Who owns the railways

[ijmad]

I seem to remember that British Rail Property Board (Residuary Body) owns assorted large railway stations with high land/property values.
This was definitely not made clear in the Rail track share prospectus , but was revealed when Railtrack went "bust", thus significantly reducing the perceived share value.

I googled, and I found this - apparently BRB is no more:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brb-residuary-ltd-has-been-abolished

Interestingly, this page also confirms what I mentioned about LCR owning Waterloo International & North Pole.

Plus also describes another separate body called Highways England Historical Railways Estate that own assets on closed routes.

 

[coppercapped]

I seem to remember that British Rail Property Board (Residuary Body) owns assorted large railway stations with high land/property values.
This was definitely not made clear in the Rail track share prospectus , but was revealed when Railtrack went "bust", thus significantly reducing the perceived share value.

Hmm! Are you sure that your recollection is correct?

The book "All Change British Railway Privatisation", edited by Freeman and Shaw and published by McGraw Hill in 2000 (ISBN 007 709679 7) has this to say (pp59-60) about the division of BR's asset base between Railtrack and the other successor organisations:

The basic ground rules, set by the government, provided that the freehold of stations, yards, depots and all the infrastructure itself should pass from BR to Railtrack, who in turn would lease certain assets back to the new operating companies. It was particularly important that these terms took account of the companies' imminent sale. In view of the criticisms of earlier privatisations in which property had been seriously undervalued leading to windfall profits, the government made it clear that all non-operational land must stay with BR and only clearly defined operational land should pass to Railtrack; in addition the government decided that certain key assets had to be reserved for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

This clearly states that all operational land was transferred to Railtrack so any large railway station could not have remained with BR - and later transferred to BR Residuary - unless it was non-operational for the purposes of running trains. The book was published before Railtrack was put into administration so the knowledge that only operational land belonged to Railtrack was public knowledge at the time.

I do not have a copy of Railtrack's share prospectus but legally these documents have to be accurate. Whether all the people who bought the shares understood what was included I can't say.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I believe Waterloo International (or rather the parts of Waterloo that used to be the International side) and North Pole Depot are owned by London and Continental Railways (a nationalised company, but not Network Rail itself).
LCR used to own HS1/CTRL but this is now owned under a lease concession for the next 30 years by Borealis Infrastructure and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.
The Channel tunnel including infrastructure on the UK side is 55% owned by SNCF.

The ownership for HS1 shown above is out of date.
In 2017 Borealis/Ontario sold on the concession until 2040 to HICL/Equitix (both 35%) and the South Korea National Pension Service (30%).
The government remains the ultimate owner.
Network Rail has the operation and maintenance contract.

Eurotunnel is owned by multiple investors but the majority are French.

Eurostar (EIL) is owned by a consortium of SNCF (55%), CdPQ (30%), Hermes Infrastructure (10%) and NMBS (5%).
The original UK government 40% share went to CdPQ (Canada) and Hermes.
France therefore has a controlling interest in both the channel tunnel and Eurostar.