Re-nationalisation and model railways.

[Neil]

We live in politically interesting times, there's a realistic prospect that our railway system could be re-nationalised. Here is definitely not the place to discuss the rights and wrongs of such action. However it does raise some interesting questions if we consider the implications for our hobby.

 

The most obvious repercussion would be re-branding/repainting to indicate our collective ownership. I'd imagine that this would be done piecemeal as franchises come to their contracted end. But what livery?

 

There's a belief that the rtr manufacturers like subjects that offer a number of liveries, a relatively easy and cheap way of broadening out their range and getting the maximum value out of the tooling for a particular model. I could see that in the short term public ownership liveries will be good news for Bachmann, Hornby, Heljan and Dapol, everything currently running on the rails would get one more livery, but what happens if, like rail blue, the design studios come up with a long term classic that lasts for twenty years or more?

 

 

[Baby Deltic]

We won't ever see good old BR with the double arrow symbol, that's for sure.

[APOLLO]

I so miss these

 

 

Brit15

[Reorte]

Even if they were re-nationalised I think that there's a good chance that we'd still have a variety of liveries, probably along the lines of different ones for the different current franchises. Similar-ish things were happening in the later days of BR with a variety of different ones (Network SE, Regional Railways, Inter-City etc.), so there would still be a good variety to choose from.

 

I'd have thought that different liveries for the same model would be a nuisance, resulting in smaller runs of the same loco or unit than would otherwise be the case. Have the same livery and everyone who wants that model will buy it, so a larger number of potential customers. Or do many like collecting as many different liveries as they can?

[SRman]

At least it would end the problems of licensing liveries and logos for model production ... wouldn't it?

[SRman]

I so miss these

 

 

Brit15

Remember the line from The Two Ronnies?

 

"British Rail has announced that the price of its coffee is to go up by 5p a slice."

[Rivercider]

I would not expect any livery to last anywhere near twenty years now.

The  pace of life and change in general has speeded up since BR.

And then there would be the continual tinkering/meddling/micro managing that would result in ongoing re-organisation change and re-branding. 

 

cheers

[DavidB-AU]

We won't ever see good old BR with the double arrow symbol, that's for sure.

We may not see BR but the double arrow symbol is likely to stay. It is a recognisable transport sign and still used today on stations and maps. It is registered trademark in the name of the Secretary of State for Transport.

 

Cheers

David

[pete_mcfarlane]

I think it will all depend on how the railways are renationalised. None of the Labour party candidates advocating this seem to have given any detail on how they plan to do it, beyond broad statements like 'bring the railways back in to public ownership'. This covers all sorts of possible set-ups, including the current one.

 

I guess it all depends on whether we have a single monolithic state railway, or lots of smaller operators. 

[PhilJ W]

I think it will all depend on how the railways are renationalised. None of the Labour party candidates advocating this seem to have given any detail on how they plan to do it, beyond broad statements like 'bring the railways back in to public ownership'. This covers all sorts of possible set-ups, including the current one.

 

I guess it all depends on whether we have a single monolithic state railway, or lots of smaller operators. 

The only candidate for the Labour leadership who has come out with a promise to re nationalise the railways is Jeremy Colbyn. He has stated that it will not be anything like the old BR but more like the London buses with private companies providing the vehicles and drivers and the 'public operator' collecting fare revenue and setting fares and timetables. The railways are already part nationalised already with Network Rail and the same 'hands off' approach is envisaged.

EDIT Part of the London buses set up is that operators have to paint their vehicles red, this has resulted in even more livery variations not fewer.

[Echo]

Whether it happens in reality or not, it would make an interesting modelling scenario. There is nothing to stop modellers pretending that everything had been renationalised - or that privatisation had not happened at all.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...However it does raise some interesting questions if we consider the implications for our hobby...

 For sure. Mine will change to finding a way to emigrate. I'll leave behind those who want carbon neutral made from 100% recycled material models hopefully to be available once the model railway manufacturing collective have settled the tricky matter of pay differentials between the workers represented by... Flee! Flee!

[Claude_Dreyfus]

With all of this talk of renationalisation, do we actually know when we last had a fully nationalised network? Various business units have been hived off over the years, and we have had highly visible privately operated trains since the mid 80s. What baseline are the politicians working to?

 

In terms of liveries, the late 80s/early 90s had a huge variety...perhaps rivalling today.

[pete_mcfarlane]

The only candidate for the Labour leadership who has come out with a promise to re nationalise the railways is Jeremy Colbyn. 

Andy Burnham has also promised nationalisation (it was in the Grauniad so it must be true). I'm not sure about the other two.

[Horsetan]

The Hammer & Sickle, with a couple of red stars?

[Ravenser]

As far as I'm aware Corbyn hasn't actually explained any detailed mechanism for renationalisation - but then I'm not sure he's spelt out detailed mechanisms for anything - certainly the railway speech was very general in terms. Since the drivers are employed by the TOCs, its difficult to imagine how rail franchising like London bus route franchising would differ substantially from today's situation: London buses are not a nationalised operation, and this is not what would be generally understood by nationalisation 

 

Given some of the other announcements (eg "Ministry of Labour") I suspect that a mandatory reimposition of BR corporate blue across the network would quite possibly be proposed. However The Scottish government has already imposed a mandatory government livery on Scotrail, involving plastering Saltaires over everything , so there would still be two liveries.

 

I don't think Corbyn has yet said anything about freight operations, though railway renationalisation would imply nationalising them as well ( I can't quite believe in a government dedicated to securing public control of the means of production distribution and exchange allowing private freight operators to move coal from reopened state-owned coal mines in S Wales and S. Yorks to state owned power stations). I doubt he's got to a sufficient level of detail to have ideas about railfreight.

 

On a practical note, unless and until we are within 18 months of an election and opinion polls are showing a Corbyn-led Labour party with some kind of realistic possibility of winning it (even with SNP support) , all of this should be taken with a large pinch of salt

 

I suspect some of the announcements currently being made are a bit like the university policy the Libdems had at the 2010 election: it sounds good, it's what your supporters want to hear, and you really don't need to worry about how or whether it would work because you're never going to be able to do it for real anyway.  

 

But re-spraying a 66 in rail blue and applying double arrows is not a terribly difficult job. Even I can do that with confidence

 

However this is very much a case of "come back in 4 years time and see if any of it looks realistic". Labour are out of power until at least 2020.

[phil-b259]

Since the drivers are employed by the TOCs, its difficult to imagine how rail franchising like London bus route franchising would differ substantially from today's situation: London buses are not a nationalised operation, and this is not what would be generally understood by nationalisation 

 

A better parallel would be London Overground. The trains are leased, and operations are let on a concession basis. TfL specify minimum station staffing levels, livery detail, timetables, fares and take on the 'revenue risk'

[woodenhead]

I've heard there are people currently placing brick piles next to the GWML at Swindon in readiness for the rebuilding of the Works in 4 years time.

 

Personally I can see a case for having and London model for the passenger services which is still a halfway house as private firms will still profit from government services and not far removed from what we have now.  That can be achieved through the franchising model, but nationalising the freight side would be a full on takeover from the 1940s - the motive power and stock is owned by the companies (via leasing apart from the 60s), I could see DB sending a lot of locomotives through the tunnel if it thought it was about to be taken over by another State.

 

Equally what happens to the open access operators who receive no subsidy from the government and have no franchise - would they continue as they are or also be taken over?

[Glorious NSE]

The only candidate for the Labour leadership who has come out with a promise to re nationalise the railways is Jeremy Colbyn. He has stated that it will not be anything like the old BR but more like the London buses with private companies providing the vehicles and drivers and the 'public operator' collecting fare revenue and setting fares and timetables. The railways are already part nationalised already with Network Rail and the same 'hands off' approach is envisaged.

EDIT Part of the London buses set up is that operators have to paint their vehicles red, this has resulted in even more livery variations not fewer.

In terms of that description we already have a nationalised railway - just one where the majority of the operations are contracted out.

 

It's certainly arguable whether a concession is better than a franchise or not, but in terms of *passengers* experience I suspect it makes very little difference - the real difference would be how openly the government wants to be seen to be controlling it all. At present on most of the national network we have a situation where the government controls nearly everything but tells everyone that it doesn't meddle and if you have a problem it's down to TOCs...nice and deniable then.

 

In terms of liveries - my cynical head would remind you that BR was absolutely fabulous in picking one livery for everything and never ever changing it....not.

 

Trains didn't have to sit still for long before some clever wotsit would come out with a brand new livery, or a mod to a nice standard livery, or start painting random bits of loco that belonged to their depot to make it look more snazzy...how many versions of Intercity livery on loco's were there? 7? 10? More? And that's on a corporate image that only lasted a decade or so...Railfreight had two (official) ones in that time (plus RfD) - the "Sector" one had six official versions, and every one of them had a myriad of non-standard implementations...so my thoughts that some kind of nationalisation will result in every train in the country being repainted in one shade is sceptical.

 

And given the level of government control, if they do it'll probably be a coat of all over grey undercoat. 

 

 

[Glorious NSE]

That can be achieved through the franchising model, but nationalising the freight side would be a full on takeover from the 1940s - the motive power and stock is owned by the companies (via leasing apart from the 60s), I could see DB sending a lot of locomotives through the tunnel if it thought it was about to be taken over by another State.

I can't see that happening - when the public talk of re-nationalising the railways they are talking about their passenger trains, which they think of as old, late and dirty*. Forgetting that before BR was broken up folk generally thought of their trains being old, late and dirty*...

 

(*Reality may, or may not differ from perception in individual cases...) 

 

If you were looking at it from a political dogma point of view you might (I still doubt any of the folk in the running will) - though i'd have thought there were bigger, more important and more visible fish to fry if you were going to go that route and make that statement - utilities for example.

[Reorte]

Aren't you forgetting BR's universal late-day steam livery of "all-over grime and rust"?

[bike2steam]

There's a belief that the rtr manufacturers like subjects that offer a number of liveries, a relatively easy and cheap way of broadening out their range and getting the maximum value out of the tooling for a particular model. 

 Yeah - you mean like Lima did ?? .

[Neil]

Gentlemen; I've noticed a few posts straying towards the wider political ramifications rather than being tightly focussed on the small scale world of model railways. I know it can be difficult to untangle one from the other but could we bend our wit and wisdom to the task of not straying into that minefield.

 

Meanwhile ....

 

 

 Yeah - you mean like Lima did ?? .

 

Just what I had in mind.

[Bernard Lamb]

At least it would end the problems of licensing liveries and logos for model production ... wouldn't it?

Now if HMRC get hold of that idea and how to exploit it we are all in trouble.

Charge for a licence and charge a fee every time we run the trains.

A lot of modellers will become collectors.

Corbyn Rail does however have a nice ring to it.

I did hear he was saying something about re-opening old coal mines. Read into that what you will.

Bernard

[Horsetan]

....I did hear he was saying something about re-opening old coal mines. Read into that what you will...

 

Yes, he might have trouble recruiting sufficient numbers of indigenous coal miners, in the same way that agriculture has trouble recruiting indigenous workers to toil in the fields...... Still, there's always *kof*migrants*kof* from Europe.....