E-petition to re nationalise the railways.

[The Stationmaster]

Other countries are still running national systems the knowledge is out there if the will is in place.

And judging by the way some of them run them I wouldn't employ them to manage so much as a chip shop or a miniature railway in a park. In my final years full time in the industry I came into close contact with various aspects of most of the major railways in Western Europe plus a few from further east. With one or two exceptions - mainly where outsiders had come in - they operated with bloated bureaucracies often of a very civil service mentality although there were not infrequently some good commercial ideas. I don't think that anyone country was as good overall as BR if you took things right across the board although you could readily pick out parts from many countries which were well worth respecting for some skills. And almost without exception they all have a well of infrastructure and resources which would make the averageBR senior manager turn green with envy.

 

I know they have moved on but they have also moved on in the same way as us because EU 91/440 has forced the separation of infrastructure management and accounts in order to provide an allegedly level playing field for open access (notwithstanding the French Govt inventing a new way of hindering such an idea every other month). And to give just one minor example of SNCF profligacy both Ian and I worked in London for BR - if we had worked in Paris for SNCF we would have had, virtually rent free, an SNCF flat of quite a high standard in which to live saving our money to spend on our out-of-town weekend houses; nice work if you can get it. And anyone on here who drives trains would have a retirement age of 50 to look forward to on SNCF plus we would all be getting 13 calendar months pay every year because of the 'bonus' month in December.

[Guest Max Stafford]

And if it had been left to BR, there would be no freight at all running on Britain's Railways. There was very much an anti freight ethos at BR in the latter years, so thank your lucky stars for the foreign investment..

 

Dave.

[The Stationmaster]

Aye and other countries national systems are running OUR trains (DB Shenker).

Sorry, bit of politics there. The way I see privatisation is that, under a national system, all the money that comes in from subsidies goet towards running the services. However, a private company has to do the same AND hive off millions in profits for the shareholders at the same time.

 

One of the reasons a number of European mainland railways have come into Britain is to learn - might sound odd but it's true; they want to see how we manage to do more with less and they want to learn more about the environment of operating with a separate infrastructure controller. Oh, and the money's not bad either of course - but that's hardly their fault.

 

The idea of profits for private companies is an interesting one and the original Treasury thinking was that it would be worth subsidising profits because theh introduction of private management would improve efficiency and in the long run would save money - it hasn't quite worked like that of course but that is partly down to political messing about and changes to the structure plus greater involvement of DafT

 

Not to mention, every company has its own managers, personnel, HR, maintainance etc etc and so forth, creating many multiples doing the same thing. Whereas one railway would, in theory have one structure doing it all without repetition.

 

So what is different about that from BR? When BR was split into business sectors in the early 1990s the staff were simply split between the new business based organisations and the more localised sub-divisions of them. No extra jobs were created although there was probably some upward grade drift at the new HQ levels. Any further sub-division simply split things up again and of course once privatisation arrived the whole of the BRB organisation was no longer needed although staff from it went into various newly created bodies and organisations - bit still fewer in number than had been the case in BR days. Nett result being a saving in 'HQ' level posts - and that remains the case (with the possible exception of Network Rail).

[The Stationmaster]

And if it had been left to BR, there would be no freight at all running on Britain's Railways. There was very much an anti freight ethos at BR in the latter years, so thank your lucky stars for the foreign investment..

Dave.

Just to put the record straight on that it wasn't so much BR as the Govt of the day. Although it would no doubt be as much denied now as it was at the time BR priced itself out of a lot of freight traffic (much of which is now back on rail) solely as a result of policy set by Govt. If you give a Govt control it, or its minions, will exercise it entirely for their own reasons, be they 'good' or 'bad'.

[Oldddudders]

And if it had been left to BR, there would be no freight at all running on Britain's Railways. There was very much an anti freight ethos at BR in the latter years, so thank your lucky stars for the foreign investment..

Interesting take there, Dave. Undoubtedly the glamour part of BR - InterCity - which received no subsidy, tended to share its tracks with the main freight arteries, e.g. WCML, ECML, GE etc., so the freight was an unwelcome intruder when high-speed travel was the big selling point. And that is exactly where today things are getting better. Completion of the 4-track on the Trent Valley would never have happened under BR, yet there are now more local passenger services, and freight has somewhere to run out of the way of the Pesky Pendos.

 

In defence of those involved, there was a big and energetic group of freight Businesses at Board HQ, and they did their damnedest to promote and sell the services they could offer. Trainload Freight, Railfreight Distribution and Freightliner all put a lot of energy into their work. Like many other senior BR staff, the chosen method of selling off the industry saw many of the leaders leave in disgust. It was a sad time.

[Guest Max Stafford]

Thanks for the insiders view from the period, lads. I understand that perception and reality don't always square and I based my comments on what I seemed to see in front of me with disappearing freight and parcels traffic. I guess it had as much to do with the collapse of our industrial base at the time also.

 

One story I've heard concerned the Clitheroe-Gunnie Castle Cement flow. Some local insiders suggested that the service's frequent breakdowns on the WCML were due to the suspected deliberate selection of unreliable motive power in an effort to justify the removal of the flow on account of passenger delays. I think Castle did ultimately walk away due to the increasing unreliability. Intercity then had a clear field to run their trains and Infrastructure didn't take a pounding from all those nasty, heavy locos and wagons, especially since 'Black Bob' had also just cynically eradicated steel-making north of the border.

 

That's how it was put to me anyway!

 

Dave.

[Oldddudders]

Intercity then had a clear field to run their trains and Infrastructure didn't take a pounding from all those nasty, heavy locos and wagons

I'm not an engineer, but everything I ever heard about high-speed loco-hauled trains was that the locos knocked seven bells out of the track. 86s were worse than 87s, maybe, but tamping and other regular remedial works were far more necessary once steam had gone and speed increased. Thus I'm not at all sure that freight was the bad boy on track maintenance costs. Provision of pathways would have been another matter, of course, as I said earlier.

[Guest dilbert]

In 1994 the Railway Development Society published inconjunction with Private Eye a satrical book called 'Thomas the Privatised Tank Engine' which has some excellent short stories on the impact of privatisation of the railway system at that time.

 

The RDS position was 'to create a pro-rail pressure group independent of BR management, trade unions, political parties and acting as a consumer organisation representing rail users'.

 

I don't think this e-petition will go very far - renationalising the spaghetti bowl mix of gvt and corporate contracts would be costly and time-consuming.

 

It seems more logical to take up improvements thru an independent group.

 

The RDS is now known as Railfuture --> http://www.railfuture.org.uk (for those who are interested)... dilbert

[chrisf]

One might argue that as the Government funds and micro-manages the railway we already have a form of nationalisation, albeit not the right sort.

 

Chris

[Glorious NSE]

I think that's very arguable Chris...

[trisonic]

 

In defence of those involved, there was a big and energetic group of freight Businesses at Board HQ, and they did their damnedest to promote and sell the services they could offer. Trainload Freight, Railfreight Distribution and Freightliner all put a lot of energy into their work. Like many other senior BR staff, the chosen method of selling off the industry saw many of the leaders leave in disgust. It was a sad time.

 

See, this is one of the things about BR I never understood, Ian - Why was it necessary to have so many divisions pushing Freight? To the average layman it looked like a duplication of effort and resources.

 

Best, Pete.

[John_Hughes]

Just to put the record straight on that it wasn't so much BR as the Govt of the day. Although it would no doubt be as much denied now as it was at the time BR priced itself out of a lot of freight traffic (much of which is now back on rail) solely as a result of policy set by Govt. If you give a Govt control it, or its minions, will exercise it entirely for their own reasons, be they 'good' or 'bad'.

 

Not just a recent phenomenon. I briefly wondered about joining BR back in the early 1960s as part of their Graduate Scheme, and duly went on the 'Take a look' course. Great fun, especially the footplate ride on a Castle between Cardiff and Swansea, but even then the clear management attitude was that the sooner they got rid of whatever the current villain was for whoever you were talking to at the time - freight, branch lines, steam engines, duplicate routes, local passenger trains, you name it - then everything in the garden would be lovely and the railway would make a lot of money.

 

Even in my early 20s I could see that it was all nonsense, of course, so I never joined up. Phew!

[bike2steam]

I'm still tryin' to get my head round the fact that todays railways are private companies not being able to exist without public money, so what's the point of it all .

But I'm sure some smartarse will try to profess he knows what's going on.

[Glorious NSE]

I'm still tryin' to get my head round the fact that todays railways are private companies not being able to exist without public money, so what's the point of it all

 

That's a bit of a generalisation, still being simplistic here but some operators don't get public money, do make a profit and they pay portions of their profit back to the public purse.

 

Some do get publicly funded if they cannot be funded on a for-profit basis...

 

But either way (assuming it's deemed a neccesary thing to keep running such services) then the government needs to pay somebody to do that bit, and that goes the same whether that is done effectively as an arm of the government (BR) or contracting somebody external to run it (as now).

 

The point of paying the money out should be to get the public service that is deemed neccesary, and the arguments over whether you'll get a better/more efficient result from paying a capitalist pig free market company or running a horribly bloated and inefficient government department will no doubt be the same for any government enterprise from now until forever.

 

But I'm sure some smartarse will try to profess he knows what's going on.

 

Not sure anyone would dare to go quite that far...

[Leicester Thumper]

I'm still tryin' to get my head round the fact that todays railways are private companies not being able to exist without public money, so what's the point of it all .

But I'm sure some smartarse will try to profess he knows what's going on.

 

Hear hear...

 

I think we are going to have a conflict of view purely because of the people who work for their current companies.

 

anyway, Interesting insight from Mike and I always value his knowledge

[Chameleon]

Oh, paranoia is endemic on the railway these days. They will NOT allow a set of empties to run early or in front of a passenger train "just in case" it breaks down and causes delay. The signaller will get it in the neck for allowing it to happen and cost the company in all those penalty fees.

 

My earlier point about other countries railways still stands. It is nonsense that state owned and run railways of other countries are allowed to bid for and run our PRIVATISED trains???

Weren't there cases in the early days, of BR subsidiaries being actively blocked from bidding for franchises as that defeated the point of the breaking apart the so called monopoly? Even though they had the experience and know-how to do a good job.

 

Oh and renationalising should, in theory be dead easy. When a franchise is due for renewal, don't. That way there would be no penalty clauses or contracts.

[Glorious NSE]

But that wouldn't renationalise "the railways", it would just renationalise the passenger train operations.

[Colin_McLeod]

But that wouldn't renationalise "the railways", it would just renationalise the passenger train operations.

 

....and add that to the never privatised rail infrastructure operation.

[Glorious NSE]

NR and 'Nationalised TOC' would have to at least be separate financially for legal reasons, but even then it doesn't renationalise 'the railways', you still have open access passenger, freight and charter operators running around for example, protected by law...

[pirouets]

Am I right in thinking another part of the equation is that the stock is now leased rather than owned?

[Horsetan]

You know the forum rules on politics, but for now let's see how it goes.

Maybe there should be an e-petition to propose an end to all these, errm, petitions?

[Glorious NSE]

Possibly - although keeping it simple 'Nationalised TOC' could still continue leasing the same stock at presumably the same (or maybe even better, bulk discounts, usage directly guaranteed by govt?) rates.

[Revolution Mike]

My earlier point about other countries railways still stands. It is nonsense that state owned and run railways of other countries are allowed to bid for and run our PRIVATISED trains???

 

This is often used as a criticism (not just in railway terms) but many areas, but does not really stand up to much scrutiny.

 

How is it nonsense? If a DBS/SNCF/SNCB etc etc can do it better/cheaper* then why does it matter to the UK?

 

On the face of things it might feel warm, safe and fluffy for British companies to run British railways, but in the grand scheme of things why does it actually matter? **

 

If foreign companies (I am far from convinced it matters if they are state owned or not) want to invest in the UK then either Jonny Foreigner is subsidising our railways or taking a profit. If he is taking a profit then he should be considered no different from any other private company seeking a profit (how that profit is then used is irrelevant provided the UK is getting good value for money). We don't complain when British companies want to make profits abroad.

 

I hope the mods won't consider this political, as it is really about global economics rather than politics per se (though inevitably the two may be interlinked).

 

* whatever criteria you want to use....

** the case of whether rolling stock is built in the UK or not is slightly different as apart from direct financial implications it also has massive employment implications

[The Stationmaster]

 

See, this is one of the things about BR I never understood, Ian - Why was it necessary to have so many divisions pushing Freight? To the average layman it looked like a duplication of effort and resources.

 

Best, Pete.

 

But in reality I don't think there were Pete. The only real separation which did lead to a bit of duplication (in BR times that is) was RfD and in any case in business terms it wasn't really competing with any of the divisions of Trainload Freight nor were they competing with each other because each was specialised in traffic terms. The only odd ball back then was Freightliner which in some respects was competing with other parts of the freight business but it was in reality a very minor overlap. But of course once they were privatised they began, a year or two down the road, to seriously compete with each other as they do to this day.

[The Stationmaster]

Am I right in thinking another part of the equation is that the stock is now leased rather than owned?

Some BR passenger stock was leased in later years (I think the first vehicles to be leased were some batches of Mk2 coaching stock?). The reason was simple - it reduced capital expenditure which had some excellent (apparently) accounting benefits. I don't think there's too much wrong with leasing rolling stock or locos as it is now a common practice but the way it is done makes a big difference to the cost. Long term leases are much cheaper than short term leases so if stock was leased long term against, say, a franchise commitment, over 20 years instead of 5 years it would be much cheaper - and that is where the passenger side of the industry misses out.