; but I suspect there would have been better co-ordination between track and train upgrades, leading to fewer examples of trains being ordered that didn't match track upgrade schedules (the Desiro fleet was delayed due to needing more power than was available and those Pendolinos still don't reach 140mph, if I remember rightly) and possibly better overall use of resources leading to greater overall improvements.

External events were always happening, and BR responded to them. We will never know what their response would have been to more recent events, but they would not have stood still. Notably during the '90s recession they tried both to cut costs and improve customer experiences to attract more leisure passengers: why does that sound familiar?


British Rail did offer some regional rangers: they were simply specified in terms of lines and geographical area. Even in today's railways, this is commonplace, such as a whole host of rangers and rovers in the Great Western region that are limited to specific lines or even counties, sometimes across TOCs.

Unofficial websites appeared, and the residuary British Rail Board got a website, but not BR itself: BR concentrated on introducing regional timetable enquiry telephone bureaux. However, given the speed with which both the Railtrack online timetable and individual TOC websites appeared - including those run by ex BR managers - I see no reason why BR would not have done the same.

One thing that BR did do instead is third-party ticket agents: I used to buy tickets on tractor-feed stock from travel agents, and I wonder if this experience might have led to different ticketing options such as tickets through PayPoint or Post Offices at some stage.

BR's marketing was top notch in its last years, and they were putting significant efforts into improving the passenger experience and actively attracting passengers. I suspect that we would have seen different innovations: for example, they were already attempting to have trains ready for boarding in the platforms at certain terminal stations rather than needing to provide separate lounges; and there were a few Sleeper Lounges, so First Class lounges might also have arrived once platforms became too busy to have trains waiting. As for on-board shops: having used both shops and buffets, I really didn't feel that the shop offered anything that the buffets couldn't (and often offered a lot less than the buffets did), and I suspect that BR would have come to the same conclusion. Other innovations that feel like post-privatisation things such as audio entertainment sockets and scrolling information displays in carriages, at-seat catering on inter-city services, cheap advance purchase fares, reward schemes and intermediate travel classes were already either in use, on trial or in the pipeline under BR.

I very much agree with your analysis.

 

[Harpers Tate]

British Rail did offer some regional rangers:

Yes - but at hugely higher cost (in real terms) as suggested in my last paragraph.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes - but at hugely higher cost (in real terms) as suggested in my last paragraph.

I did lots of North and Mid Wales Day Rangers pre-privatisation and those were great value.

 

[Harpers Tate]

I did use that as an example. I didn't really want to list all I could think of.
But here is another.
Pre-privatisation, the old (and usually excellent) full silver-service Breakfast was an exclusively Mon-Fri thing.
Enter Midland Mainline and lo! Saturdays. With special fares for the round trip to London either 2nd; 1st, or 1st with breakfast. IIRC back in the 90's it was £35 for the whole thing.

 

[WesternLancer]

I did use that as an example. I didn't really want to list all I could think of.
But here is another.
Pre-privatisation, the old (and usually excellent) full silver-service Breakfast was an exclusively Mon-Fri thing.
Enter Midland Mainline and lo! Saturdays. With special fares for the round trip to London either 2nd; 1st, or 1st with breakfast. IIRC back in the 90's it was £35 for the whole thing.

Don't recall cooked breakfast being available to Standard Class passengers on MML (without at least paying weekend first upgrade plus the breakfast charge on top*). Of course BR dining cars admitted Std Class passengers, a thing MML and Virgin removed - whereas GNER retained and indeed GWR still permit.

But without wishing to sound too dismissive, I'm not sure MML offering a small number of trains (2?) with cooked breakfasts on a Saturday, enjoyable as that certainly is, is a particularly impressive example of private sector innovation...

*edit - re read your post and I guess you mean they offered special round trip fares (London Day out?) one of which included breakfast in the price. Which was good for a day out, but a bit of a nuisance I found when I wanted to be away longer than a day out and wanted a breakfast, there was no ticket for that if my outbound was a Saturday and return a sunday etc. Luckily staff would usually have enough room to accept the W/E 1st upgrade and breakfast charge when I asked, but I recall being turned down once being told 'we only have enough stock on for the pre booked breakfasts' - so entrepreneurial innovation at that level had it's limits

 

[Helvellyn]

We know some of BR's thinking from the early 1990s on rolling stock:

• IC250 for the WCML (Class 93s plus Mark 5 stock), with track realignment to increase speeds but no tilt.
  • expected to lead to the cascade of the Mark 3b/3A LHCS to Anglia (as happened under privatisation) but also CrossCountry.
  • likely some Mark 2F stock would have been retained for CrossCountry alongside Mark 3As.
• Class 471 Networker for Kent Coast Express services; Universal Networker (Class 371/381?) for Thameslink 2000, Great Northern outer-suburban and LTS services; Class 341 Networker for CrossRail.
  • likely cascade of Class 317s/319s allowing replacement of 312s on the Great Eastern, use of 319s on outer suburban services on third rail (e.g. Waterloo-Reading displacing 4-VEPs).
  • likely further development of the Networker to replace 4-BIGs/4-CIGs/4-VEPs on the South Central and South Western divisions.
• Class 157 for Regional Railways replacing Class 101s on Strathclyde (and possibly 156s for a cascade); further Class 323s for West Yorkshire electrification.

Lots not accounted for by the above so we don't know for example if maybe a case for MML electrification would have been made by proposing transferring Class 87s/90s and Mark 3s from the WCML (so Anglia + MML rather than Anglia + CrossCountry), with HSTs displaced to CrossCountry. All Mark 3s (and possibly many Mark 2Fs) would have had mid-life refurbishment. A MML electrification could have allowed time for the business case for GWML electrification plus a son of HST for non-electrified services (Devon + Cornwall; CrossCountry; ECML North of Edinburgh).

Would we have seen innovation such as MML stopping services by InterCity? Maybe with electrification where cascaded stock could have allowed more services, but not in the way the Class 170s (and later 222s) were intended to shake things up.

Organising for Quality made BR very efficient but equally it might have had to recreate an infrastructure division to meet EU requirements to account for track/trains separately.

As someone else said we can play the "What if" game until the cows come home, but ultimately we don't know how a BR of the early 1990s would have looked today. A Labour victory in 1992 would have stopped privatisation but even Labour were proposing private leasing of stock by BR. The Conservatives could have done a different model for privatisation; Labour could have undertaken meaningful reform of franchises in the 2000s rather than let the Treasury turn them into a cash cow. That last point is one that actually bugs me - everyone blames the Conservatives under John Major for privatisation, but Labour had ample opportunity in thirteen years (1997-2010) to undertake massive reform even if it didn't want to renationalise. It was Labour that effectively collapsed Railtrack; it was Labour that encouraged massive bids (GNER and National Express East Coast both collapsed under Labour - the original GNER franchise ran 1996-2005; the second franchise collapsed in December 2006 and was replaced by NXEC in December 2007, which itself lasted only until November 2009). With hindsight it can be seen that there was a massive under-estimate of the potential for growth, which meant early franchises were cash cows. But by the early 2000s there was an opportunity to redress that with long-term deals for long-term investment. Chiltern's Evergreen projects under its 20-year deal could have been replicated on SWT with the proposed 20-year deal for Stagecoach (complete rebuild of Clapham; massive route modernisation) but instead we saw that scrapped, a short extension granted and the SRA (and later the DfT) take ever more control by stealth.

To come back round BR would have innovated. Likely in different ways to some of the things we saw under privatisation but in other ways maybe similar (leadership didn't change overnight). But BR would still have been hamstrung by The Treasury and would have been competing for capex alongside lots of other things. Unless it was allowed to become a standalone (albeit state owned) organisation, or was privatised in different ways, we'd have still seen investment not reach its full potential.

 

[tbwbear]

plus a whole new Railcard to make travel off peak cheaper at all times (then subsequently undermined post privatisation by TOCs who required the imposition of minimum fare regs)

Exactly.

It seems pretty odd that the Network Railcard (excellent innovation that it is) is still with us and still called a "Network Railcard". In all these years they have not come up with anything better.

And I think that is part of the problem - it is not essentially privatisation that is a barrier to innovation it is the fragmentation that privatisation caused. Yes, in some ways that helps a bit of innovation but it is patchy.

How could the "privatised" railway come up with something like the Network Railcard?

Just as they wouldn't easily come up with innovative national advertising to tempt people back on to rail.

British Rail back in the 60s, 70s and 80s was certainly an innovator in the use of market research and marketing, I don't think that has really been matched to the same level since.

 

[WesternLancer]

Exactly.

It seems pretty odd that the Network Railcard (excellent innovation that it is) is still with us and still called a "Network Railcard". In all these years they have not come up with anything better.

And I think that is part of the problem - it is not essentially privatisation that is a barrier to innovation it is the fragmentation that privatisation caused. Yes, in some ways that helps a bit of innovation but it is patchy.

How could the "privatised" railway come up with something like the Network Railcard?

Just as they wouldn't easily come up with innovative national advertising to tempt people back on to rail.

British Rail back in the 60s, 70s and 80s was certainly an innovator in the use of market research and marketing, I don't think that has really been matched to the same level since.

Yep - for me privatization has failed to achieve or match the best of what BR could achieve and deliver, whilst simultaneously failing to deliver what might have been expected the best of the private sector could or ought to have been able to deliver. And I don't see that it got rid of the worst of what BR had to offer either come to that.

That's why for me it's been a big failure, a big waste of money and big waste of what might have been an opportunity.

 

[JonathanH]

How could the "privatised" railway come up with something like the Network Railcard?

It managed to come up with complete replacement of the fare structure in London. The Network Railcard has stood accused of stifling the ability of the various operators to offer their own promotions.

Just as they wouldn't easily come up with innovative national advertising to tempt people back on to rail.

Seemingly not. Many of the different operators seem to be doing advertising on commercial radio explaining what steps they have taken to make their trains ready for passengers again. (What we don't know is whether the 'advertising space' has been bought centrally by RDG and shared out.)

 

[tbwbear]

The Network Railcard has stood accused of stifling the ability of the various operators to offer their own promotions.

But that is kind of my point. Surely a "rail network solution" is better rather than localised promotions and why can't we have both anyway?

The only development of the Network Railcard under privatisation seems to have been the introduction of the minimum fare requirement on Mondays to Fridays - how is that innovative ?

 

[Harpers Tate]

Don't recall cooked breakfast being available to Standard Class passengers on MML

It wasn't and I don't think I said it was.

"either 2nd; 1st, or 1st with breakfast."

 

[yorksrob]

It managed to come up with complete replacement of the fare structure in London. The Network Railcard has stood accused of stifling the ability of the various operators to offer their own promotions.

Something squealed about by the TOC's but not borne out in reality. The better ones have managed to introduce good deals such as groupsave anyway.

 

[Journeyman]

And selling that expertise overseas via its Transmark consultancy.

Network Rail is big on overseas consultancy.

 

[LowLevel]

It wasn't and I don't think I said it was.

"either 2nd; 1st, or 1st with breakfast."

Not sure whether MML did it but under EMT they used to do breakfast in a box for standard if they'd not used it all in first class - a host would come through the train taking orders and anything up to a full English would be delivered to your seat. That went when they introduced the Saturday breakfast and went for standard plating in the kitchen rather than silver service.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I did lots of North and Mid Wales Day Rangers pre-privatisation and those were great value.

Local Marketing deals - even as far back as the late 197O's gave you a Cambrian Evening Rover for a mere 60p , and a stunning North London Line off peak and at weekends for a mere 66p. Bargain. (you could even in those days on a summer evening get from Aber to Barmouth for the 60p - enough time for a quick pint and chips , but enjoy a superb scenic journey)

£7 First Class at weekends from anywhere in Mid Wales to London Euston - a summer only 3 days from anywhere in West Wales to Slough (clearly not offering London) - but valid anywhere on the Western Region for a mere £12.

Very affordable and very enterprising "discretionary" marketing and extra off peak revenue at nil cost.

I do not recall the privatised successors offering anything like that. (the protectionist caveats post 1996 stopped that entirely)

I am sure other bits of BR did similar things.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Local Marketing deals - even as far back as the late 197O's gave you a Cambrian Evening Rover for a mere 60p , and a stunning North London Line off peak and at weekends for a mere 66p. Bargain. (you could even in those days on a summer evening get from Aber to Barmouth for the 60p - enough time for a quick pint and chips , but enjoy a superb scenic journey)

There was of course the GM Evening Ranger, just £1.25 (in the late 90s) from I think 6:30pm to end of service.

 

[tbwbear]

Used to do theatre-concert rail from Blackpool to London in the 80s. With a young persons railcard it worked out around 25-30% of the actual full return fare - excluding the theatre tickets. Used to get the cheap seats for the theatre, a full day in London and get the really late train home...

I don't know if that was a national BR scheme or a local LMR thing, but there were lots of other local deals like that...

It is obviously difficult to compare the 60s, 70s and 80s to the current day, but the idea that BR sat around and didn't really innovate or fight for traffic is plain wrong.

 

[Ianno87]

There was of course the GM Evening Ranger, just £1.25 (in the late 90s) from I think 6:30pm to end of service.

Something like £2.50 by the time it was withdrawn in 2014. The Evening Return was around £1.90 or so and undercut most single fares at that time of the evening!

 

[Lloyds siding]

I did lots of North and Mid Wales Day Rangers pre-privatisation and those were great value.

Indeed. I remember that, in the late 60/early 70s, these cost 2 guineas (£2.10) for an adult and 10 shillings (50p) for a child...and that was for 3 or 5 days travel (I'm struggling to remember), and was also valid on all Crosville bus services in the area, and a few other local bus operators. Great value!