Could the railways be renationalised under Labour and what should happen in the meantime?

[Bletchleyite]

I personally, without any professional judgement whatsoever, would like to see Euston to Glasgow services taken over by Scotrail. I think having a more “Scottish” feel to these services like the sleeper has, would be a great brand for the railway and might attract new tourist custom.

This is an interesting idea, but unlike the ECML fast Edinburgh services these trains carry a lot of their traffic (possibly even more than half of it?) within England.

You could do it with the HS2 proposed "superfasts" though, where the Lancaster semifast would take almost all that English traffic.

It'd be a pretty expensive microfleet for scotrail. Plus if it is like the current timetable, the first train crew would have to take the whole journey down to London first without serving customers in order to run the first train , unless you have a scotrail depot inside England. Caledonian sleeper is outsourced , not ran by scotrail themselves

CS is nationalised now, though separate from ScotRail. They (at least some of them) stay overnight in London. I half recall that they have a dedicated flat for the purpose to save on hotel costs.

 

[Harvey B]

I personally think that a huge start would be to integrate LNER, Northern, TPE and SE under one brand name (whether that be Great British Railways, British Rail or something else) and gradually add TOCs to the company as their franchises end could be a good strategy. (This is purely speculation.)

I'd love the Railways to be under public ownership but I'd disagree about having them under one branding. I'd much rather prefer it if the train operators kept their individual branding (pretty much the same setup that currently works for TOC's under OLR)

 

[Burton Road]

The transfer made sense at the time, as it linked the service in nicely with the former First North Western express services to Blackpool and Barrow/Windermere which also transferred to TPE. The busiest part of the Manchester-Scotland service is still south of Lancaster, which in terms of feel is very similar to the TPE Manchester-Huddersfield-Leeds core.

Sadly the Blackpool and Barrow/Windermere expresses have gone back to Northern, with a service standard to match. It’s telling how many people for Preston and Lancaster will let the Northern train go and wait for TPE.

The better split was when it was RRNE and RRNW to be quite honest.

Rail operations are not my area of expertise, but from an regional economic point of view many of the corridors that the Northern Economic Strategy are trying to use to drive regional growth are east west (Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Hull, L-M-Sheffield, Lancashire-M-Sh, Lancs-Leeds-Hull), and that means that both sides of the Pennines will need to be major stakeholders in any operator running rail services along those corridors. What we need from that perspective is something like a Network South East centred on Manchester/Leeds for all non-intercity services into Manchester and Leeds. The local services north/east of York would probably need to be hived off into a separate operator, and TPE to Scotland services taken over by intercity WC*, but that would better reflect the economic geography that rail could be effective at serving within the region.

*And arguably the "fast" Liverpool-Newcastle train to intercity EC.

 

[YorkRailFan]

I'd love the Railways to be under public ownership but I'd disagree about having them under one branding. I'd much rather prefer it if the train operators kept their individual branding (pretty much the same setup that currently works for TOC's under OLR)

I think a better alternative is to have subdivisions like in the BR days, with Regional Railways, Inter-Regional (for TPE, some Northern, some XC, some EMR, LNR, etc), Intercity and NSE.

 

[coppercapped]

Although this thread appears in the 'Speculative Discussion' forum and has generated a number of posts I see no mention of what financial, social or employment benefits and disbenefits are to be expected from any 'renationalisation'? This should consider the effects on customers/passengers/freight shippers, the Treasury in supplying funds - and by extension the effect on the taxpayer - and any effects on those employed directly and indirectly by the railway industry.

So far the discussion has mainly revolved around changes in 'branding', the re-allocation of some passenger flows from one Train Operating Company to another and the possible effects on on-going leasing costs for passenger rolling stock. The situation on the permanent way and works seems to have been largely ignored and more importantly there appears to be difference of opinion as to what 'renationalisation' really means in practice.

To give a little bit of background to the original nationalisation in 1947...

In 1917 Sidney Webb wrote what became Clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution:

To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

In November 1942 the wartime coalition government's report "Social Insurance and Allied Services", aka the Beveridge Report, was presented to parliament. It provided a summary of principles necessary to banish poverty and 'want' from Britain — to be implemented after the end of the war. The Report proposed a system of social security which would be operated by the state: 'Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.'

Beveridge's suggestions were adopted by both parties for the 1945 election with Labour also calling for the taking into public ownership the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy based on Clause IV. So the Attlee government nationalised about a fifth of the economy - coal, railways, canals, docks and harbours, road transport, the Bank of England, civil aviation, electricity, gas and steel and international telecommunications. (Internal telecommunications were already nationalised and operated by the General Post Office, the GPO). It also nationalised the hospitals when setting up the NHS. These organisations became departments of state, they were not companies with all the shares owned by the state.

None of the proposals in this thread appear, to me at least, to be 'nationalisation' on this scale, it is more a 're-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic' level.

So, help me! What are the real benefits of the taking under full state control some of the Train Operating Companies?

 

[Ken H]

I'd let the metro areas run their own services (Liverpool, Manchester, West Yorkshire, Tyneside) Scottish services to Intercity (or even Scotrail) and any residual services combined back into TPE.

Metro areas. So who runs Leeds - Harrogate - York, Leeds - Skipton (Morecambe/Carlisle), Manchester - Clitheroe, Manchester - Chester. All run well outside the Metro area.

 

[Ken H]

Although this thread appears in the 'Speculative Discussion' forum and has generated a number of posts I see no mention of what financial, social or employment benefits and disbenefits are to be expected from any 'renationalisation'? This should consider the effects on customers/passengers/freight shippers, the Treasury in supplying funds - and by extension the effect on the taxpayer - and any effects on those employed directly and indirectly by the railway industry.

So far the discussion has mainly revolved around changes in 'branding', the re-allocation of some passenger flows from one Train Operating Company to another and the possible effects on on-going leasing costs for passenger rolling stock. The situation on the permanent way and works seems to have been largely ignored and more importantly there appears to be difference of opinion as to what 'renationalisation' really means in practice.

To give a little bit of background to the original nationalisation in 1947...

In 1917 Sidney Webb wrote what became Clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution:

In November 1942 the wartime coalition government's report "Social Insurance and Allied Services", aka the Beveridge Report, was presented to parliament. It provided a summary of principles necessary to banish poverty and 'want' from Britain — to be implemented after the end of the war. The Report proposed a system of social security which would be operated by the state: 'Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.'

Beveridge's suggestions were adopted by both parties for the 1945 election with Labour also calling for the taking into public ownership the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy based on Clause IV. So the Attlee government nationalised about a fifth of the economy - coal, railways, canals, docks and harbours, road transport, the Bank of England, civil aviation, electricity, gas and steel and international telecommunications. (Internal telecommunications were already nationalised and operated by the General Post Office, the GPO). It also nationalised the hospitals when setting up the NHS. These organisations became departments of state, they were not companies with all the shares owned by the state.

None of the proposals in this thread appear, to me at least, to be 'nationalisation' on this scale, it is more a 're-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic' level.

So, help me! What are the real benefits of the taking under full state control some of the Train Operating Companies?

Wasnt quite like this. The national infrastructure was largely smashed by a very destructive world war, and by diversion of maintenance to the war effort. The repair of this damage was way beyond the resources of the owning companies.
But what was actually nationalised. Coas was. The railways were regulated following grouping. Road transport seems to have been half a job with smaller concerns remaining private. Civil Aviation soon had competition to BOAC(1) and BEA(2) from abroad and Laker and Dan Air were operating in the 1960's. Electricity and Gas were largely local authority provided, not least because of their tram and trolleybus operations.
The GPO telephones were seriously bad. Party lines, 6 months wait for a new line, only GPO engineers able to wire extensions, and you still needed a GPO pulse dialling phone.

Hospitals were already owned and run, either by county councils or or by the Workhouse system (yes in 1948). So that was just a transfer of assets between parts of government. The NHS big change was free GP services, and the end of means testing hospital treatment. Of course the NHS isnt nationalised. It runs hospitals (many are owned by PfI concerns) but drugs, consumables, cleaning, GPs', pharmacies, opticians, dentists, vehicles etc are bought in. NHS is, and always has been, a massive procurement organisation that happens to run a few hospitals.

But for Government, every little detail became the responsibility of ministers, and I am sure they had a healthy mailbag about the late running 8.23am from Haselmere. So putting day to day operations in the hands of an agency meant they could deny responsibility as the 'independent' railway was to blame.

</rant>
(1) British Overseas Airways Corporation
(2) British European Airways.
These 2 concerns made up the nationalised airline. They became joined up as British Airways.

 

[Backroom_boy]

Metro areas. So who runs Leeds - Harrogate - York, Leeds - Skipton (Morecambe/Carlisle), Manchester - Clitheroe, Manchester - Chester. All run well outside the Metro area.

Either the Metro areas would run them under contract with DFT or as I put it 'any residual services combined back into TPE'.

No it isn’t, their policy is to bring the remaining contracted TOCs in house.

No plans to nationalise the remaining parts of the railway (freight, ROSCOs,

Under 'organising for quality' (OFQ) which was the last configuration of BR before privatisation, everything was split into the business units of Intercity, NSE, Regional Railways, Scotrail etc.

Am I right in saying signallers were also split, so you would have IC signallers and NSE signallers? Presumably this was at the box level and they signalled whatever service was needed in their area? Was this as successful as the other OFQ areas? All the nationalisation proposals I've seen involve keeping the network rail region org pretty much the same and not vertically integrating signalling back with train operations.

 

[coppercapped]

Wasnt quite like this. The national infrastructure was largely smashed by a very destructive world war, and by diversion of maintenance to the war effort. The repair of this damage was way beyond the resources of the owning companies.
But what was actually nationalised. Coas was. The railways were regulated following grouping. Road transport seems to have been half a job with smaller concerns remaining private. Civil Aviation soon had competition to BOAC(1) and BEA(2) from abroad and Laker and Dan Air were operating in the 1960's. Electricity and Gas were largely local authority provided, not least because of their tram and trolleybus operations.
The GPO telephones were seriously bad. Party lines, 6 months wait for a new line, only GPO engineers able to wire extensions, and you still needed a GPO pulse dialling phone.

Hospitals were already owned and run, either by county councils or or by the Workhouse system (yes in 1948). So that was just a transfer of assets between parts of government. The NHS big change was free GP services, and the end of means testing hospital treatment. Of course the NHS isnt nationalised. It runs hospitals (many are owned by PfI concerns) but drugs, consumables, cleaning, GPs', pharmacies, opticians, dentists, vehicles etc are bought in. NHS is, and always has been, a massive procurement organisation that happens to run a few hospitals.

But for Government, every little detail became the responsibility of ministers, and I am sure they had a healthy mailbag about the late running 8.23am from Haselmere. So putting day to day operations in the hands of an agency meant they could deny responsibility as the 'independent' railway was to blame.

</rant>
(1) British Overseas Airways Corporation
(2) British European Airways.
These 2 concerns made up the nationalised airline. They became joined up as British Airways.

It would seem that you have fallen for the traditional excuse for the nationalisation of the railways - closer examination of your post and a knowledge of history shows that the version I gave is the more accurate one.

You write:

The national infrastructure was largely smashed by a very destructive world war, and by diversion of maintenance to the war effort. The repair of this damage was way beyond the resources of the owning companies.

I presume you are referring to the railway infrastructure rather than to the national infrastructure generally, but the railway infrastructure wasn’t ‘largely smashed’. It remained in sufficently good shape to deliver troops and all their equipment, munitions, fuel and food, to the south coast ports to support the landing of 160,000 troops in Normandy on one day, 6th June 1944, and subsequently to increase the number of troops in France to 2 million by August. If you want to see ‘smashed infrastructure’ then look at photographs taken in the summer of 1945 of towns, cities and railways across Belgium, parts of France, the Netherlands and Germany.

The British railways were certainly run down, but they were most certainly not smashed. What was life threatening was that the Government did not recompense the companies in the manner and amounts agreed at the start of the war although they all had plans, and in some cases finance, for the future. In fact no Government money at all was made available to recover from deferred maintenance or improvements until the 1955 Modernisation Plan. The railways were not singled out for lack of investment — they were one of many and although all the industries were nationalised there was no Government investment in any of them.[1] The shareholders received Government paper at nationalisation which essentially guaranteed a dividend. In the case of transport, the British Transport Commission was expected to generate a return sufficient to pay the dividends to the share owners of the 'Big Four'. By 1952 it couldn't. That the railways were nationalised because the companies could not afford the repairs is a complete myth, in fact there is a powerful argument which states that the reason that they were nationalised was to avoid paying them the monies due.

If you want to know more about the situation of the time I can recommend the BBC’s article about the way the UK used its Marshall Aid money to be found at The Wasting of Britain’s Marshall Aid https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/marshall_01.shtml

As for the railways being regulated after Grouping, how do you explain the existence of the Railway Regulation Act 1844…?

A minor correction to your history of BOAC and BEA. State-owned BOAC was created in 1939 by the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. The 1946 Civil Aviation Act also nationalised BEA (originally a spin off from BOAC) and British South American Airways - a privately owned airline. Other airlines remained private, an example being Silver City which was involved in the Berlin airlift in 1948-49.

The term ‘Nationalisation’ means that the organisation is placed under central government control — the clue is in the word. Prior to the 1946 Health Service Act health services were, as you stated, decentralised and supplied by a variety of organisations. This Act centralised the administration as a department of state — the NHS is, regardless of your interpretation, a nationalised concern. You claim that the big change that the NHS brought about was the introduction of free GP services but I can assure you that, having lived and worked in Germany, Belgium and France, that GP and hospital services are free at the point of use in all three countries and none of these countries has an organisation comparable to the NHS.

I also notice that you did not answer the question I posed in my earlier post

So, help me! What are the real benefits of the taking under full state control some of the Train Operating Companies?

What are these benefits — financial or social — supposed to be?

[1] Operational expenditure in the NHS is not investment in the generally accepted meaning of the term.

 

[Class450/4DES]

I think there should be a date for example "mid 2025". During that time TOC's would be merged so the already DfT owned franchises take over other TOC's.
It would go something like this.

Southeastern: Will take over commuter operators out of London such as SWR, LNR, c2c, GA, etc. (Not 100% if I would add the Overground or the Elizabeth line though.) They will either remain as "SE" or become a new "NSE".
Northern: They will be renamed Regional or Regional Railways, and then take over commuter service outside of London. (Merseyrail, ScotRail and TfW will remain but apart of Regional.)
LNER: They will either be renamed or rebranded fully as InterCity and operate all InterCity + GatEx services.
Freight: I don't really know yet.

 

[YorkRailFan]

I think there should be a date for example "mid 2025". During that time TOC's would be merged so the already DfT owned franchises take over other TOC's.
It would go something like this.

Southeastern: Will take over commuter operators out of London such as SWR, LNR, c2c, GA, etc. (Not 100% if I would add the Overground or the Elizabeth line though.) They will either remain as "SE" or become a new "NSE".
Northern: They will be renamed Regional or Regional Railways, and then take over commuter service outside of London. (Merseyrail, ScotRail and TfW will remain but apart of Regional.)
LNER: They will either be renamed or rebranded fully as InterCity and operate all InterCity + GatEx services.
Freight: I don't really know yet.

What about TPE?

 

[Meerkat]

Wont nationalisation just give even more power to those who have done the most damage to the railways - DfT?
ROSCOs need to stay. If borrowing has to come from the Treasury it won’t matter how good a business case is if the government wants to use their borrowing limit to build hospitals.
Also it all sounds nice the government owning the trains. But not so nice if the trains turn out to be rubbish or no longer needed and you have to keep paying for them for 30 years. Good luck to the suckers at the end of the cascade who get them dumped on their line.

Lastly I don’t understand this nostalgic fetish for the Intercity and BR brands. More local brands are better marketing, and reduce the PR damage when one line is performing badly.

 

[Manutd1999]

The first step would be to bring TOCs back under government control either as the contracts expire or the operators are no longer meeting their commitments (a la Northern).

Longer term, I would have one national operator, run as a state-owned 'arms length' company. It would have three brands but would share a common driver/rolling stock/maintenance pool:

Intercity - Long distance services to London + the longer XC routes.
Regional Express - most of the TPE routes and some other semi-fast services (Birmingham-Stanstead, Cardiff-Portsmouth etc.)
Regional - stopping services which cross local boundaries (Manchester-Chester, Carlisle-Newcastle etc.)

Outside of this, services which are well contained within regions would be devolved to local authorities, ideally mayoral regions (Greater Manchester, Bristol, West Midlands etc.). Where it makes sense, services could extend slightly outside regional boundaries (e.g. Manchester-Glossop/Blackpool/Buxton) but generally they would be limited to local commuter services. Local authorities would have the freedom to privatise or nationalise the services to whatever level they see fit.

 

[mike57]

It would have three brands but would share a common driver/rolling stock/maintenance pool:

To me this could be a big gain.

We also need to avoid situations like the TPE Mk5s. No more micro fleets. Commonality and interoperatabilty of rolling stock needs to form part of all future procurement requirements, even if this results in higher unit cost. It gives both short term benefits as well as longer term ones, and the current situations where you have lots of small fleets that all require training & maintenance, and cannot be easily redeployed to cover either short term needs or longer term changes is not good use of money. Thinking back to the recent past class 14x and 15x could all work in multple providing the lowest maximum speed was observed. The Southern Region had a similar concept as well.

 

[Meerkat]

To me this could be a big gain.

We also need to avoid situations like the TPE Mk5s. No more micro fleets. Commonality and interoperatabilty of rolling stock needs to form part of all future procurement requirements, even if this results in higher unit cost. It gives both short term benefits as well as longer term ones, and the current situations where you have lots of small fleets that all require training & maintenance, and cannot be easily redeployed to cover either short term needs or longer term changes is not good use of money. Thinking back to the recent past class 14x and 15x could all work in multple providing the lowest maximum speed was observed. The Southern Region had a similar concept as well.

Common pools are great as long as your service is one of the fat controllers favourites, and not bottom of priorities expendable when things get tight.
Also it won’t create loads of spare capacity for contingency - DfT/Treasury/consultants will say ‘this is more efficient so we can cut a load of resource out’ and everyone’s contingency will already be doing something elsewhere.
Is interoperability economic practicable with computerised trains? Just asking Alstom to bodge their shonky software even more, and add in more fault modes.
And if it isn’t possible to make backward compatible improvements then you have just fossilised your railway.

 

[YorkRailFan]

We also need to avoid situations like the TPE Mk5s. No more micro fleets.

I agree, but the DFT hasn't learnt from the Nova 3s as they ordered those tri-mode CAF vehicles for LNER which will be a micro-fleet.

 

[Harvey B]

I'd let the metro areas run their own services (Liverpool, Manchester, West Yorkshire, Tyneside) Scottish services to Intercity (or even Scotrail) and any residual services combined back into TPE.

Metro areas. So who runs Leeds - Harrogate - York, Leeds - Skipton (Morecambe/Carlisle), Manchester - Clitheroe, Manchester - Chester. All run well outside the Metro area.

What about handing regional franchises such as Northern to interregional bodies such as Transport for The North? That way the franchises don't have to be split up

 

[Manutd1999]

What about handing regional franchises such as Northern to interregional bodies such as Transport for The North? That way the franchises don't have to be split up

That could be another good approach. One national InterCity brand, then a series of devolved operators for the local and regional services:

Northern (maybe with Tyne and Wear separated)
Western
Central (West and East Mids)
South-East
Scotrail
TfW

Some services could then be further devolved to local authorities (e.g. Merseyrail, TfL, maybe self-contained lines like Manchester-Glossop).

 

[Bletchleyite]

Some services could then be further devolved to local authorities (e.g. Merseyrail, TfL, maybe self-contained lines like Manchester-Glossop).

I'd not get too hung up about Glossop and Rose Hill as they're not entirely unlikely to end up as trams before too long.

More complex is Atherton because it tends to carry through services from a long way outside Greater Manchester.

 

[Manutd1999]

I'd not get too hung up about Glossop and Rose Hill as they're not entirely unlikely to end up as trams before too long.

I was just using that as an example of the type of service which could be devolved relatively easily. Anything which interacts significantly with other services would be operated by the "regional" operators (Northern etc.).

 

[Harvey B]

That could be another good approach. One national InterCity brand, then a series of devolved operators for the local and regional services:

Northern (maybe with Tyne and Wear separated)
Western
Central (West and East Mids)
South-East
Scotrail
TfW

Some services could then be further devolved to local authorities (e.g. Merseyrail, TfL, maybe self-contained lines like Manchester-Glossop).

This could probably work as well as allowing some of the Present Operators to keep their present Branding (I.E Logos and Liveries) on their fleet

 

[Class450/4DES]

What about TPE?

Oh yeah. Either own brand or apart of Regional & InterCity.

 

[A0wen]

I personally, without any professional judgement whatsoever, would like to see Euston to Glasgow services taken over by Scotrail. I think having a more “Scottish” feel to these services like the sleeper has, would be a great brand for the railway and might attract new tourist custom.

Utter nonsense - it would be of little relevance to pretty much any passenger apart from SNP blow-hards who would be saying it was "their" train.

The current shambolic state of rolling stock ordering and allocation is more down to fragmented nature of the industry than the ownership of the rolling stock. A "guiding mind" taking a long term view of requirements on, at least, a England basis would be able to make decisions on procurement and re-deployment on a far more holistic basis than the farcical situations we've seen in recent years where a change of ownership means the extinction of a brand new fleet in favour of another brand new fleet (707s for 701s on SWR), units being withdrawn and then having nowhere to go because the numbers in the bid made new stock more attractive (379s for 745s on GA), a famine of orders followed by feasts followed by famines again, etc.

That's a bit wide of the mark - the 707s have been easily re-deployed elsewhere and the 701s were ordered to achieve two things, improve timings and standardise the SWR fleet by replacing the 707s, 455s and 456s. And it was the DfT which mandated the removal of the 707s, not the TOC. Again on GA, the 745s have meant standardisation across their fleet - the Electrostars, as with the Desiros they had, were only a small part of their fleet in any case, so were 'non standard' against their much larger fleet of ex BR EMUs e.g. 315, 317, 321.

The problem you have is not all rolling stock needs replacing at the same time - and if you try to keep things "standard" as you would refer to it, you're effectively blocking any progress because technology moves on. It's not like the 1950s where the technology used in Southern EMUs was basically the same as the old Southern Railway used 20 years earlier.

To me this could be a big gain.

We also need to avoid situations like the TPE Mk5s. No more micro fleets. Commonality and interoperatabilty of rolling stock needs to form part of all future procurement requirements, even if this results in higher unit cost. It gives both short term benefits as well as longer term ones, and the current situations where you have lots of small fleets that all require training & maintenance, and cannot be easily redeployed to cover either short term needs or longer term changes is not good use of money. Thinking back to the recent past class 14x and 15x could all work in multple providing the lowest maximum speed was observed. The Southern Region had a similar concept as well.

Again - why this push for "standardisation" where it really isn't necessary ? Examples, the Pendolinos cannot work with other stock, however these are 9/11 car long distance express units, does it matter that they cannot be hooked up to a class 350 ? The infrastructure on the railways is such you couldn't run Pendolinos in multiple in any case, so they fact they aren't "common" really doesn't matter. Same with the 777s ordered for Merseyrail - it's an entirely self-contained metro network. Those units aren't going to suddenly be cascaded to Manchester or Newcastle, they won't even be cascaded to the south-east where 750v third rail is more common (apart from, perhaps, the Isle of Wight in around 2064), so again, why does the fact these aren't "standard" actually matter ?

 

[mike57]

Common pools are great as long as your service is one of the fat controllers favourites, and not bottom of priorities expendable when things get tight.
Also it won’t create loads of spare capacity for contingency - DfT/Treasury/consultants will say ‘this is more efficient so we can cut a load of resource out’ and everyone’s contingency will already be doing something elsewhere.
Is interoperability economic practicable with computerised trains? Just asking Alstom to bodge their shonky software even more, and add in more fault modes.
And if it isn’t possible to make backward compatible improvements then you have just fossilised your railway.

These are other rail issues, yes all part of the bigger picture, but just because one bit is broken isn't a reason to not try and move towards a less fragmented system. TPE with their recent problems are good example of what happens when you have a lot of different types of rolling stock, all of which requires specific training, it adds to costs and reduces efficency and ultimately the passengers suffer.

If a rolling stock supplier are unable to provide what is specified, or when they do it doesn't work then they are out of the reckoning for future contracts until they can demonstrate that they are in a position to deliver a reliable system.

Other industries manage interoperability of systems, in my industry we have certain standard protocols and I can buy hardware from a number of suppliers and be reasonably sure it will all work together, and some of this is safety critical. If it doesn't work, or takes a lot 'fixes' to get it to work then that supplier will not be considered for future projects. It does require standards to be set and enforced, and that requires a national passenger rail operator, even if there are brands within that operation. Drivers and other safety critical staff for passenger services should all work for the national operator.

In terms of rolling stock once you have a national standard for operation and control, with for example standardised HMI layouts and control then 'traction knowledge' comes down to understanding the dynamic characteristics, and particular issues surrounding the various flavours, diesel, electric, bi mode etc. Once a driver had been driving for a reasonable time the ideal situation would be that they would be able to drive any current passenger stock after a short familiarisation for each variant. The old SR idea that everything can MU with everything was the right idea, and should be the goal.

In terms of funding DfT/Treasury need to set service targets and allocate funding. Senior manager bonuses with the rail insustry are linked to those service targets,

The current DfT/Treasury/ToC triangle is not working, the 'GBR' operation needs to be arms length, and bearing in mind the investment cycles are long on the railways, continual tweaking and interfering needs stop, set a service level, and long term targets then only intervene if those in control fail.

Then start to address other issues, ticketing for example, which just seems to be get ever more complex.

And remember that large parts of the system are subsidised by taxpayers, I, in common with a lot of tax payers who are not at the extremes of the political spectrum have no issue with subsidies even for things that I dont use, I realise that it is part of sensible national strategy, but what I do take issue with is the large sums of money which just seem to be sucked in with no service improvement, or where in spite of subsidies the service is still dire due to bad decisions.

This is what I would like to happen:

All passenger operations except OAs to brought under the control of a national operator, a son of BR if you like. Currently we have a number of operations, Northern, LNER, TPE and SE, under direct control, as other franchises expire/fail bring them in. Within the national operation have 'brands' as others have suggested, Inter City, Regional Railways and various Metro services. Because all passenger drivers and guards (except OA) work for the national undertaking who also control the rolling stock in times of disruption there is more flexibility.

Freight remains as is, as I assume there are no direct subsidies, so it is competing with other modes

Network Rail should continue to deliver infrastructure, with a funded plan to bring skills in house, and reduce the dependence on sub contractors, which seem to be one of the issues that cause cost overruns. For example get a core team for electification in place and then deliver a steady flow of electrification, with a goal of eventually covering all inter city routes, then moving on to the busier regional routes.

Leave the current OA operators alone and still allow fresh applications. OAs are always going to be niche, but potentially fill gaps or develop markets.

Ticketing is national, no 'ToC' specific tickets, no ticket acceptance issues during disruption. If during normal service you want to allow people to use slower/specific services at a cheaper fare do that with advance tickets. OAs can offer advance tickets on their services at whatever rate they feel gives them a commercial return.

The problem with this approach is that to really show benefits its going to take more than one political cycle, probably 3 or 4, and that is always the stumbling block, coupled with politicians who want to be seen to be 'doing something'

Again - why this push for "standardisation" where it really isn't necessary ? Examples, the Pendolinos cannot work with other stock, however these are 9/11 car long distance express units, does it matter that they cannot be hooked up to a class 350 ? The infrastructure on the railways is such you couldn't run Pendolinos in multiple in any case, so they fact they aren't "common" really doesn't matter. Same with the 777s ordered for Merseyrail - it's an entirely self-contained metro network. Those units aren't going to suddenly be cascaded to Manchester or Newcastle, they won't even be cascaded to the south-east where 750v third rail is more common (apart from, perhaps, the Isle of Wight in around 2064), so again, why does the fact these aren't "standard" actually matter ?

Its not just about be able to work in multiple, its about driver knowledge, maintenance, and economy of scale. And as situations change todays Never becomes tomorrows 'If only'. A standardised consistent national fleet can only bring benefits, some of which may not be apparent until the need arises

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Utter nonsense

Note "without professional judgement" - daydreaming still permitted I assume!

 

[A0wen]

Its not just about be able to work in multiple, its about driver knowledge, maintenance, and economy of scale. And as situations change todays Never becomes tomorrows 'If only'. A standardised consistent national fleet can only bring benefits, some of which may not be apparent until the need arises

But does it matter that a WCML driver (who's passed out on Pendos) can't drive the equivalent Inter City unit on the GWML for example ? The likelihood of them ever needing to drive one is vanishingly small.

It's a bit like the endless debates on here about why unit 'x' hasn't been cleared for piece of track 'y' - because if the chances of it ever being used on there are nearly zero, then why waste the time and energy.

On the economies of scale, the art is not having small pockets of certain fleets - so I'd argue things like the Pendolinos, Voyagers, Meridians among others though "non standard" by your definition are fine, because they are contained within a set of routes and the fleets are large enough to attract those economies of scale.

The Desiros which were on the GEML were, perhaps, a better example of where standardisation could have been beneficial, because that line never took any other Siemens units and you ended up with GA having a mix of half a dozen different EMU types, though they've managed to streamline that down to the Aventras and Stadler FLIRTs. Do I think that means Aventras should be the "default" choice for everywhere else though ? No - because other lines have different requirements and having Siemens units on TL and GN isn't a problem, nor is having CAF units with Northern.

 

[Mark J]

Bring back Network SouthEast! They had a much better brand than British Rail back in the day. NSE was good, InterCity was mostly good but BR was just the bits in the regions which didn't work.

Bring back Regional Railways with its 'hand me down' rolling stock too!

 

[A0wen]

Bring back Network SouthEast! They had a much better brand than British Rail back in the day. NSE was good,

A *very* slective memory there. Yes NSE repainted stations and trains so they looked a bit brighter and did some advertising, but many NSE lines were run down operated with decrepit rolling stock and poor reliability - think lines like the Gospel Oak - Barking, Euston DC lines or the Marylebone suburban lines.

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Longer term, I would have one national operator, run as a state-owned 'arms length' company. It would have three brands but would share a common driver/rolling stock/maintenance pool:

Does this include nationalising open access operators and freight?

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Utter nonsense - it would be of little relevance to pretty much any passenger apart from SNP blow-hards who would be saying it was "their" train.

Completely agree. Would be nothing but a vanity project for SNP.