My GBR reorganisation idea

[Sad Sprinter]

If there's one great thing about being autistic is that your brain can come up with the most intricate ideas based on your special interest without warning...

OK - instead of bringing back BR sectorisation or going down the boring "Intercity, Regional Express, Local" whatever, how about this:

1. Regional Overgrounds

Manchester Overground, Liverpool Overground, Birmingham Overground etc. Run by the local government. You could create as many as you conceivably like, London showed how you can have an efficient, well-branded inner-suburban rail system with short trains. You could create a Sheffield Overground (Dore to Doncaster) or a Plymouth Overground (Gunnislake to Ivybridge) You get the idea..

2. Regional integration

With whats left of Northern and LNWR - simply merge them with the intercity operator of the main trunk route the regional services radiate from. Like EMR. Speaking of which - prune EMR and so everything east of Sheffield and Nottingham is merged with the East Coast operator. You should now have: Overground, Great Western, West Coast, Midland, East Coast, Cross Country

3. Number the trains

I don't particularly like train numbering, but I think it could work in this context. If you hollow out regional operators so the suburban services become Overgrounds, what you're left with is a disparate number of regional routes that are part outer-suburban, part long distance. Manchester Airport to Barrow - I'm looking at you. Numbering them avoids an awkward branding, and could encrouage people to make more long-distance journeys by rail. For instance, a London to Grange-Over-Sands journey could end up being WC1 (London to Glasgow) + WC13 for example. Something like Parsons Street to Scarborough could be GW9+XC1+EC10 - codes that are easy to remember and could hopefully encourage more rail journeys.

Anyway, you get the idea. Oh and split Cross Country into two main routes: XC1 - Plymouth to Newcastle and XC2 Manchester to Bournemouth. I've got further ideas, inevitably, but I'll leave it there for now.

 

[6Gman]

If there's one great thing about being autistic is that your brain can come up with the most intricate ideas based on your special interest without warning...

2. Regional integration

With whats left of Northern and LNWR - simply merge them with the intercity operator of the main trunk route the regional services radiate from. Like EMR. Speaking of which - prune EMR and so everything east of Sheffield and Nottingham is merged with the East Coast operator. You should now have: Overground, Great Western, West Coast, Midland, East Coast, Cross Country

1. To what purpose?
2. Taking Crewe/Stafford to London as an example how would your idea go down with the people who currently use the (significantly cheaper) LNWR services? I see these trains frequently and the two services have very different demographic profiles.

 

[rmHawk765]

2. Taking Crewe/Stafford to London as an example how would your idea go down with the people who currently use the (significantly cheaper) LNWR services? I see these trains frequently and the two services have very different demographic profiles.

I agree, intercity and regional are two separate entities nonetheless and should be kept as so.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

1. To what purpose?
2. Taking Crewe/Stafford to London as an example how would your idea go down with the people who currently use the (significantly cheaper) LNWR services? I see these trains frequently and the two services have very different demographic profiles.

1. We need better suburban rail outside of London.

2. Why would that change? In America Amtrak is the only operator between Washington DC and Boston but you can choose between the more expensive Acela Express or the cheaper Northeast Regional

 

[vuzzeho]

2. Why would that change? In America Amtrak is the only operator between Washington DC and Boston but you can choose between the more expensive Acela Express or the cheaper Northeast Regional

Interesting... so there's a distinction between service types? Like... (Acela) Express vs (Northeast) Regional? So a high speed Intercity service vs a slower, stopping Regional service?

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Interesting... so there's a distinction between service types? Like... (Acela) Express vs (Northeast) Regional? So a high speed Intercity service vs a slower, stopping Regional service?

Well you could still have “West Coast Intercity”.

 

[6Gman]

1. We need better suburban rail outside of London.

How does amalgamating LNWR with Avanti achieve that?

 

[birchesgreen]

What is the difference between this idea for a Liverpool Overground and Merseyrail as it is already? Same with Birmingham and WMR?

 

[Sad Sprinter]

How does amalgamating LNWR with Avanti achieve that?

My point was to make a convincing regional based network over the more popular sector based network

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jul 2025 ==

What is the difference between this idea for a Liverpool Overground and Merseyrail as it is already? Same with Birmingham and WMR?

I’d keep Merseyrail, I’d bin WMR. Besides some parts of WMR like the Hereford to wherever service can be rolled into the man WC operation.

 

[The Planner]

My point was to make a convincing regional based network over the more popular sector based network

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jul 2025 ==



I’d keep Merseyrail, I’d bin WMR. Besides some parts of WMR like the Hereford to wherever service can be rolled into the man WC operation.

How do you deal with interworking? Or are you expecting some sort of split of rolling stock? How would the Euston Birmingham trains work that stop at all stations between Coventry and International for example.

 

[Magdalia]

If there's one great thing about being autistic is that your brain can come up with the most intricate ideas based on your special interest without warning...

To what purpose?

I have been involved in lots of reorganisations, though not on the railway. Lots of them were more trouble than they were worth. Lots of them were attempts to correct the unforeseen consequences of the previous reorganisation. So I start from a position of scepticism about the benefits of reorganisations.

The important thing to remember is that organisational structure is not an end in itself, it is a means to the end of delivering the organisation's objectives.

In big organisations like Great British Railways those objectives can be conflicting, for example:

• reuniting the track with the trains
• reducing government subsidy
• helping to deliver the government's growth objective
• providing transport for people living in 1.5 million new homes

Reorganisations also tend to go in cycles: one reorganisation gives priority to objective A, which is to the detriment of objective B, so eventually there is another reorganisation that gives priority to objective B, which is to the detriment of objective A. And so it goes on.

My point was to make a convincing regional based network over the more popular sector based network

A regional organisation is likely to be more suitable than business sectors for reuniting the tracks with the trains.

intercity and regional are two separate entities nonetheless and should be kept as so.

On the other hand there is a good argument for saying that the sector based organisation is better for driving revenue up and costs down.

We need better suburban rail outside of London.

This is where the railway helps to deliver the economic growth objective, and transport for 1.5 million new homes. The key part here is fitting the Great British Railways reorganisation with local government reorganisation, where every part of England will eventually get their own mayor. A good example of what can be done with suburban rail is Exeter, an example where the railway could do much better is Southampton. It is something that I think should be high priority here in Cambridge.

After more than 10 years of BR sectors, and 30 years of privatisation, I do think that there is a lot to be gained from going back to a regionally based organisation, especially for delivering the economic growth objective, and transport for 1.5 million new homes. But, given the state of the UK public finances, the reducing government subsidy objective could still take priority over all of the others.

 

[Manutd1999]

1. Regional Overgrounds

Manchester Overground, Liverpool Overground, Birmingham Overground etc. Run by the local government. You could create as many as you conceivably like, London showed how you can have an efficient, well-branded inner-suburban rail system with short trains. You could create a Sheffield Overground (Dore to Doncaster) or a Plymouth Overground (Gunnislake to Ivybridge) You get the idea..

Totally agree with this - it's the best way to focus on place-based outcomes and integrate with other transport options. I'm not sure it should be completely run by local government as there are too many cases where logical service patterns don't align with political boundaries. Maybe GBR could keep overall control and employ the drivers etc, but with local mayors/councils having responsibility for running stations within their area and taking full revenue risk (i.e. paying GRB a fee to run the service, then keeping the revenue).

2. Regional integration

With whats left of Northern and LNWR - simply merge them with the intercity operator of the main trunk route the regional services radiate from. Like EMR. Speaking of which - prune EMR and so everything east of Sheffield and Nottingham is merged with the East Coast operator. You should now have: Overground, Great Western, West Coast, Midland, East Coast, Cross Country

I don't see why the regional integration is required? Why not have 1x operator (GBR) which pools all the resources/cost but uses separate sub-brands where it makes sense (e.g. Intercity, Regional + more focused brands to promote certain services, such as "Northern Powerhouse Rail")?

3. Number the trains

I don't particularly like train numbering, but I think it could work in this context. If you hollow out regional operators so the suburban services become Overgrounds, what you're left with is a disparate number of regional routes that are part outer-suburban, part long distance. Manchester Airport to Barrow - I'm looking at you. Numbering them avoids an awkward branding, and could encrouage people to make more long-distance journeys by rail. For instance, a London to Grange-Over-Sands journey could end up being WC1 (London to Glasgow) + WC13 for example. Something like Parsons Street to Scarborough could be GW9+XC1+EC10 - codes that are easy to remember and could hopefully encourage more rail journeys.

This is a bit of a distraction IMO and doesn't bring any meaningful benefit to passengers. The vast majority of people use their phones/apps anyway, a number won't make a difference. If anything, route numbers/names could be better as part of the local suburban networks.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

But, given the state of the UK public finances, the reducing government subsidy objective could still take priority over all of the others.

So because of this, you think sector based organisation is more likely?

 

[Magdalia]

So because of this, you think sector based organisation is more likely?

I would need to be a fly on the wall in the Treasury to know the answer to that!

 

[tbtc]

Apologies for any apparent negativity here, I've thought some of these myself in the past though, I don't mean to sound down

1. Nice in theory, especially if starting with a blank sheet of paper, but incredibly messy in reality.

Firstly, there are a lot of places like Glossop that sit over the PTE/ Mayoral/ Assembly boundary, which would create a few problems

You'd have some real microfleets (e.g. there are lots of trains in/ through South Yorkshire, but almost all of them cross into other areas, so a locally run railway operation would only deal with the hourly-or-so Sheffield to Adwick stopper - would it be worth having a separate fleet/ engineering staff etc for just that?)

You also run the risk of situations where one Mayor wants to find services up to the station before the boundary, creating something like we've seen between West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester/ Greater Manchester and Merseyside in the past, fragmentation. Funding the electrification to Hazel Grove rather than all the way into Buxton.

There's a big thread in the buses section where people are moaning about 'lost' links just beyond the boundaries of places like London, because nobody has an incentive to fund something outside of their area.

2. Nice again, but GBR is going to mean the end of TOCs as we know it anyway

3. Great plan, but the problem would be with any non-standard service. I like the way that NSE/ WY Metro/ Virgin tried to give lines/services an identity (even having numbers in the front of NSE trains), I think those kind of maps improve public understanding significantly more. The Overground changes are great in theory, although some of the names seem to be more about culture wars than practicalities

But how would you deal with oddities, trains that skipped a station or had an additional stop? Or some interworkings like Gloucester to Stansted? Would you cut through trains to make a map/ numbering simpler?

Needs more detail but I like the idea. It's a lot simpler on buses where a number seventeen will stop at the same stops each time, doesn't skip parts of the route to maintain the driver's route card in case of engineering works etc

split Cross Country into two main routes: XC1 - Plymouth to Newcastle and XC2 Manchester to Bournemouth

This is by far my favorite suggestion though, and a shame that it's not being discussed by others.

I think that XC is too big and messy for anyone to feel ownership of/ try to change. You can't tinker with the timings slightly because that'd throw everything out of sync, that kind of thing. Can't introduce a handful of non standard trains because of diagrams like Bournemouth - Manchester - Bristol.

If we focused on a half hourly service on those two basic corridors (no interworking), with a fifteen minute connection at New Street in each direction, it would be much more likely that at least one of them would be improved. The cross pollination of delays would reduce. Staffing and depots could be simpler.

Princess showed that passenger numbers went up significantly when you gave people simple 'reliable' services, even if the railway lost the once-a-year Liverpool to Brighton passengers

Otherwise, if we keep trying to link everywhere with everywhere, Cross Country will continue to stagnate, be too cumbersome for anyone to tackle, lose out as other areas get investment

Something radical needs doing, reducing it to just two routes is

 

[43096]

Interesting... so there's a distinction between service types? Like... (Acela) Express vs (Northeast) Regional? So a high speed Intercity service vs a slower, stopping Regional service?

Albeit it is a 125mph regional service - the Swiss would define it as an IR service.

 

[vuzzeho]

So because of this, you think sector based organisation is more likely?

I believe it's been said before (officially) that GBR will have regional organisation. I think they should probably go off more of a sector based organisation, but I guess we'll find out later this year, when the Railways Bill is introduced to Parliament. That said, looking at what they've been doing (the whole South Eastern Railway thing) - seems like they're going more region-based.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I believe it's been said before (officially) that GBR will have regional organisation. I think they should probably go off more of a sector based organisation, but I guess we'll find out later this year, when the Railways Bill is introduced to Parliament. That said, looking at what they've been doing (the whole South Eastern Railway thing) - seems like they're going more region-based.

You can't really fully integrate track and train if you do it on a sector-based approach. Of course the underlying organisation isn't how it has to be presented to the public. After all the vast majority of tickets are presently sold from an entirely separate company (Trainline) either direct or via the TOC contracted sites.

 

[vuzzeho]

You can't really fully integrate track and train if you do it on a sector-based approach. Of course the underlying organisation isn't how it has to be presented to the public.

I agree. I think/hope it'll be regional-based operationally, but with sector brands - so for example, Anglia region (today c2c and GA) with a commuter/regional sub brand(s) and an IC one. I guess that gets messy with CrossCountry but I don't know enough about how that operates to suggest changes.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I agree. I think/hope it'll be regional-based operationally, but with sector brands - so for example, Anglia region (today c2c and GA) with a commuter/regional sub brand(s) and an IC one. I guess that gets messy with CrossCountry but I don't know enough about how that operates to suggest changes.

I would personally like to see no regional branding of long distance services at all, with the InterCity brand being used, but that has no impact on how it's organised under the surface.

Regional brands may still make sense because they create buy-in by way of a more local feel. However the overall product really does need to be homogenised. And there should be a single GBR sales and information site, with Delay Repay claims integrated into it (plus, as with air travel, whatever third party agencies decide to continue).

 

[aron2smith]

1. Regional Overgrounds

Manchester Overground, Liverpool Overground, Birmingham Overground etc. Run by the local government. You could create as many as you conceivably like, London showed how you can have an efficient, well-branded inner-suburban rail system with short trains. You could create a Sheffield Overground (Dore to Doncaster) or a Plymouth Overground (Gunnislake to Ivybridge) You get the idea..

Manchester planning this already under the Bee Network. Liverpool already is like this under Merseyrail but I think they should take over the Northern services to places like Preston and Wigan Wallgate/ North Western, extend Ellesmere Port to Warrington Bank Quay etc.
Birmingham - better to keep the West Midlands brand and Network intact. I agree overall and hopefully rail devolution is taken up widely under the new strategic authorities.

I would like some form of Network Southeast to come back for London and surrounding areas. Not so far fetched when TFL wants to take over the Moorgate to Welwyn and Stevenage services and especially with something like Project Oval.

Plymouth I would argue be merged with all local regional services out of Exeter to create a Devon Overground. Only services from Waterloo and Paddington would be called Intercity. Seems realistic in Bristol too.

Intercity as one brand covering Great Eastern (Norwich only), East Coast, Midland, West Coast, Crosscountry, Transpennine, Great Western, South Western and HS1 makes a lot of sense too. Crosscountry in particular should be great for many long journeys that avoid London, but standards can't improve whilst it remains separate to everything else.

2. Regional integration

With whats left of Northern and LNWR - simply merge them with the intercity operator of the main trunk route the regional services radiate from. Like EMR. Speaking of which - prune EMR and so everything east of Sheffield and Nottingham is merged with the East Coast operator. You should now have: Overground, Great Western, West Coast, Midland, East Coast, Cross Country

I generally like the idea, some of the franchises like EMR and Northern as they are, feel very much like they got whatever no one else wanted! I think the idea is we don't want to break up current routes too much, unless a clear benefit like better reliability can be achieved. Northern especially has some very complex service patterns. Probably could break it into 4 or 5 distinct networks on its own.

3. Number the trains

I don't particularly like train numbering, but I think it could work in this context. If you hollow out regional operators so the suburban services become Overgrounds, what you're left with is a disparate number of regional routes that are part outer-suburban, part long distance. Manchester Airport to Barrow - I'm looking at you. Numbering them avoids an awkward branding, and could encrouage people to make more long-distance journeys by rail. For instance, a London to Grange-Over-Sands journey could end up being WC1 (London to Glasgow) + WC13 for example. Something like Parsons Street to Scarborough could be GW9+XC1+EC10 - codes that are easy to remember and could hopefully encourage more rail journeys.

Anyway, you get the idea. Oh and split Cross Country into two main routes: XC1 - Plymouth to Newcastle and XC2 Manchester to Bournemouth. I've got further ideas, inevitably, but I'll leave it there for now.

Interesting, I would prefer names either of the lines or trains myself. Maybe codes could be something in the background for staff/ enthusiasts.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jul 2025 ==

I agree. I think/hope it'll be regional-based operationally, but with sector brands - so for example, Anglia region (today c2c and GA) with a commuter/regional sub brand(s) and an IC one. I guess that gets messy with CrossCountry but I don't know enough about how that operates to suggest changes.

Crosscountry would simply be Intercity, it provides almost all of the long rail journeys without going into London. In a way it joins all the other main lines together quite nicely.

Also with Anglia, we need King's Lynn services from Great Northern added to this too.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jul 2025 ==

1. Nice in theory, especially if starting with a blank sheet of paper, but incredibly messy in reality.

Firstly, there are a lot of places like Glossop that sit over the PTE/ Mayoral/ Assembly boundary, which would create a few problems

You also run the risk of situations where one Mayor wants to find services up to the station before the boundary, creating something like we've seen between West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester/ Greater Manchester and Merseyside in the past, fragmentation. Funding the electrification to Hazel Grove rather than all the way into Buxton.

Given railways are fixed on their routes, why should authority boundaries get in the way? Bee Network for instance plans to take the Rochdale-Southport service as one of its lines. It makes no sense to cut in half. They committed to taking over the Glossop line and all the buses there are Bee Network too. Similar London Overground and Underground don't arbitrarily stop at some line we created 60 years ago. And if anything TFL wants to expand, they are keen to run the stopping services to Welwyn Garden City and Stevenage. Why would it cut the service in half at Hadley Wood or Crews Hill? That would be stupid.

Maybe the political boundaries should try to match the transport and built up areas rather than the other way round.

Only one place have I seen political boundaries get in the way of a railway. Headbolt Lane on Merseyrail has a cheap looking black barrier across the tracks, it looks ridiculous. Felt like I was at the Berlin Wall! Ormskirk is similarly bizarre.

I wonder if the borders in Ireland finished off many of their railways back in the day too.

 

[thomalex]

I would personally like to see no regional branding of long distance services at all, with the InterCity brand being used, but that has no impact on how it's organised under the surface.

Regional brands may still make sense because they create buy-in by way of a more local feel. However the overall product really does need to be homogenised. And there should be a single GBR sales and information site, with Delay Repay claims integrated into it (plus, as with air travel, whatever third party agencies decide to continue).

I'm with you on this. It should be possible to have a brand with a design system for regional services which gives local trains a distinct appearance for different regions while being recognisable as a single network. For InterCitys this should be the same if I'm travelling to Bristol or to Leeds.

 

[Farnborough]

I believe it's been said before (officially) that GBR will have regional organisation. I think they should probably go off more of a sector based organisation, but I guess we'll find out later this year, when the Railways Bill is introduced to Parliament. That said, looking at what they've been doing (the whole South Eastern Railway thing) - seems like they're going more region-based.

For infrastructure, regional makes sense
For train operations, sectoral makes sense

Infrastructure does not need to have the same structure as the train operation...

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Apologies for any apparent negativity here, I've thought some of these myself in the past though, I don't mean to sound down

1. Nice in theory, especially if starting with a blank sheet of paper, but incredibly messy in reality.

Firstly, there are a lot of places like Glossop that sit over the PTE/ Mayoral/ Assembly boundary, which would create a few problems

You'd have some real microfleets (e.g. there are lots of trains in/ through South Yorkshire, but almost all of them cross into other areas, so a locally run railway operation would only deal with the hourly-or-so Sheffield to Adwick stopper - would it be worth having a separate fleet/ engineering staff etc for just that?)

You also run the risk of situations where one Mayor wants to find services up to the station before the boundary, creating something like we've seen between West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester/ Greater Manchester and Merseyside in the past, fragmentation. Funding the electrification to Hazel Grove rather than all the way into Buxton.

There's a big thread in the buses section where people are moaning about 'lost' links just beyond the boundaries of places like London, because nobody has an incentive to fund something outside of their area.

2. Nice again, but GBR is going to mean the end of TOCs as we know it anyway

3. Great plan, but the problem would be with any non-standard service. I like the way that NSE/ WY Metro/ Virgin tried to give lines/services an identity (even having numbers in the front of NSE trains), I think those kind of maps improve public understanding significantly more. The Overground changes are great in theory, although some of the names seem to be more about culture wars than practicalities

But how would you deal with oddities, trains that skipped a station or had an additional stop? Or some interworkings like Gloucester to Stansted? Would you cut through trains to make a map/ numbering simpler?

Needs more detail but I like the idea. It's a lot simpler on buses where a number seventeen will stop at the same stops each time, doesn't skip parts of the route to maintain the driver's route card in case of engineering works etc



This is by far my favorite suggestion though, and a shame that it's not being discussed by others.

I think that XC is too big and messy for anyone to feel ownership of/ try to change. You can't tinker with the timings slightly because that'd throw everything out of sync, that kind of thing. Can't introduce a handful of non standard trains because of diagrams like Bournemouth - Manchester - Bristol.

If we focused on a half hourly service on those two basic corridors (no interworking), with a fifteen minute connection at New Street in each direction, it would be much more likely that at least one of them would be improved. The cross pollination of delays would reduce. Staffing and depots could be simpler.

Princess showed that passenger numbers went up significantly when you gave people simple 'reliable' services, even if the railway lost the once-a-year Liverpool to Brighton passengers

Otherwise, if we keep trying to link everywhere with everywhere, Cross Country will continue to stagnate, be too cumbersome for anyone to tackle, lose out as other areas get investment

Something radical needs doing, reducing it to just two routes is

I don't think your post is negative.

1. I take your point, it is of course a similar situation in London for lines that stretch out the GLA boundary. I think that some kind of benefit needs to outweigh the negative. I think that having a high-frequency metro-rail corridor in Sheffield say, is probably a betterment to the entire country even if it means having to electrify lines outside of a Mayoral boundary.

2. I see your point, and maybe more standard stopping patterns would be the answer especially if they are much simpler to understand (although enthusiasts would miss the variety of services).

The idea wouldn't be to number everything for the sake of numbering, I gather some posters on here who advocate service numbering want to do it just because. The idea would be, if you had regional brands, with suburban services given over to locally run Overgrounds, you'd be left with Intercity services from London and neither-here-nor-there regional services. The idea would be to instead use another branding like "regional", to psychologically minimise the distinction between London intercity services and regional services, hence a numbering system like "West Coast 1 + West Coast 7" reduce the unfamiliarity between two distinct services.

If there are for instance, a service from Town A to Town B every half an hour, and one service is semi-fast whilst the other is stopping, I suppose you could have a letter designation like "f" for "fast" and "s" for stopping.

 

[Farnborough]

In big organisations like Great British Railways those objectives can be conflicting, for example:

• reuniting the track with the trains

I know Brexit and all that, but doesn't Directive 2012/34/EU as modified, and as replaced by Directive 2012/34/EU, require full SEPERATION of track and trains?

 

[Bertie the bus]

3. Number the trains

I don't particularly like train numbering, but I think it could work in this context. If you hollow out regional operators so the suburban services become Overgrounds, what you're left with is a disparate number of regional routes that are part outer-suburban, part long distance. Manchester Airport to Barrow - I'm looking at you. Numbering them avoids an awkward branding, and could encrouage people to make more long-distance journeys by rail. For instance, a London to Grange-Over-Sands journey could end up being WC1 (London to Glasgow) + WC13 for example. Something like Parsons Street to Scarborough could be GW9+XC1+EC10 - codes that are easy to remember and could hopefully encourage more rail journeys.

Anyway, you get the idea. Oh and split Cross Country into two main routes: XC1 - Plymouth to Newcastle and XC2 Manchester to Bournemouth. I've got further ideas, inevitably, but I'll leave it there for now.

I'm intrigued by this random idea. It is so out there it almost doesn't even belong in the fantasy section.

How would printing GW9+XC1+EC10 on a ticket encourage more rail journeys? I just can't get my head around it.

 

[Farnborough]

How would printing GW9+XC1+EC10 on a ticket encourage more rail journeys? I just can't get my head around it.

Like Pokémon: Gotta Catch 'Em All

Think of the merchandising opportunities...

 

[JamesT]

I know Brexit and all that, but doesn't Directive 2012/34/EU as modified, and as replaced by Directive 2012/34/EU, require full SEPERATION of track and trains?

It requires separate accounting of track and trains, other countries have the same organisation run both.
But as you say, we've Brexited, so we're entirely at liberty to decide not to apply that bit of EU legislation any more. If we're doing that, the bill setting up GBR would be where you'd do that.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

could

I'm intrigued by this random idea. It is so out there it almost doesn't even belong in the fantasy section.

How would printing GW9+XC1+EC10 on a ticket encourage more rail journeys? I just can't get my head around it.

Because it’s not a timetable with seemingly haphazard and random services, they’re set-in-stone routes that are easy to find and navigate outside of London and the south east

 

[Bertie the bus]

People don't look at timetables these days. They put their origin, destination and time of travel in an app and it tells them which trains to catch. Virgin did something similar to your idea with numbering routes but that only related to the printed timetable, e.g. London - Birmingham timetable was VW1 or something like that but they only used the route on printed timetables. They didn't print it on the ticket or display it on the PIS.

I really have no idea what a set in stone route is either. Surely the fact there are rails there and trains run on them is a fairly clear indication of it not being something haphazard or random.