In the interest of reasoned debate, do you have anything to back that up? Since 2002 Network Rail has nearly halved the delay minutes it caused in a year
www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/653.aspx
Under Railtrack, between 1999-2003 delay minutes caused by infrastructure (Railtrack and NR are liable to weather related delays too) went from 4.9mil to 9.7mil, then in the next five years Network Rail got it down to 3.8mil
www.nao.org.uk/publications/0708/reducing_passenger_rail_delays.aspx
Over the past 5 years the PPM figure, which has been measured the same way throughout those 5 years has increased by around 5%
www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/742.aspx
Despite the shiny beacon that was BR, I remember plenty of absolutely ridiculous delays (around 6hrs for an HST on the Lickey) and Inter-City services were regularly full to bursting with the inadequate air-con not even close to coping (I felt like I was suffocating as a 12 year old in some mk2s to Glasgow). The HSTs were pretty good for BR and helped shift people quickly, but the public purse would not have been able to react to such a sharp rise in patronage (I think in one of the links above it is put at 25% more passenger journeys in a 5 year period) no matter how many mk1s and freight locos were sat idle.
Of course:
Firstly cost:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/trends/current/section3pubtran.pdf
If you go to page 10, Government grants to BR was around £1 billion per year, it climbed slightly in Railtrack days due to the WCML. After 2000, when NR was created it climbed heavily, and is now nearly £5 billion per year.
On page 11, it shows that investment in rollingstock under BR in the early 90s was twice the level it is now.
http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/uploads/docs/250111.pdf P120
Look at the situation since the war, today's government grant is now at twice the level of the 1950s which turned a steam railway into the railway we know now. And in the 50s it was a loan.
On on p121 it shows miles of track replaced, were still only at 1970s levels when the HSTs came into service.
As the network assets are being more intensively unit costs should be coming down, not going up. NR often claims it has removed X from the cost of running the railway, but the reality is, it's still not as efficient as BR or Railtrack.
Under NR, very little new big schemes have taken place, certainly no large scale electrification or the resignalling BR undertook on the West of England main line and midland main line in the 80s, and IECCs in the 90s.
Passengers are also paying a lot more, passenger revenue was 3,663 million in 2002, and over 6,000 million (nearly double what it was) in 2009. Remember this is a period of quadrupling government support!
http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/YEARBOOK0809-v22.pdf P17
Clearly any extra money is coming from government in some way, the private sector in effect is putting no money in overall, which makes a mockery of privatisation.
Next punctuality:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/trends/current/section3pubtran.pdf p13
Punctuality is roughly what it was in 1997 at the dawn of privatisation.
Leaving aside timetabled have been padded out substantially, with many services taking longer than in the 1930s than today, I can provide further information if you want: There was a recent article in railway magazine, the SR in particular has much slower times than in steam days.
But here's one source
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article528218.ece
'Nationalised BR tempted people on to trains by advertising reductions in journey time, but the privatised companies have switched the focus to reliability rather than speed and several have added extra minutes to the timetable to avoid penalties for delays.
Journeys on the Great Western Main Line now take up to 20 minutes longer than in 1980, using the same trains. The fastest journey from London to Edinburgh took just under four hours in the 1990s but now takes ten minutes longer. On some regional routes, journeys were faster when Queen Victoria was on the throne. '
BR punctuality statistics are now archived and are not easily to come by punctuality on the ECML was higher than it is now, and the WCML about the same, before £9bn was spent on it.
The only part of NRs saving grace is more trains are being running now. But nationalised Swiss federal railways regularly achieves 95% on a very intense network with stiff gradients. The ORR have written to NR and said their performance is 'mixed', and many concerns are evident especially on efficiency.
