Benefits of nationalisation

[Buttsy]

The EU requirement which caused the move to privatisation was the requirement to separate the track from the trains for accounting purposes (at least), hence it is probable that the other European railways did this as an internal measure and set up an asset register. If BR had not been privatised, it is likely that BR would have had to set up an asset register. I agree that BR were not squeaky clean as far as the track was concerned, but Railtrack was always likely to panic more when somethin went wrong.

Also, please remember that what is expected now should not be compared to the past as things were done differently there, it's like comparing apples to pears. For example, seat belts - not compulsory until the early 80s, now a requirement on all vehicles and fines if you don't wear them. I agree that the railways now are much safer, but that's not to say they were unsafe in the 80s.

 

[tbtc]

please remember that what is expected now should not be compared to the past as things were done differently there, it's like comparing apples to pears. For example, seat belts - not compulsory until the early 80s, now a requirement on all vehicles and fines if you don't wear them. I agree that the railways now are much safer, but that's not to say they were unsafe in the 80s.

True, but there are other differences that get forgotten about, like the fact that one reason for higher costs on the modern railway (apart from perceived inefficiencies etc) is the much higher cost of operating in this litigious world - even if we nationalised the railways we'd be faced with the much higher costs of insurance/ preventing accidents/ safety legislation/ compensating passengers/ rising construction costs, that kind of thing.

 

[NSEFAN]

The EU requirement which caused the move to privatisation was the requirement to separate the track from the trains for accounting purposes (at least), hence it is probable that the other European railways did this as an internal measure and set up an asset register. If BR had not been privatised, it is likely that BR would have had to set up an asset register. I agree that BR were not squeaky clean as far as the track was concerned, but Railtrack was always likely to panic more when somethin went wrong.

Also, please remember that what is expected now should not be compared to the past as things were done differently there, it's like comparing apples to pears. For example, seat belts - not compulsory until the early 80s, now a requirement on all vehicles and fines if you don't wear them. I agree that the railways now are much safer, but that's not to say they were unsafe in the 80s.

I'd be surprised that the EU had much to do with privatisation. What happened to BR was politically popular at the time, as other industries were also broken up and sold off. I understand that the EU rules require seperate accounting for infrastructure and train companies, but that's about it. There's nothing expressly banning full public operation of the trains.

I would also be careful with the "it's always been done that way" argument. The railways have historically been a reactive industry; they are bad at guessing where fatal mistakes will occur but have been very good at learning from them. I suspect that it would have taken several accidents in the style of Hatfield to force BR to move away from depending solely on local knowledge to actually logging information properly. Of course this can only ever be speculation, but the same thing happened with other safety systems and features we now consider to be extremely important (AWS etc).

 

[Buttsy]

I'd be surprised that the EU had much to do with privatisation. What happened to BR was politically popular at the time, as other industries were also broken up and sold off. I understand that the EU rules require seperate accounting for infrastructure and train companies, but that's about it. There's nothing expressly banning full public operation of the trains.

I would also be careful with the "it's always been done that way" argument. The railways have historically been a reactive industry; they are bad at guessing where fatal mistakes will occur but have been very good at learning from them. I suspect that it would have taken several accidents in the style of Hatfield to force BR to move away from depending solely on local knowledge to actually logging information properly. Of course this can only ever be speculation, but the same thing happened with other safety systems and features we now consider to be extremely important (AWS etc).

What I was referring to with regard to the EU was that the accountancy change required by them was used as an argument for the removal of vertical integration and was a justification for privatisation.

I concur that 'it's always been done this way' should not be the ongoing approach and I would not have expected BR to remain as it was in the early 90s. The changes since the early 80s show that it was a slowly evolving industry. Unless anyone has access to a different universe where the Tories didn't win the 1992 election, we'll never know what would have happened to BR...

I have a preference to see the railways under arms-length state control as BR was, however, as that doesn't seem possible at the present time, I would be much happier with the situation if the railways were run as one company as there are economies of scale to be had with larger industries and therefore the required subsidy from the government is likely to reduce.

 

[cjmillsnun]

Yet another post bashing train drivers pay.

With good reason. My job is safety critical. If I screw up I could end up in court on manslaughter charges, a mistake by someone in my position killed an entire family and lead to the biggest corporate health and safety fine ever at the time (£15m in 2005). A more serious mistake could take out a street. So in that way I have a similar responsibility to the general public that a train driver does.

I earn less than half of £50k and I can survive in the south east with a comfortable lifestyle.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

According to Phillip Hammond it wasn't: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110519/debtext/110519-0002.htm



Also this parliamentary report extract from http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01224.pdf



I'm no fan of privatization but I believe the issues raised in the above quotes do need to be addressed when discussing BR/Railtrack.

Not all of them were strictly true.

Yes certainly there were signalling systems that were life expired, WCML being the main example, however BR had wanted to invest in total route modernisation on the west coast route, but was prevented from doing so because privatisation was imminent.

Condition of assets under BR certainly wasn't a factor in Potters Bar. That was purely down to contractor negligence.

Hatfield was again down to contractor and railtrack negligence. 3 times the rail was scheduled to be replaced, and 3 times it wasn't done. In the meantime there was no TSR put on that section of track, despite it's replacement being a priority 1. Under BR a local crew would've known about the problem, a TSR would've been placed on the section of track, which would've been replaced. Or (more likely) it would've been ground in time, which would've dealt with the RCF before it became too far gone.

Ladbroke Grove on the infrastructure side was down to poor sighting of SN109. Mainly because of the OHLE going up for HEX. Lets remember who was in charge of the infrastructure at that time.... Oh yes... Railtrack. The signalling there was far from life expired, in fact it was an IECC. On the other side, it was poor driver training. Procedures had slipped since the BR days.

So in that respect I can rebut certainly the last quote, except for this interesting sentence..

Keen to protect its profit in order to attract investors to its expansion programme, Railtrack put the squeeze on maintenance costs

A company with no idea of the state of its assets putting the squeeze on maintenance. That is negligence.