That aside, let's get this right. The rails are nationalised, the trains are privatised (East Coast?) and in some places you get one company per line, others several. For the same fare you can either get the luxury of standing toe-to-toe on a draughty, leaking nodding donkey, or a seat in a new carriage with air-con, electric points and so on.
To truly work, privatisation has to mean at least two companies running their trains on the same lines (here the choice is Northern or walking) with different fares per train - and let them fight it out. Competition for the passenger's cash. Doesn't happen in my experience though. So to that extent, as a customer, privatisation's failed?
I've noticed that East Coast have recently had a radio advertising campaign, highlighting that their trains have Wifi and offer a good food selection on board (particularly breakfasts). The tone of the adverts is basically 'Next time you take the train, take an East Coast train' (although they don't actually say that specifically!).
Sounds good to me. The trains I usually travel on have either one or the other - Wifi but an over-priced and under-stocked trolley service, or a buffet car (or better!) but no Wifi. So maybe next time I travel on the train, I will go on East Coast, so I can eat well and mess around on Facebook while I travel.
* goes to journey planner *
Oh.
Well, according to this, I can't. It seems that only South West Trains allow travel from Bournemouth to London, so that's the wifi but a dodgy trolley. And it's only First Great Western from Tiverton to London, so that's the buffet car, and I suppose I should take a book with me.
Dodgy acting (if one can act on a Forum) and tounge-in-cheekness aside, that is, in my opinion, what is wrong with the privatised railway we currently have. Not necessarily that there's things available on certain services that aren't available on others, or that the rolling stock in some companies have seen better days than others, and even with the same stock, the different companies treat them differently, but it's the *perceived* competition that the railways have that's the issue.
Personally, I don't think that reviving the 'British Rail' brand for our railways would work; as has been said, the brand didn't necessarily have a strong selling point in its latter years. I also don't think renationalisation would work either. Look at what the DfT are doing with the railways now when it's supposedly a private system.
It does, in my opinion, however, need something to change what is happening, and I think that a franchised option like TfL use would be part of how to get this to work. Rail companies who have less funds because they have less traffic, or have lower fares, or whatever (although I have no experience, to me through this forum, this is how it seems that Northern Rail operate) should be subsidised by those companies who are making more. It should be a national rail system, yes, one that is operated by private companies, but actually it doesn't matter who runs the trains. And it doesn't matter what the different facilities on board different companies' trains are.
The problem has been, as I mentioned before, that the way the railways are perceived by the public - and the TOCs seem not to be helping stem this perception - is that there is a competition between companies. Admittedly, in a few places, the companies do have competitive routes, but I'd say that the vast majority of routes don't have competition between companies. Okay, so, for example, Exeter to London - I could travel either on FGW or SWT. But I travel from Tiverton, so that's FGW. If I lived in Honiton, it'd be SWT. And I'd suggest that most journeys don't necessarily have a choice, or if they do, it's not necessarily a realistic one (for instance, my other main journey from Bournemouth, I could, if I so desired, take XC to Southampton and then Southern to Victoria - that seems the only option I'd have to get to London avoiding SWT, but it's not really practical).
??
