http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... nalisation

It strikes me as the best way of knowing (phasing it) if we'll ever get away from companies doing the bare minimum while getting massive subsidies.

I think the scary thing about nationalisation, though it could be done easily as each franchise expires, is the worry about long term investment and management.
Low investment and poor management led to the poor services that led to privatisation in the first place.
Having seen how some public bodies are run (eg Doncaster Council, who couldn't organise a booze up in a brewery. Seriously I know people who've worked there), I'd be worried about about it being in government hands.
To me the biggest current issues with the railways are unavoidable, regardless of who's in charge. Old, slow, bendy tracks with no real room to expand capacity where it's needed. Maybe we could lengthen platforms here and there, but there's no way we could have continental double decker trains on commuter route due to low bridges etc. Delays caused by slow trains and high speed trains sharing the same tracks, that can't be avoided either.

Show me some evidence investment and management have been better since privatisation. And that any of that investment wasn't actually just public money funnelled through private companies as subsidies.

Privatisation of the railways was the product of Conservative dogma not practical requirement. Even John Major now admits the privatisation of the railways, in the way it was done, was an utter cockup. It's possible the railways could have been privatised to produce a better service, but the fact is the end product wasn't better service. Just a more crowded, bureaucratic, confusing and expensive one.

Jon

BR was bureaucratic, but well run. Privatization by crudely carving up the network into competition-free franchises was cheap up front but pointless, and only increased subsidies. Maintaining what little competition there is by preventing operators from selling services to each other or pooling any resources makes the result even less efficient. And failing to take a chance on long term franchises makes serious investment impossible to fund. The system that is intended to encourage long term investment is only capable of promoting short term rinsing.

I don't think anybody is proud of UK rail privatization, it's probably better to just expire all the franchises. If privatization has been done better in any other countries (not sure that it has tbh) we can maybe copy whatever plan they used if we want to try again. But our plan was [LIFTED].

The original 1948 nationalisation was the product of a little practical requirement and a lot of Labour dogmatic opportunism. The railways were built by private companies and stolen by the Atlee government.

The network had had little to no investment since the end of WWII and it was utterly knackered. It desperately needed a injection of capital and that money was never going to come from any government of any variety - because the country was skint.

The rolling stock was knackered, the tracks were knackered, the buildings were knackered and the signals were knackered. We either had to sell the railway while there was still something left to sell, or we had to shut it down before people died. Either way, a publicly-owned railway was simply not a viable option. Frankly, I remain to be convinced that it is an option now.

The history you've explained is fair but it's the past, Major's government's privatisation scheme is the present and I'm more interested in the future tbh. The railways are currently privatised and the improvements are that has brought are debatable at best - pretty much everything still is knackered or under-resourced, we've got the most expensive and overcrowded trains in Europe and the government is putting just as much (or as little, as preferences define) money in as it used to, just now some of it is going to shareholders rather than to the railway infrastructure. Network rail (according to press today) is about to be subjected to the biggest fine ever levied (£90m+ according to reports) due to consistent failure to meet targets. How is that better than it was before? They're failing just as badly as the nationalised company did. Surely, this is impossible isn't it? Private enterprise must be better. However Network Rail made an operating profit of over £1 billion last financial year so they're unlikely to care or indeed change. And by the way how does a business that's failing to supply it's customer's needs to an unprecedented degree make £1b a year profit anyway?

This is all much better than it was before, obviously.

Whether nationalisation was right when it happened is a matter of historians. Whether it is right now is a matter for everyone who uses a train. I haven't seem the full proposal to it's hard for me to say whether it is or not, but I do believe anyone claiming rail privatisation was a success for the rail traveller or the public at large is living in cloud cuckoo land.

The problem with it being back in the state is that it was, and will be in the future starved of investment – if I only have £x then as a politician I will spend it on the NHS etc over the railways


What I think is better is a none for profit Company with the government holding a golden share

Cough... East Coast...cough

The east coast was "re-nationalised" whne the franchise failed BUT there was no investmnet done or planned - and so you can run it day to day for a time without needing to invest millions.However I believe that if it had remained in the goverments hands it would have been starved of any investment funds

Your argument is entirely hypothetical; If my aunt had balls etc. We simply don't know whether that would have been the case and never will. Getting back to the point of proposed re- (or possibly re-re-) nationalisation, ideally the proposal for it would include some schedule of future investment - admittedly with the caveat that politicians go back on their promises and shouldn't be taken on trust.

How the railways have been treated in the past is not really a great predictor of how they will be treated in the future. The best we can do is get the Labour party to put their proposal for it on paper in their manifesto and make it patently clear that if they back out on it they'll be politically dead for a generation (ref: Clegg's pledge on student fees). Then if Labour get into government we can see what happens.

The franchises on the line I’m on changes every two years. It’s been a dreadful miss-mash of companies running them, and because there is no obvious longterm return for any real investment, there’s been no investment in new rolling stock - so much so that our MP (The once railways minister Simon Burns) is making noises about this (not that he’d travel in them, he’s happier to go to work in his ministerial car ).

You’ll see trains here that are pretty old, and some will have the remnants of previous liveries on them.

Running trains is an incidental side effect of turning a profit, it seems.

Not really - I can use past precident of how the rail network was starved of funds for decades from the 50's onwards


You have made my point for me

I don't have a problem with trains being old per say, as long as they're still reliable.
GNER did up the carriages on their old 125's, and they were fine for long journeys.

A blogger builds a site about how great the privatised trains are.