If British Rail still existed..

[mattvince]

In the case of places like Lincolnshire - it's probably only fair that the passenger service is low - there's Lincoln, and not a lot else. And where would you propose these freight trains go? There isn't any space on the East Coast, with the ever-increasing numbers of high-speed passenger services, and the only other routes from Immingham to the Midlands involve running either via Mansfield or Sheffield - both of which have issues of capability, as well as being longer (resulting in higher fuel bills, TAC charges, vehicle mileage, crewing issues, etc). As a point of historical note - British Rail closed the Lincoln Avoiding Line in 1982.

The operative phrase was "subject to a business case". Business Cases are only ever accepted if the amount of money out exceeds the amount of money in - and the investors get their money back. If the Treasury is willing to lend money (on a commercial basis) to the railway companies, then so be it, but it would be subject to the Treasury (like any other bank) getting its money back over the agreed lifespan - the same as a mortgage, car-finance deal, or any other lending. Shareholders would have to dip their collective hands into their pockets (possibly by the company issuing more shares), but it would be on the understanding that they would recieve a fair deal back in the form of dividends. Otherwise there is no point in the shareholders buying the shares in the first place, and the company might as well rename itself the Inland Revenue...

If local or national Government wished for the operator to provide more services, then there should still be the option for subsidy, subject to contractual terms being met, and at a level which reflects the marginal cost of providing the extra services.

[rich20166]

i think BR would have stuck with high maintanance on the older locomotives. One thing is for sure though, we wouldnt have any class 20's on the main line. They just would'nt sit down with the introduction of the class 58s but the class 60s came along and really pushed them off the scene. Luckily DRS decided to do what BR didnt want to do and refirbish these ultra reliable machines and prove that a well looked after machine will run and run and run

[jbilton]

Hi Matt
Some interesting points there, and I can't argue against them.
Its the way things are, and as you posted before...there's no going back.
But don't expect me to agree its better, its not....its much worse.
Although I will note ,you appear to swing from caring about the environment, to not, because alternatives would disrupt the profitable high speed services.
However what about this scenario.
You have a Railway........where the more successful services offset the cost of the less successfully services.
Where the trains are owned and operated by the same company.
Everything is integrated, freight trains are scheduled to run at night so they don't get in the way of passenger trains..........oh whats that called....a Nationalised Railway.
Hmm let me think of a name for it.....oh I know... how about British Rail.
Sorry but no one is ever going to change my mind, unless I start to see the evidence.
I love the words 'Business Case'....its real management talk...it usually means "We know what we are doing is wrong, we know what will happen you won't like, but by wrapping it up in this complicated document, its more difficult to see, and on paper it looks like a good deal"
A good plan doesn't need selling, everyone can just see its a good idea.
Like having a fully integrated Railway, who's only business is to carry passengers and goods for the good of all and the country.
Cheers
Jon

Ps I know it was BR who closed the Lincoln avoiding line, there were plenty of protests from forward thinking people at the time.
But it was the early days of Thatchers Conservative government, and she wanted to be able to lower Taxation, and fund her private war on the unions, and the working people of the UK.

[mattvince]

Although I will note ,you appear to swing from caring about the environment, to not, because alternatives would disrupt the profitable high speed services.

But it is caring about the environment - if running more HSTs means fewer short-haul flights being made between London and Leeds or Newcastle, for instance. Lincoln does need something to be done about it - whether that means rebuilding the Avoiding Line, or perhaps a major pedestrianisation of Lincoln (with footbridges over the railway), is up to the local authority, Network Rail and the DfT. Like it or not, but avoiding running 60mph freights on the two-track East Coast is something which is a necessary evil. That still only deals with the north/south flows - the east/west flows out of Immingham would be forced to run through Worksop and Gainsborough (Central) - with that single-track section handily rationalised by BR.

You have a Railway........where the more successful services offset the cost of the less successfully services.
Where the trains are owned and operated by the same company.
Everything is integrated, freight trains are scheduled to run at night so they don't get in the way of passenger trains..........oh whats that called....a Nationalised Railway.
Hmm let me think of a name for it.....oh I know... how about British Rail.

Who said that railway has to be publicly-owned to achieve that? It was done before 1948, it was done before 1923 - when the Railway Clearing House allowed the system to operate as a network. And freight trains cannot run exclusively at night - otherwise what time would there be for maintaining the tracks - Mondays at 08:00? Nor in the age of Just-In-Time delivery can the railway's customers be expected to wait for their freight train to arrive at the time the railway chooses. And with the long-distance nature of freight - a train leaving Scotland at 23:00 could arrive in London right in the middle of the morning peak.

I love the words 'Business Case'....its real management talk...it usually means "We know what we are doing is wrong, we know what will happen you won't like, but by wrapping it up in this complicated document, its more difficult to see, and on paper it looks like a good deal"
A good plan doesn't need selling, everyone can just see its a good idea.

Can they? How do you convince Her Majesty's Treasury that it's a good idea just because you say it is? How do you argue that your idea is better than someone else's idea, without being able to put some figures to it? The whole purpose of a business case is to get some cold, hard numbers on which a decision over supply of funding can be made. What you believe a business case to be sounds more like management incompetance.

Like having a fully integrated Railway, who's only business is to carry passengers and goods for the good of all and the country.

Then surely that should include all buses, trucks, shipping, aircraft? What about all private motor cars? And who decides what is 'for the good of the country'? "Soyuz nerushimiy respublik svobodnykh..."

[thenudehamster]

So under BR we had, in various turns, a fleet of steam locomotives scrapped after barely ten percent of their lifespans in order to replace them with a fleet of untried, untested and unsuccessful diesels for all the wrong reasons; we had a simple, cheap, single railcar setup (the Pacer? National bus copy) turned into an expensive and unpopular DMU because BR insisted it had to be run in multiple - then used most of them as singles; we spent an absolute fortune developing a tilting train that was pushed into service before it was perfected, sold the technology to Italy, then bought it back under privatisation; allowed (encouraged, even) Trade Unions to effectively dictate railway and roads policy as regards expenditure - and you want to renationalise?

For ever, the 'workers' have regarded ANY naionalised industry as a bottomless pit of money, and held the country to ransom in order to achieve their selfish aims, knowing that the government could never force a nationalised industry into bankruptcy.

Nationalisation happend fro reasons of political dogma after the government ran the railways into the ground during two wars, then refused to pay the bills.
Politicians should NEVER be allowed to run ANY business - they don't have the knowledge, the capability or the incentive. Every decision is made for political reasons, not for social or economic ones.
Naitonalisation is and always has been a financial failure.

Just my four penn'orth


BarryH - thenudehamster

[MuzTrem]

But don't expect me to agree its better, its not....its much worse.

Well my personal experience is quite the opposite. Have you ever been to London Marylebone? The nationalised railway which you so love wanted to close it in the 1980s because there wasn't enough traffic...it's now so busy that Chiltern Railways are having to add extra platforms. Privatisation is the best thing that ever happened to the Chiltern line.
Just last weekend, I went to Loughborugh by Midland Mainline. The trains were clean, comfortable, and punctual in both directions. I've also made numerous trips by GNER, and would wholeheartedly reccomend them.
If these three companies can get it right, there's no reason why the others can't. And if they don't, they'll lose their franchise...all the more incentive to do better.

For ever, the 'workers' have regarded ANY naionalised industry as a bottomless pit of money, and held the country to ransom in order to achieve their selfish aims, knowing that the government could never force a nationalised industry into bankruptcy.

Nationalisation happend fro reasons of political dogma after the government ran the railways into the ground during two wars, then refused to pay the bills.
Politicians should NEVER be allowed to run ANY business - they don't have the knowledge, the capability or the incentive. Every decision is made for political reasons, not for social or economic ones.
Naitonalisation is and always has been a financial failure.

Well said Barry. Exactly the sort of common sense that Thatcher restored to the British government. Without her, Britain would now be be buried in debt and bureaucracy...and yet some people think she should burn in hell...

[jbilton]

Hi
Well as I posted....and we've had previous threads before....there's little point in discussing, as a Nationalised won't come back.
But your both wrong on all counts.
Barry's skipping through 40 years of history...and just picking a few failures.
To answer the steam engine debate, they were too costly to run, and nobody wanted to clean them.....ask any real railway worker of the time.
The diesel failures were really they allowed private companies to rip them off, and even deliberately gave orders to companies to keep jobs.
Generally they got it right though IMO.
By the early nineties NSE was showing just how good BR could be....and traffic was already steadily rising.Which goes on to answer Murray's question.
However in todays railway, there's no problem if you don't wish to leave the mainline....but try going somewhere else.
We need to send delegates to Manchester tomorrow, and basically its impossible. Best they can offer is about 4 hours from Grantham....which is a 45 minute drive.
In BR days it would have taken about 2 and half hours....train leaving at 10AM.
Cheers
Jon

[allypally]

You can say Thatcher is brilliant to all the people whose jobs were lost, and whose places of residence were reduced to crime ridden hell holes when all the industry closed down.

[thenudehamster]

Much the same as everyone does, Jon, I picked points to make my argument. The steam engines, perhaps, should not have been built, but once you'd made the investment, it makes sense to at least get a useful amount of work out of it. What the BTC should have done, of course, was invested much more into electrification and ignored new steam and much of the diesels anyway. Maybe wait a few years until diesel technology was proven (though the USA had already proven it), but electricity was the way to go.

Oh - and can't your delegates go Lincoln - Nottingham - Crewe -Manchester? That's the logical way to me? Not super fast, I know, but it ought to be feasible.

As for the NSE situation, yes, you're right - but it was the beginning of privatisation; split a nationalised behemoth into separate trading entities and force them into competition; it's amazing how efficient they suddenly become. British Airways is another example, as was British Steel. Nationalised, they were just another tax-swallowing financial black hole, privatised, they are profitable. Slimmer in terms of the number of employees, maybe, but a damned sight more efficient.


And Thatcher didn't close down industries, ally. What she did was put into place a legislative and economic scenario where companies were able to slim down their workforces in order to become efficient and competitive with other countries. Towns and cities didn't turn into 'crime-ridden hellholes' because of those decisions; they were already most of the way there before Thatcher ever came on the scene. It was the free-thinking, no-responsibility 'loony left' who gave everyone rights and took away responsiblity, from the sixties onwards, who created this scenario. Children were no longer taught respect for anyone or anything, and they grew into adults who taught their kids even less - and when they were caught being criminal, the criminal justice system had its hands tied. The criminals had rights, but society and their victims didn't. Crime is rampant these days because we as a society put the groundwork in place for it to be that way. It's the culmination of fifty years of erosion of responsibility, not of one single politician or political party.

[mattvince]

The railway system, particularly the timetables, hasn't changed that much as regards levels of service since 1993 - the Passenger Service Requirement in all Mk1 franchises has seen this status quo. Whilst Sundays are heavily disrupted with engineering work (due both to more restrictive HMRI rules and a greater workload), the first/last trains are pretty much similar. Therefore comparing 1970s timetables with the present is not a comparison of private vs public, but a sign of the reduction in services under BR - often to pay for the next inflation-busting wage hike.

NSE was getting things right - but could have done so much more had it had the ability to borrow money privately. As it was, in 1995 Sir George Young had to go cap-in-hand to HM-T to buy a mere forty Networkers - something which cost the West Coast its chance to eliminate the Mk2 rakes. NSE's sucess can also be attributed to Chris Green's management style, and that Bob Reid was willing to give him a free hand. Combine it with Ministers for Transport with just enough time to put the family photograph on the desk and find a pen that worked before being reshuffled, and you have a railway able to do the job. We now have a railway with Civil Servants poking and prodding and generally playing choo-choos, and managers who are too afraid to get on and do things, lest they incur the wrath of the Men from the Ministry - moreover cannot do things, because in a few years time the job could be given to a rival group and investors could lose their money. Scrapping the Minister and Ministry would allow the railway to do the job - but for as long as they are the owner, they will also want to play choo-choos.

[jbilton]

Hi
I don't know much about the above...but I believe the first train out of Lincoln on a Sunday is around 11am tomorrow.
Then there's about another five....and thats it.
Generally speaking you can get to Newark....but Central trains are not timed to connect with GNER services.
My wife, and some of my colleagues travel by train, and I'm often driving to Newark and Grantham to pickup or drop off.
Me personally only ever travel on business, and always by car.
I haven't travelled on a train in fifteen years (came close the other month)
Cheers
Jon

Ps
I can fully sympathise with ministers putting their noses in, and political meddling, due to votes and these days money lead. It happens in all government departments.....but I disagree that unions are a bad influence, we are often the ones who tell the truth.

[mattvince]

CT are never informed by GNER of their timing changes, hence no changes ever happen - particularly when GNER are retimed due to engineering. Comparing the present Sunday service with the Winter 1994 NRT* reveals a point worth noting. In 1994, there were four trains each way between Newark Northgate and Lincoln Central, and nothing to Nottingham or Doncaster. Skip forward to 2006, there are now four trains a day to Doncaster (including one from and two going through to Leeds), earlier Newark NG services (1049 compared to 1433) and increased in number, and six services between Lincoln and Nottingham each way. How can that be 'gotten worse'? In mathematical terms, the 2006 Sunday rail service in Lincoln is, on Nottingham and Doncaster routes, infinitely better than in 1994.

* Since the Winter 1994 timetable ran September-May, it is applicable for this argument.

In the 1960s, the NUR blocked the access of non-railway lorries to Freightliner terminals - thus Beeching's most positive gift to rail during his leadership was scuppered, something which railfreight has been reeling from ever since. Then there is Bob Crow - who by rights should probably have been culled by DEFRA, showing symptoms of Foot-in-Mouth disease...

[jbilton]

Hi Matt
I'm sure your correct.
I would however be more interested in the timetables for 1964, 1974 and 1984.
By 1994 Lincoln had suffered its major cuts.
Loss of its avoiding line
Loss of its second station
Loss of its direct service to London.
I also wouldn't advocate the return of the all powerful Union days either...but there should be a balance.
Remember the Unions started when the railways were in private hands...to protect the workers from unscrupulous operating practises.
Driven on for making more profit for shareholders, without a care for workers or even their fare paying passengers.
Couldn't happen now?.....I think it did at Paddington.
Cheers
Jon

[Samd22]

Regarding Lincoln, I remember plans from a few years back (or possibly longer) to 'sink' the Lincoln railway line underground to avoid disruption on the streets of the city. I presume this would have been a cut and cover job?

As for nationalisation, it seems like the fairy tale holy grail type outcome. But like Matt says, private railways can work very well if they're given the scope to suceed. I beleive the German railways for example are touching on a form of privatisation?

I'm sure they have hundreds of private operators using the DB tracks at least. If you want an example of why a nationalised state railway doesn't always work then look at SNCF. So often used by our ill informed media as a shining example of what we need in the UK.

Truthfully though with out the TGV network it would be a very poor operator. I'm sure I read somewhere that 95% of their income comes from the TGV network, the classic network itself is relatively under-used.

[jbilton]

Hi Sam
Surely that case of SNCF actually supports the idea of Nationalised railways...the profitable services pay to subsidise the less profitable?
Although personally, I thought the TGV had cost the French tax payers a lot of money...so I'm not sure on the so called profit.
Cheers
Jon