Rail renationalisation- do you support it?

[6Gman]

BR 2 would have its own issues as the staff will all want to be paid the rates of the best TOC, which would wipe out any savings, if there any in the first place as less competition reduces the desire to be efficient.

A very good point. The 3% "saved" by removing shareholder profit could very easily be wiped out by moving to a national system.

(I speak as someone who instinctively supports renationalisation - but not for financial reasons - and worked on both the BR and privatised railway.)

 

[Railsigns]

A very good point. The 3% "saved" by removing shareholder profit could very easily be wiped out by moving to a national system.

The extraction of profit is only a tiny part of what makes privatisation more expensive. Most of the savings from renationalisation will come from reintegrating the industry and removing all the artificial barriers within which drive up costs, not to mention the costly pantomime of franchise competition. Any fool could tell you that breaking a coherent national industry into a hundred separate parts isn't going to make it more efficient but will have the opposite effect.

 

[nw1]

I would say I do support it as I believe railways should be run as a public service rather than a device to gain profit for shareholders... profitable lines might run fine as private entities but running non-profitable lines is always going to have the issue that under a private system one is obliged to put profit first which might lead to the reduction or closure of a socially-vital service. Same goes for any public service which is unprofitable but socially necessary. Even for profitable lines, private companies are always going to use "supply-and-demand" economics to squeeze money out of passengers on busy services... whereas a public service need not be run in that way (though I suspect that a rail service run by a Conservative government would be).

However I will say that the biggest legacy of the sort of "split into ten million parts" privatisation we endured is the large amount of incompatible stock. The old Southern third rail system having incompatible stock on the SWT and Southern areas for instance. Imagine how much more flexible it would have been if the CIGS and VEPs had been replaced by a fleet of compatible replacement stock across the whole Southern Region third-rail network. Ideally something that could have worked in multiple with the 465/466s, as they were the last BR units to be introduced on the Southern. Classes 461-464 (a la 421-424), perhaps?

Though I am a nationalisation supporter, a privatisation that had consisted of the re-formation of the Big Four (with Cross Country part of the "LMS" as it's centred on Birmingham) would have been much better than what we do have. We would have had to have had some oddities like Thameslink ("LMS" track north of London) being part of Southern, and Waterloo to Exeter probably "Great Western" as then it could have used the same pool of diesel stock as the rest of the "Great Western" network, but certainly a Big Four like system which would mean stock could much more easily move round the system. Oh and no ROSCOs and other bureaucratic nonsense - just have the companies own their own stock...

Whether we nationalise or not, the legacy of the unnecessarily complicated privatisation is here to stay for a while as a result of all the incompatible unit types operated by different train companies.

 

[satisnek]

Don't forget the considerable investment in rolling stock that has occured since privatisation.

Yes, but like I said, it's pro rata with regard to the number of people travelling by rail - it's still 'barely enough, worked into the ground' just as it was under BR's last gasps. (At Mercia Marina trains are only audible, not visible, but it doesn't take long to work out that the ones with wheel flats are 220s and the ones with blown exhaust gaskets are 170s )

The extraction of profit is only a tiny part of what makes privatisation more expensive. Most of the savings from renationalisation will come from reintegrating the industry and removing all the artificial barriers within which drive up costs, not to mention the costly pantomime of franchise competition. Any fool could tell you that breaking a coherent national industry into a hundred separate parts isn't going to make it more efficient but will have the opposite effect.

Well said sir!

 

[Harbornite]

I would say I do support it as I believe railways should be run as a public service rather than a device to gain profit for shareholders... profitable lines might run fine as private entities but running non-profitable lines is always going to have the issue that under a private system one is obliged to put profit first which might lead to the reduction or closure of a socially-vital service. Same goes for any public service which is unprofitable but socially necessary. Even for profitable lines, private companies are always going to use "supply-and-demand" economics to squeeze money out of passengers on busy services... whereas a public service need not be run in that way (though I suspect that a rail service run by a Conservative government would be).

However I will say that the biggest legacy of the sort of "split into ten million parts" privatisation we endured is the large amount of incompatible stock. The old Southern third rail system having incompatible stock on the SWT and Southern areas for instance. Imagine how much more flexible it would have been if the CIGS and VEPs had been replaced by a fleet of compatible replacement stock across the whole Southern Region third-rail network. Ideally something that could have worked in multiple with the 465/466s, as they were the last BR units to be introduced on the Southern. Classes 461-464 (a la 421-424), perhaps?

Though I am a nationalisation supporter, a privatisation that had consisted of the re-formation of the Big Four (with Cross Country part of the "LMS" as it's centred on Birmingham) would have been much better than what we do have. We would have had to have had some oddities like Thameslink ("LMS" track north of London) being part of Southern, and Waterloo to Exeter probably "Great Western" as then it could have used the same pool of diesel stock as the rest of the "Great Western" network, but certainly a Big Four like system which would mean stock could much more easily move round the system. Oh and no ROSCOs and other bureaucratic nonsense - just have the companies own their own stock...

Whether we nationalise or not, the legacy of the unnecessarily complicated privatisation is here to stay for a while as a result of all the incompatible unit types operated by different train companies.

When you say that you'd have wanted to bring back the big 4, would the borders be the same as they were historically, so for instance, Birmingham would be split in two by the LMS and GWR?

 

[6Gman]

The extraction of profit is only a tiny part of what makes privatisation more expensive. Most of the savings from renationalisation will come from reintegrating the industry and removing all the artificial barriers within which drive up costs, not to mention the costly pantomime of franchise competition. Any fool could tell you that breaking a coherent national industry into a hundred separate parts isn't going to make it more efficient but will have the opposite effect.

The difficulty of multi-quoting on here obscures the point I was making which was in response to someone who said - basically - we wouldn't need a fare rise because the removal of profit would cancel it out.

It wouldn't.

But you are quite right that there are many other costs in the present set-up.

 

[nw1]

When you say that you'd have wanted to bring back the big 4, would the borders be the same as they were historically, so for instance, Birmingham would be split in two by the LMS and GWR?

No to be honest, I'm more thinking of the borders of the old Regions (as they were in the 1980s) which is different I admit - however I was trying to find a "privatisation" scenario which was more acceptable than the present one so came up with a hybrid of the Big Four and the old BR regions.

So Birmingham would be pure "LMS" with all trains - including Cross Country - run by them. This is not supposed to be a comment on the relative merits of the old Big Four companies or their successors.

 

[daikilo]

Well, Brexit is sbout to be discussed and it is rather urgent to decide what railway organisation we want. The issue is how to extricate that from UK law. Good luck.

 

[najaB]

Well, Brexit is sbout to be discussed...

Not sure I get the link between railway privatisation/nationalisation and Brexit?

 

[Harbornite]

Not sure I get the link between railway privatisation/nationalisation and Brexit?

Possibly referring to the EU guidelines on the separation of infrastructure and train operations.

 

[jon0844]

And we'd change that? Maybe if Corbyn gets in power, but first I just need to win the lottery jackpot three or four times.

Sent from my KIW-L21 using Tapatalk

 

[najaB]

Possibly referring to the EU guidelines on the separation of infrastructure and train operations.

Which has nothing to do with nationalisation - as long as the track operator and train operator have separate accounts.

 

[yorksrob]

Which has nothing to do with nationalisation - as long as the track operator and train operator have separate accounts.

Although the EU seems to be becoming less content with this arrangement with the more recent railway packages.

 

[Harbornite]

Which has nothing to do with nationalisation - as long as the track operator and train operator have separate accounts.

Fair point.

 

[richieb1971]

The only thing i've seen change is the rolling stock over the years and the re-introduction of steam under privatization.

What will a re nationalized railway look like?


A perfect railway is one where trains are adequate in length and capacity, run on time, are comfortable and the price is road competitive. Major stations should have 1st mile/last mile connections with the trains that are equally as comfortable, fast, efficient.

If a new BR can make all that happen at a competitive price i'm in. If privatization can make that happen i'm in.

Whatever works.

 

[Harbornite]

The only thing i've seen change is the rolling stock over the years and the re-introduction of steam under privatization.

A perfect railway is one where trains are adequate in length and capacity, run on time, are comfortable and the price is road competitive. Major stations should have 1st mile/last mile connections with the trains that are equally as comfortable, fast, efficient.


Whatever works.

What are you on about? Do you mean the Jacobite and Shakespeare express?

I agree with the rest of the post though.

 

[richieb1971]

What are you on about? Do you mean the Jacobite and Shakespeare express?

I agree with the rest of the post though.

I assume because most of you disagree with me you find it ok to use a negative tone.

Anyway, apparently BR banned all steam on the mainlines post dieselization. From memory I never saw any steam trains on the mainline from 1976 (my first memories of railways) until I emigrated to the USA in 2000. When I came back to the UK steam was all the rage. I am sure I read somewhere that when the network was privatized steam was allowed back on the mainline.

 

[Ash Bridge]

I assume because most of you disagree with me you find it ok to use a negative tone.

Anyway, apparently BR banned all steam on the mainlines post dieselization. From memory I never saw any steam trains on the mainline from 1976 (my first memories of railways) until I emigrated to the USA in 2000. When I came back to the UK steam was all the rage. I am sure I read somewhere that when the network was privatized steam was allowed back on the mainline.

There was plenty of steam haulage during the 1980s/90s under BR, so I can't agree with you on that point, I totally agree with all your other views though.

EDIT: Just to add, I think it was 6000 King George V that broke the BR steam ban sometime during 1971 that had been in place from 1968.

 

[Harbornite]

I assume because most of you disagree with me you find it ok to use a negative tone.

Anyway, apparently BR banned all steam on the mainlines post dieselization. From memory I never saw any steam trains on the mainline from 1976 (my first memories of railways) until I emigrated to the USA in 2000. When I came back to the UK steam was all the rage. I am sure I read somewhere that when the network was privatized steam was allowed back on the mainline.

Well my tone was such because you are wrong. Steam trains began running on BR in 1971 (as mentioned above) so I wouldn't say this was an achievement of privatization.

 

[richieb1971]

Well my tone was such because you are wrong. Steam trains began running on BR in 1971 (as mentioned above) so I wouldn't say this was an achievement of privatization.

Well I definitely read the words "Steam will never run on British rails again" somewhere.

It seems you are correct and I am wrong. But I haven't seen any steam on the mainline under British rail and I was a spotter from 1976 until 1988. In my combined volume of the time the only steam engines in it were the 1 2 3 from Wales. I never read or heard of any steam charter either, in magazines or on TV. Must have been advertised in close circles.

 

[Harbornite]

Well I definitely read the words "Steam will never run on British rails again" somewhere.

It seems you are correct and I am wrong. But I haven't seen any steam on the mainline under British rail and I was a spotter from 1976 until 1988. In my combined volume of the time the only steam engines in it were the 1 2 3 from Wales. I never read or heard of any steam charter either, in magazines or on TV. Must have been advertised in close circles.

You were in the wrong places at the wrong times, what you needed was some sort of CCTV system...

On a serious note, there were less steam railtours then than in the 21st century but they were happening. Mallard was still running back then for instance.

 

[Andy-mc]

The railways pretty much are nationalised when you look at the level of input by the government into the franchise agreements and the basic rail regulations, all the government has done is say "were tired of being held responsible when the 08:07 from Brighton is late, as we have bigger things to worry about like wars and a financial crisis, so lets pay someone else to take the blame"
The only true privatised companies are the open access operators, freight operators and maybe Chiltern as they were given a significant franchise length where they could actually do stuff and say it was all their idea.
Coming back to freight I believe this should be nationalised or at least formed into one body so it can compete with the road and not itself

 

[richieb1971]

You were in the wrong places at the wrong times, what you needed was some sort of CCTV system...

On a serious note, there were less steam railtours then than in the 21st century but they were happening. Mallard was still running back then for instance.

I'm guessing most of those steam charters were up north. I had a raleigh Grifter it didn't have enough gears to get me that far. I remember some double headed 40's going through Bletchley around 1985-6.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The railways pretty much are nationalised when you look at the level of input by the government into the franchise agreements and the basic rail regulations, all the government has done is say "were tired of being held responsible when the 08:07 from Brighton is late, as we have bigger things to worry about like wars and a financial crisis, so lets pay someone else to take the blame"
The only true privatised companies are the open access operators, freight operators and maybe Chiltern as they were given a significant franchise length where they could actually do stuff and say it was all their idea.
Coming back to freight I believe this should be nationalised or at least formed into one body so it can compete with the road and not itself

I think freight would do better under nationalized project. Unlike passenger traffic which is somewhat guaranteed, freight isn't.

The class 60's sitting idle is one of the side effects of privatization. I sometimes wonder what engineers at Toton do all day. I mean they don't fix up the rotting locos, most of the fleet work without much touching up.. What do they do there?

 

[Cowley]

I've always felt that governments that only have a shelf life of 5 or 10 years should not be able to make sweeping changes of certain sectors that need a much longer term form of management eg hospitals, Social Services, schools and public transport etc. Some kind of cross party arrangement would possibly work better with these things although I don't know how that could work.
I think a nationalised railway would be my preference but only as someone said earlier if it wasn't used as a political football and given a massive shake up every time someone new got into power.

 

[Andrewlong]

The railways pretty much are nationalised when you look at the level of input by the government into the franchise agreements and the basic rail regulations, all the government has done is say "were tired of being held responsible when the 08:07 from Brighton is late, as we have bigger things to worry about like wars and a financial crisis, so lets pay someone else to take the blame"
The only true privatised companies are the open access operators, freight operators and maybe Chiltern as they were given a significant franchise length where they could actually do stuff and say it was all their idea.
Coming back to freight I believe this should be nationalised or at least formed into one body so it can compete with the road and not itself

DFT also have power to strip franchises when it suits them and to let the TOC get a kicking when they are forced to bring in controversial changes eg what is happening on Southern now.

Whilst not a fan of nationalisation, the current franchise situation does little for bringing in private sector innovation and competition which should produce lower fares. If I want to fly to say New York, there is real competition - someone hasn't awarded a franchise to one airline flying to/from. Same can't be said between Reading and Bristol. And walk on fares are high. If you are going nationalise, we need to agree model otherwise we might end up with government run DOO (as promised by Corbyn), just as high fares as now and with the inability to get rid of them if they are no good.

 

[Harbornite]

I think freight would do better under nationalized project. Unlike passenger traffic which is somewhat guaranteed, freight isn't.

The class 60's sitting idle is one of the side effects of privatization. I sometimes wonder what engineers at Toton do all day. I mean they don't fix up the rotting locos, most of the fleet work without much touching up.. What do they do there?

More wibble. Do some research and you'll realize that the engineers at Toton are doing a pretty good job of maintaining the operational diesel locomotive fleet. What else would they do? It seems like you are fond of wibble because you wanted DB to restore a class 58 for charter use, despite their money problems.

Your argument for nationalizing freight is poor. The 60s are unused because of a downturn in freight, not because of privatization. Also you can't say that state ownership will guarantee freight. Haven't you heard of Speedlink? Freight depends on how other businesses are doing and cannot be guaranteed by any government, unless they were to nationalise and subsidize everything like in East Germany et al.

 

[coppercapped]

I’ve followed this discussion with some interest and it is fascinating to observe how much of a ‘Marmite’ topic this is!

However there seem to be an awful lot of half-truths and misunderstandings floating about both regarding nationalisation and the form of organisation of the current railway and sometimes the things have got confused. At the risk of becoming a soap-box orator (but in writing!) I’d like to examine the most frequently stated arguments for nationalising an industry - any industry, not necessarily the railway. You may not agree with my analysis but that’s your business - I just hope to have clarified the issues and given some food for thought.

A private company has a simple purpose. It is there to make money for its owners or shareholders. In some rare cases there was a desire or requirement in its Articles of Association to deliver some other defined aim, for example, Cadbury was privately held and had philanthropic objectives - that of offering chocolate as an alternative to the ‘demon drink’ and of ensuring that its workers were treated and housed well - other than just making a profit. Of course, it was only by making a profit that it could fulfil its philanthropic ambitions.

Nationalised companies are very different beasts - they are expected to meet several objectives at the same time and this makes them difficult to direct and manage. Are they there to:

(1) make money (the "why give the profits to shareholders when the whole country can have them?" argument)
or
(2) to deliver a vital service that otherwise would either not be delivered or would be more expensive
or
(3) to reduce the "waste" of competition
or
(4) to create jobs, also known as “makework”?

The usual claim is a combination of 1 and 2 and sometimes 3, but it almost always ends up as 4.

In the case of the railways No. 1 obvious doesn’t work - the business as a whole has needed continual financial support from taxpayers since 1955. For the last 60 years. It has never shown a profit. Even if the TOCs and ROSCOs were to be nationalised there would still need to be an injection of funds. If you look at the size of these profits and compare them to the total funding requirements they are so small they get lost in the noise.

No. 2 sounds good, except all that happens is the excess cost of a nationalised industry is then loaded onto rest of the economy, directly and as opportunity cost, and you end up having to use coercion to stop people from buying the good or service elsewhere: you start out trying to protect a "vital strategic industry", but in fact what happens is that British businesses are burdened with less effective, more expensive services that then make their potentially competitive business less competitive.
So for many years British companies were prevented from buying transport services from flexible private lorry companies so as to protect BTC's nationalised industry, with the net effect that British industries were held back by poor transport. The airline businesses suffered from having to use products developed by the UK aircraft business which was tasked with producing aircraft for the UK airline business (VC10, Trident). The wider markets were missed and the result was that Boeing cleaned up and British airframe manufacturing disappeared. You protect the "vital strategic industry" at the expense of the real industries.
This is one of the arguments used at the moment for re-nationalising the railways - the fares would come down. They won't.

No. 3, the claim of reducing the waste of competition, is nonsense: if you really could pick winners (in the 1970s the avowed intent of the DTI was to do this) then you could just invest in them and get rich, and nationalised industries - steel, coal, ports, railways, airlines, motor cars - are simply by the luck of the draw almost always the wrong choices.

At the time of the original nationalisation of the railways in 1947, there was no need for No. 4, because the economy was booming and there was for practical purposes no structural unemployment anyway.

As always in something like this, accuracy suffers from brevity. I have omitted many of the supporting arguments and examples but I am sure some here will have a field day in pointing out inconsistencies! Go for it - just don’t expect me to bite!

 

[Andy-mc]

Freight should be split into two bodies, infrastructure which should basically be run by network rail so they can run what they want when they want without running last minute bidding wars between freight operators to provide a loco and driver
And then Intermodal which should solely compete with long haul road transportation

 

[nw1]

DFT also have power to strip franchises when it suits them and to let the TOC get a kicking when they are forced to bring in controversial changes eg what is happening on Southern now.

Whilst not a fan of nationalisation, the current franchise situation does little for bringing in private sector innovation and competition which should produce lower fares. If I want to fly to say New York, there is real competition - someone hasn't awarded a franchise to one airline flying to/from. Same can't be said between Reading and Bristol. And walk on fares are high. If you are going nationalise, we need to agree model otherwise we might end up with government run DOO (as promised by Corbyn), just as high fares as now and with the inability to get rid of them if they are no good.

Unlike the air - and indeed buses (though competition on buses also has problems, see below) - you can't do real competition on the trains though because of capacity constraints. Another operator could not offer an alternative service with equal speed and frequency to Virgin on the WCML, for instance, because there isn't space. There are the slow (LM) trains - but nationalised systems on the continent also offer fast inter-city trains and local, slower, cheaper slow trains so this isn't something peculiar to privatisation.

In all honesty I'd say competition on land-based public transport works against the passenger. It works ok for air travel (where the flight is typically the main component of the journey - I don't care whether or not a flight I book includes integrated land transport) but does not work with integrated public transport on land. Lots of bus operators, for instance, means that tickets are not valid across different journeys by different companies which cuts down the available choice. Likewise, while PlusBus is a start, train/bus integration is not good - really buses should meet trains and there should be through ticketing. This would make the Isle of Purbeck, to quote a local(ish) example, much more accessible and cheaper by public transport from places like Southampton. Arrange the buses to Swanage to connect with trains at Wareham and offer through ticketing (so that a Swanage return is only a little more than a Wareham return) and you get a much more integrated system. Don't care too much if it's 100% public or contracted-out operators as long as the through ticketing is there.

(In this particular case it might be necessary to split the Poole-Wareham-Swanage bus into two legs Poole-Wareham and Wareham-Swanage to avoid the bus south of Wareham being delayed in the Sandford area which is notorious in that respect - though I have to admit I am not aware how many people cross Wareham on this bus and whether they would all transfer to train should the bus be arranged to connect with the train).

 

[richieb1971]

More wibble. Do some research and you'll realize that the engineers at Toton are doing a pretty good job of maintaining the operational diesel locomotive fleet. What else would they do? It seems like you are fond of wibble because you wanted DB to restore a class 58 for charter use, despite their money problems.

Your argument for nationalizing freight is poor. The 60s are unused because of a downturn in freight, not because of privatization. Also you can't say that state ownership will guarantee freight. Haven't you heard of Speedlink? Freight depends on how other businesses are doing and cannot be guaranteed by any government, unless they were to nationalise and subsidize everything like in East Germany et al.

Your tone again. I just asked a question and you go off on one.

66's are supposed to be extremely reliable, 60's not much so but only 20+ in operation. Considering what Toton was like in the BR days they must have their feet up quite a bit of the time.. Unless of course the employment level has decreased drastically with the number of locos they are maintaining.

I never said anything about nationalizing the railways would cause an upturn in freight. I simply said 60's are sitting idle as a result of privatization. If DBs didn't own those locos another sector would have taken them under BR and utilized them for specialized duties of where they could be used as spare standing locos at localized areas. Just like the BR days.

As it stands DBs is holding the 60's on competition grounds. They won't sell them because they have value as spares and won't sell them because they may lose business. But other FOC's might want them, but can't have them. That wouldn't happen under BR.