Why not.... nationalise the railways?
 

As fares go up by more than inflation yet again there is a (for once) very balanced discussion article on the BBC website about rail nationalisation.

Why not.... nationalise the railways?

Irrelevant really as we don't have a left leaning major political party any longer, but a fun discussion nonetheless.

Re-nationalising the railways is the worst thing that could happen, unless strict controls were put in place to severely limit the power of the unions and the political parties.

This country's finances are in their current parlous state in large part thanks the vast wastage within nationalised industries, that both political parties have been responsible for, since the end of WW2 :mad:

I think a good thing to be discussing would be whether MPs, councillors and civil servants should be held liable in civil court for squandering taxpayers money finanicing their own idealogical pipe dreams :mad:

Its not commonly known but the privatisation of railways was in response to an EU directive.....

Hey, great news; property prices are apparently going up so we can stop all this productivity nonsense and rely on that instead! We can feel rich again for no reason knowing how well it's done the country so far!

Network Rail appears to be another very cosy relationship between government and some shrewd Directors...

Of course it is, they weren't going to appoint people who have the best interests of the rail travelling public at heart were they :nono:

How does the cost of say a 50 mile daily commute to Paris compare with a similar UK journey to London?

dl

Fair point, I don't see why Tony Blair and his cronies shoulden't be held accountable for what they did to this place..

A lot more interesting and going to get more debate than railways IMHO.

I say yes they should be held libel for their decisions, might make them think a lot more

Richard

The Parisian journey will likely be a hell of a lot cheaper - and hugely subsidised by the French tax payer.

I personally am all for the UK tax payer under writing public transport and spreading the cost of commuting from my pocket to society as a whole.

In fact, given that 700 million annual journeys are made by commuters to London and there is less than that cumulatively across the rest of the UK it may actually be a case that Londoners are subsidising the rest of the country.

As a city worker I would happily have the railways nationalised and given reasonable local budgets based on usage - but be prepared for a huge drop in investment outside of London and for the city boys to receive benefits-in-kind by way of much cheaper season tickets.

Country is basically broke as it is.!???

When the railways were nationalised they were run pretty efficiently and the fares were significantly cheaper.

Les

Somebody has to pay for our above inflation payrise every year.

Thanks. :thumb:

Got to agree Les, but then I'm an old lefty according to most on here. There is no earthly reason why a nationalised indusrty should be less well run than a privatised one, but it seems to be folklore that nationalised = badly run.

In my world there is no way the utility companies would be in private hands, that was a very stupid thing to do and will come back to haunt us big style eventually!

Sounds like a good idea to me, post up a thread :thumb:

Not strictly true Les ;)

Yes fares were cheaper, but they were massively subsidised from government coffers. The people in charge were political lackeys, who often had no clue how to run a business.
There are countless documented cases of upper management members actively blocking, and often deliberately sabotaging any initiative that might actually improve the ability of the network to both provide customer service and make money :Cuckoo

And as for HS2, we actually had a high speed main line, built practically to the continental loading gauge, right up through the middle of the country. But it was deemed surplus to requirement, closed down and sold off :mad:

For decades, under both major parties, the railways (and in fact industry in general) were the whipping boys of a new political class who saw actually working for a living as something to be sneered at, looked down upon and eradicated :(

Well CPD, I was saying what I saw in those days. Yes you are right about the cost of subsidising the fares but overall that did make it possible for so many more people to be able to use rail. These days the profit requirement of professionals who run BR make fares so expensive that I just could not afford to use rail transport. I feel that the easier use of rail was more profitable for this country as a whole. Some of the rail charges these days are just "pie in the sky" as far as I can see.

Les

The other major subsidy, historically, for the passenger service was of course freight movement, which is also the actual reason for the network existing in the first place. Unfortunately under the franchise system currently in place this is no longer the case.

But is it not true to say that the amount of subsidy, even in "real terms" is now far greater than it was under nationalisation?

Are you referring to steam trains Les;)

I think al subsidy should be removed from the railway.

i have no idea why any body would want to pay more tax so that somebody else gets cheap rail travel!

If you live outside a city / big town, trains are almost completely useless for work. Take away all subsidy from it, if it goes belly up then so be it.

To make the roads empty for my sprint to work :thumb:

If you missed seeing the steam trains you really have lost out badly.

They were an impressive sight and if you stood looking interested by the engine when it was stopped at a platform at say Waterloo, you were likely to get invited onto the footplate by the driver. That was a real experience,especially when they opened the door into the firebox. Its hard to imagine the heat from that!

Happy days :)

Les

I've had a few footplate rides on various heritage railways, even with the firebox doors shut, the heat in the cab is tremendous :eek:

I can't begin to imagine what it was like actually firing something like a Stanier pacific, shovelling 9-10 tons of coal in that heat, on a Euston-Glasgow turn :notworthy

Les,

Funnily enough I used to live next to a railway when I was little and do remember standing alongside the track to watch the last steam train running on our line.

I always like to see the steamers when I'm down in the Dartmouth area as well.

Chip

Earth to Les,

Did you actually commute in the 60s or 70s? BR's service was truly appalling with random wildcat strikes, trains cancelled for no reason and overcrowding on a level akin to battery farming.

On the plus side, we could at least leap from the moving train as it drew into the platform.

Privatisation has resulted in higher fares but the level of service has been greatly improved. There's no need to see the years of nationalisation through rose-tinted spectacles, it was an awful, union-dominated time which I have no wish to return to.

Following the Modernisation plan of the 1950's (which basically just swapped steam engines for diesel) the level of investment in BR went steadily downhill. By the 1980's, most of the stock staggering around was designed in the 1950s, and was on its last legs, having been designed to only last about twenty years.

The major engineering project of the 1980s was the elctrification of the East Coast Main Line, and this was done on the cheep, which is why tue wires always fall down in anything more than a gentle breeze. The Tories further reduced subsidies to try to prove that high levels of subsidies wouldn't be needee under privatisation. All that happened was that a massive backlog of necessary investment in infrastructure and rolling stock was put back by 10 years, and still hasn't fully caught up.

Privatisation has helped with investment, but has also introduced a whole world of burocracy that must cost millions. If we could somehow get rid of that, then the railways can only improve further.

It's still a nice feeling, signalling the old steamers. If you leave the windows open the whole signal box fills with steam as it passes. :cool:

I took a couple of videos a while back, but unfortunately they were a bit crap when I looked back at them.

CHEAP!?!