Rail fares 50% higher in Britain than on the continent

[Azrael]

Very interesting discussion: to Roadkill's formidable knowledge of our railway history, add agricola.

One advantage to private railways would have been freedom to change routes. It's very doubtful the a Beeching Report could or would have been implemented across four separate companies, and the companies would have been able to build new lines to take haulage traffic. (Perhaps duplicating existing routes for this purpose.)

Also, they'd have been able to respond to growing towns and cities in a more flexible way. If they had withdrawn lines, they could have restored them far more rapidly than central government. Plenty of the Beeching lines can be restored, and need to be: the recent BBC4 season on the railways have a programme on Norfolk where the operator wouldn't restore lines because it lacked the power to do so (not owning infrastructure, which makes no sense).

The Beeching cuts weren't only short-sighted and incompetent, at times they were absurd. Right now we have a few tiny hamlets with stations, while towns of 20,000 are miles from their nearest route. A private system could take the impetus in addressing this.

An alternative, however, is a series of regional "London Passenger Transport Boards". This could have real advantages, with latitude and non-profitability.

Oh, and trivia question for railway buffs: when did "railroad" become exclusive to America? I know the Victorians used it, but it seems to have died out. Shame, I like it.

 

[agricola]

Roadkill,

To back up what davesgcr said, great post.

That said I think the question must eventually come down to whether the bad things that happened to BR would have been able to happen to the Big Four if they had remained private companies.

 

[Isambard]

There is a tendency to have fewer trains on mainland Europe but a MUCH greater level of connections. A station might hvae just one train an hour but when it arrives at the next junction there are trains leaving on X different routes within the next Y minutes.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

i've always thought what a pisstake the trainfares were. i've always had to get the coach everywhere in england cos it costs an extra 30 odd pound on the train

Indeed. In choosing newcastle I hadn't properly considered how scandalously expensive the trains are. I mean 3 hours to london isn't bad at all, but it becomes much further when you've got to pay 140 bloody quid for it

 

[Meltingpot]

Some good posts here especially Roadkill's. I used to enjoy travelling by rail but I can't say I do now; you pay more for worse service than you used to and the timetables are fiddled so that the punctuality targets are easy to meet.

Whatever the arguments may have been in theory for privatisation, I'm convinced that separating the operating companies off from the track maintenance was a disaster. I can't really call it a mistake because I think it was done deliberately to be hard to reverse when Labour came back to power.

Why was privatisation done at all? My guess is that (as the Independent speculated at the time) it was done because the Tories figured that the car was unstoppable and they didn't want to be endlessly propping up what they thought would be a dying industry. Whatever the reasons, I must admit I'm angry about the mess that they created and would love to see the likes of John MacGregor (one of the chief architects of privatisation) made to account for his actions. There were even Tories at the time, like Robert Atkins, who cared about the railways and warned that privatisation was a bad move.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

It is ridiculous how much more expensive train travel is than car travel, when you factor in the relative comfort and convenience of having a car.

The government always say they want to get people out of their cars; well where's the motivation at the moment?

Public transport should be really cheap or even free.

 

[nino_savatte]

No surprises there then.I wonder how the bosses' pay compares?

The worst thing is, nothing will change. ATOC will rationalise their extortionate fares by claiming that they will go to "improve the network", while the companies themselves will make even greater profits for their shareholders.

 

[Roadkill]

That said I think the question must eventually come down to whether the bad things that happened to BR would have been able to happen to the Big Four if they had remained private companies.

There's no easy answer to that question IMO. Had nationalisation not taken place the Big Four would have been afflicted by most of the problems that beset BR in its first two decades, in terms of growing competition, falling traffic, outdated equipment and rising costs. Given that in 1946 shares in even the GWR were trading at half their value (and the LMS and LNER were in a worse position still) with little imminent prospect of improvement, they would have had great difficulties raising money to invest in modernising the system. It's very likely that there would have been major cuts in services and route mileage. That might have happened earlier and more gradually, and perhaps in a less arbitrary fashion than the Beeching closures, but it would still have happened IMO.

The managerial problems would have been rather different since had nationalisation not happened there'd have been no British Transport Commission to impose extra cost and bureaucracy. However, instead there would have been the old problems of co-ordination between companies, duplication of functions and lack of standardisation. Besides, as I said above, I can't see how the Big Four could have survived in their old form. They would have needed a subsidy at some point, and with that would have come some of the same difficulties that BR suffered in terms of prising money out of the Treasury and maintaining their independence.

One advantage to private railways would have been freedom to change routes. It's very doubtful the a Beeching Report could or would have been implemented across four separate companies, and the companies would have been able to build new lines to take haulage traffic. (Perhaps duplicating existing routes for this purpose.)

Also, they'd have been able to respond to growing towns and cities in a more flexible way. If they had withdrawn lines, they could have restored them far more rapidly than central government. Plenty of the Beeching lines can be restored, and need to be: the recent BBC4 season on the railways have a programme on Norfolk where the operator wouldn't restore lines because it lacked the power to do so (not owning infrastructure, which makes no sense).

This is possible, but it does rest on the assumption that, left in the private sector, the Big Four would have been solvent, well run, innovative and expansive. I have to say, I think that assumption owes rather too much to ideology. It's often been said that state-owned railways are inefficient, unresponsive to demand and slow to innovate, happy to manage a slowly declining railway rather than developing new business. Those charges have all been laid at BR's door, not without some truth. However, state-owned railways all over Europe have shown themselves capable of developing new services, seeking out new business and providing high-quality services. I have SNCF and the TGV in mind, but there are plenty of other examples. Meanwhile, privately owned railways in the United States wilted in the face of growing competition after the war and responded with retrenchment, disinvestment and cutbacks until Amtrak was created in 1971. I don't, therefore, believe that privately owned railways must always work better than state-owned ones.

The problem with this debate - in general, not specifically here - is that people tend to posit a rather idealised model of what privately owned railways could theoretically have achieved, and compare it against BR's poor early record. That's not invalid, but there's just as much scope for stressing that privatised railways don't have to run well and that the Big Four had flaws and weaknesses of their own and would have struggled in the post-war period, and for suggesting that had BR been structured differently (in particular, it should have been a stand-alone business rather than part of the BTC), managed more effectively and funded more consistently, it could have done much better than it did in its first two decades.

The Beeching cuts weren't only short-sighted and incompetent, at times they were absurd. Right now we have a few tiny hamlets with stations, while towns of 20,000 are miles from their nearest route. A private system could take the impetus in addressing this.

As I said above, I think cuts would have happened anyway, although the process might have been slower and more rational. One of the great absurdities of Beeching, of course, was the closure of the Oxford-Cambridge line, despite the fact that it ran right through an area whose population was expanding rapidly and passed close to the then-new city of Milton Keynes. But to be fair to BR, it did begin a limited programme of reopening lines and stations from the 1970s.

As for building completely new lines, I'm not at all convinced that a private railway system could do that much more effectively than a state-owned one. Again, I'd point to the impressive record of European railways on that score, and also Japanese National Railways prior to their privatisation in 1987. I can't offhand think of any privately-owned system that's shown itself to be nearly as expansive.

An alternative, however, is a series of regional "London Passenger Transport Boards". This could have real advantages, with latitude and non-profitability.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. We already have some regional bodies - the Passenger Transport executives, set up under the Transport Act 1968 - which try to co-ordinate transport mainly in the major conurbations and have played a significant role in developing railways in one form or another. Greater Manchester PTE, for example, was largely responsible for developing the Manchester Metrolink light-rail network. The PTEs have been a great success and I do think there could be an expanded role for them in future.

Oh, and trivia question for railway buffs: when did "railroad" become exclusive to America? I know the Victorians used it, but it seems to have died out. Shame, I like it.

Good question! I don't know for certain, but 'railway' was pretty much universally used by the end of the nineteenth century and it was in common use from an early stage. The rail-connected dock that opened in Hull in 1846, for example, was called Railway Dock right from the start. The impression I get is that 'railroad' and 'railway' were used interchangeably early on, perhaps with 'railroad' slightly more common (certainly the word was used a lot in connection with the Rainhill Trials), but that 'railway' gradually became universal.

 

[Isambard]

The PTEs are good but there are many urban centres that don't have them.
Austria for example has the whole country in PTEs

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Nice post, Roadie

 

[_angel_]

It is ridiculous how much more expensive train travel is than car travel, when you factor in the relative comfort and convenience of having a car.

The government always say they want to get people out of their cars; well where's the motivation at the moment?

Public transport should be really cheap or even free.

It's mental isn't it?

 

[davesgcr]

Couple of honarary MA - of not PhD's to be handed out for the supreme quality of some of these posts


The 1840 line from Llanelly was the "Llanelly Dock and Railway Company" - and I suspect the book by Frances Head "Our Iron Roads" - circa 1848 was about the last mainstream reference to the "railroad" - as the UK and USA have a common language divided by differences we ought to celebrate this ! -(though not LT used to have American influence from the Edwardian rail barons such as Yerkes - with the words "truck" for bogie and "car" used until very recent times.


One thing about the "big 4" companies was that they actually had a strong service ethos right through - and ran uncommercial services such as late and extra Saturday night drinkers trains on a large number of lines in peacetime eg the 2300 Ammanford - Brynamman W which ran back empty stock , or the Swansea St Thomas - Cray ( a settlement of about 30 people !)

Post War - had they survived intact - there would almost certainly have needed some social obligation subsidy (which BR got in the 1968 Act) - but more critically - they had no access to the desperately needed capital investment they needed after the tight 30's and the overworked war years.The Square deal campaign of the late 30's showed how tight things were wito common carrier obligations , and not enough revenue surplus to invest in what the railway could have done - bar a few flagwaving schemes and services.


Attlees "reconstructed" Britian couldent even supply enough loco coal to run extra services and steel to relay war hammered track (hence the alarming accident record of the late 1940's)

Guess who paid for the reconstruction of the SNCF , DB etc etc ....?

 

[Isambard]

I've heard of the Square deal campaign of the 30s but don't know much about it.
where can I go to read up on it?

 

[davesgcr]

I think its very much a historical footnote - its mentioned in a few books but not in any great detail. Someone (with time) needs to do a magisterial article in something like the excellent "Backtrack" magazine. I dare sy the railway commercial press of the day would have some choice material..


So many interesting things to research .........so little spare time !

 

[Roadkill]

I've heard of the Square deal campaign of the 30s but don't know much about it.
where can I go to read up on it?

Wolmar has a bit to say about it in Fire and Steam, and most general transport histories will mention it - pretty sure Dyos and Aldcroft's British Transport contains a discussion of it, for instance. I agree wtih davesgcr that it's crying out for some more detailed research, though, as indeed are many aspects of railways in the interwar period (and before and after actually!).

The Square Deal campaign was basically about the railways (quite reasonably) wanting rid of the common carrier obligation, and also not being put at a commercial disadvantage by having to publish their rates and so on, which lorry operators did not.

'Give the railways a fair deal' was the BIg Four's slogan: some road hauliers and cynics retorted that it should have been 'Give the railways a square wheel.' In all likelihood something would have happened - modification of the common carrier obligation, if not its complete repeal - but the war broke out before anything was done.

 

[davesgcr]

The usual good response RK ! - ironically - the threat of war brought some investment of a kind to the railways in the late 30's - some power signalling schemes were brought forward , and stockpiles of useful material like track components as in Jarrah sleepers (imported from Australia) bought in advance of use with Govt money.

 

[Azrael]

I don't, therefore, believe that privately owned railways must always work better than state-owned ones.

Of course not. Some railways are inherently unsuited to private ownership. The Tube was a doomed enterprise because the capital costs could never be recouped through fares, or close to it.

The European systems are a fair comparison, but I'd need to know more about the exact model, and how extensive quality services are. TGV is an inter-city route: what are local services like? When I was in Paris, the Metro was fine, but some local suburban trains pretty ropey.

My counter-factual regarding the Big Four doesn't rest on the assumption that they'd have remained solvent: more that four seperate companies wouldn't have delivered cuts as co-ordianted and radical as Beeching's. (Or the government's, on the advice of Beeching, to be exact.) This is a major benefit of private enterprises free from the demands of the Treasury.

Regarding the USA, the private railroad companies toppled in large part because Eisenhower pumped vast amounds of Federal money into the road network in the 1950s (on the pretext of driving away from nukes, of all things!). Britain's geography is very different to the USA's, and with four railway companies making public attacks on excessive roadbuilding, things could have turned out very differently. (As it is, our road network isn't up to the USA's behemoth.)

As for the LPTB, I'd have to go get my books on the history of the Tube for details, but basically it was a public company ala the BBC, capable of raising its own revenue, but not run for profit. It lobbied the government for funds under 1930s work-creation schemes, and being at arm's length, was able to implement major capital projects. (Extensions to the Piccadily and Central lines, amongst other things.) Frank Pick was the dour Quaker in charge, and his tenure is commonly seen as LU's golden age. A series of regional authorities along those lines could work well.

 

[Roadkill]

Of course not. Some railways are inherently unsuited to private ownership. The Tube was a doomed enterprise because the capital costs could never be recouped through fares, or close to it.

Given the cost of major infrastructure projects now, on those grounds one could make a case for saying that the main line railways are just as unsuited to private ownership in this day and age!

The European systems are a fair comparison, but I'd need to know more about the exact model, and how extensive quality services are. TGV is an inter-city route: what are local services like? When I was in Paris, the Metro was fine, but some local suburban trains pretty ropey.

I've used local trains in Germany that were fairly old and shabby, and I'm told (although I've not used them) that a lot of French local services can be quite slow and old fashioned. That said, those in Germany were on lines that I imagine wouldn't have survived at all in Britain. Better old trains than none at all...

European railways vary, of course, but until pretty recently most have been state-owned concerns along much the same lines as British Rail. Needless to say their priorities and service levels vary too. Some run excellent local trains, some less so. Some have invested in high-speed rail along the lines of the TGV, some not. But the point I was making was that state-owned railways are often portrayed as inefficient, ponderous beasts that don't respond well to changing demand. That was surely implicit in your argument that railways in the private sector would have been better at adapting to demographic changes (post #31). I'm arguing that that assumption owes far too much to liberal ideology and isn't supported by the facts.

My counter-factual regarding the Big Four doesn't rest on the assumption that they'd have remained solvent: more that four seperate companies wouldn't have delivered cuts as co-ordianted and radical as Beeching's. (Or the government's, on the advice of Beeching, to be exact.) This is a major benefit of private enterprises free from the demands of the Treasury.

With respect, you've missed the point I was making, which was that for all of the things you suggested in post #31 to come to pass, there would have to have been a railway system in private hands and in good financial and institutional health. What I've been arguing on this thread is that that probably would not have happened. The Big Four by 1947 were worn-out and in desperate financial straits, and without a huge injection of public money they would have remained so. Yes, the government owed them a lot for wartime usage which it could not repay in the economic circumstances of the late 40s, but even if it had been able to, the financial position of the railways would have remained very, very weak. You can't invest in new lines, better services etc unless you've the money to do so, and after WWII (and before it in many cases, frankly) the Big Four didn't.

Let me strengthen that point a little by reiterating another I made in my first post on this thread, which is that all of the Big Four are easy to romanticise. We look back on the 1930s as a great age of railways, with its luxury trains and speed records, but the reality is that on the LMS, the LNER and bits of the others local services were poor, stations dilapidated and speeds low. With the exception of the Southern electrification (which was only viable on the main London commuter routes), none of them was technically very innovative (the GWR was still building steam shunting engines right up to nationalisation, despite diesels capable of the same work at half the cost being readily available, for instance) and all of them showed a marked reluctance to close uneconomic lines and rationalise services. My contention is that, not only did the Big Four probably not have the financial clout to survive the post-war period, but even if they had their record on modernisation and improvement may well not have been nearly as dynamic as some seem to think.

Regarding the USA, the private railroad companies toppled in large part because Eisenhower pumped vast amounds of Federal money into the road network in the 1950s (on the pretext of driving away from nukes, of all things!). Britain's geography is very different to the USA's, and with four railway companies making public attacks on excessive roadbuilding, things could have turned out very differently. (As it is, our road network isn't up to the USA's behemoth.)

But that was the case in a great many countries: road transport grew at the expense of rail, regardless of whether the railways were privately or publicly owned. I don't believe for one minute that that would not have happened here had the railways not been nationalised, although precisely how and when it happened would obviously have been different. Ernest Marples wouldn't have been able to shut thousands of miles of railways whilst owning a road construction firm, for a start!

 

[agricola]

With respect, you've missed the point I was making, which was that for all of the things you suggested in post #31 to come to pass, there would have to have been a railway system in private hands and in good financial and institutional health. What I've been arguing on this thread is that that probably would not have happened. The Big Four by 1947 were worn-out and in desperate financial straits, and without a huge injection of public money they would have remained so. Yes, the government owed them a lot for wartime usage which it could not repay in the economic circumstances of the late 40s, but even if it had been able to, the financial position of the railways would have remained very, very weak. You can't invest in new lines, better services etc unless you've the money to do so, and after WWII (and before it in many cases, frankly) the Big Four didn't.

The immediate postwar picture is perhaps complicated by the Labour manifesto promise of 1945 to nationalize the railways - few people would invest in them even if the situation had been better than it was, and given that they were in essence owed huge sums by the Government - which as you state they were unable to pay back - it is perhaps too much to say the Big Four were as the result of their own actions in desperate financial straights.

If Attlee's Government had been less focused on nationalization as the only game in town then perhaps the situation of the Big Four would have been better than it was, but of course this is something we will never know.

Let me strengthen that point a little by reiterating another I made in my first post on this thread, which is that all of the Big Four are easy to romanticise. We look back on the 1930s as a great age of railways, with its luxury trains and speed records, but the reality is that on the LMS, the LNER and bits of the others local services were poor, stations dilapidated and speeds low. With the exception of the Southern electrification (which was only viable on the main London commuter routes), none of them was technically very innovative (the GWR was still building steam shunting engines right up to nationalisation, despite diesels capable of the same work at half the cost being readily available, for instance) and all of them showed a marked reluctance to close uneconomic lines and rationalise services. My contention is that, not only did the Big Four probably not have the financial clout to survive the post-war period, but even if they had their record on modernisation and improvement may well not have been nearly as dynamic as some seem to think.

They were perhaps not the best - but they were there. Under BR they were perhaps as bad and then disappeared, to be replaced by even worse bus services - or maintained and then run on a shoestring. As for innovation, both GWR and the LMS had started with DMUs before WW2 so its not as if they were entirely luddite.

Finally uneconomic lines means - as Beeching and post-Beeching found - different things to different people at different times. The rail network did contract between 1900 and 1947, they (the Big Four and ancestor companies) did rationalize and close those stations and lines that were uneconomic to them. (edit follows) As a case in point, one of the lines closed as a result of Beeching was the old Mold & Denbigh Junction Railway that ran between Chester (well, Mold Junction on the North Wales coast line) and Denbigh. There were a lot of stations on this line that were clearly uneconomic - Llong for instance - that should have been closed since they served absolutely nothing.

That line did, however, serve some reasonably large towns that would go on to be larger, Mold especially. If that railway existed today it would be heavily used, given that lots of people use the (slower) bus service from Mold to go to work, shop, and enjoy leisure time in Chester. That railway would also have a station (Broughton) very close to a large retail park.

 

[Roadkill]

The immediate postwar picture is perhaps complicated by the Labour manifesto promise of 1945 to nationalize the railways - few people would invest in them even if the situation had been better than it was, and given that they were in essence owed huge sums by the Government - which as you state they were unable to pay back - it is perhaps too much to say the Big Four were as the result of their own actions in desperate financial straights.

If Attlee's Government had been less focused on nationalization as the only game in town then perhaps the situation of the Big Four would have been better than it was, but of course this is something we will never know.

There might well be some truth in the suggestion that the Labour government's promise to nationalise the railways depressed their share price. However, I still think you're ignoring the fact that even the GWR wasn't making a big profit before the war and the LNER was barely profitable at all, with the other two somewhere in between. The financial position of the Big Four was pretty much always quite weak, and the legacy of the war and the other changes of the 1950s I've been over above would soon have made it much worse, and turned modest profits into big losses.

They were perhaps not the best - but they were there. Under BR they were perhaps as bad and then disappeared, to be replaced by even worse bus services - or maintained and then run on a shoestring. As for innovation, both GWR and the LMS had started with DMUs before WW2 so its not as if they were entirely luddite.

I'm not trying to portray the Big Four as 'entirely luddite.' Of course there were innovations, and in areas where there weren't there were sometimes good reasons for that. Main line diesels in Britain, for instance, didn't make sense in the 1930s when coal and labour were cheap and high-quality steam engines were readily available. However, in many respects services and working practices remained old-fashioned, there was little attempt at rationalising services and as I pointed out above, it's easy to be taken in by the prestige trains and forget that a lot of rail services in the 30s frankly weren't very good.

Meanwhile, in response to your first sentence all I can do is reiterate what I've said at least twice already: major rail cuts would in all probability have happened anyway. as you rightly point out in your last paragraph, closures were already happening, albeit slowly, but with the precipitate decline in rail traffic in the 1950s that would almost certainly have speeded up, nationalisation or no

 

[Isambard]

The European systems are a fair comparison, but I'd need to know more about the exact model, and how extensive quality services are. TGV is an inter-city route: what are local services like? When I was in Paris, the Metro was fine, but some local suburban trains pretty ropey.

The trend in Europe is for local authorities to buy in local rail services that are put out to Europe wide tender. So far it is mostly the former national monopoly operator that wins the tender but this is not always the case.

So you basicly you get what your local authority is willing to pay for in terms of service freqiency and the type of stock used. There is still some old stock out there on the more peripheral routes but new stuff is coming in, this is the new RegioNova that is taking over branchlines in the Czech Republic

The photo is of Domazlice and I guess the unit must be a departure on line 185 to Klatovy and Horazdovice Predmestie.

 

[Azrael]

With respect, you've missed the point I was making, which was that for all of the things you suggested in post #31 to come to pass, there would have to have been a railway system in private hands and in good financial and institutional health.

Perhaps for all of them, but even if the Big Four weren't in rude health, the Beeching cuts, being national in scale, are intrinsically unlikely to have been implemented by a private system. For one thing, would private railways have been so eager to tear up thousands of miles of track that could, potentially, have been profitable? I know cuts began under the Big Four (and maybe earlier, would have to read up on it) but they were relatively conservative.

I had more of a bias for the efficacy of the market in the past than I do now. I have no opposition in principle to the state running the railways if it's best suited to it. (I have no objection to the state running the emergency services and the post office, after all.) My major concern now isn't private v. public, but centralisation vs. localisation. Central government can only do so much. I support a private system only because I think it could be best suited to the railways, but there are public alternatives (like the one I suggested).

As for post-war Britain, as agricola said, it was an extraordinary circumstance. The government could have given the Big Four secured loans, as they did with the LPTB pre-war (and possibly the Big Four too, would have to read up on it). A private system doesn't have to exist in total isolation: that's impractical, and not how the railways were ever run.

Oh, and I don't view the Thirties as a golden age (except for the Tube). If anything the period 1890-1914 was the railways' heyday.

 

[Azrael]

The trend in Europe is for local authorities to buy in local rail services that are put out to Europe wide tender. So far it is mostly the former national monopoly operator that wins the tender but this is not always the case.

So you basicly you get what your local authority is willing to pay for in terms of service freqiency and the type of stock used. There is still some old stock out there on the more peripheral routes but new stuff is coming in, this is the new RegioNova that is taking over branchlines in the Czech Republic.

Thanks for the info. That matches my hunch that behind doubtlessly fast and impressive showpiece routes like the TGV lie local services of variable quality. Of course, semi-independent and local authorities can be bolstered by cash & loans from central government. Perhaps the key lies in getting the balance right.

 

[agricola]

There might well be some truth in the suggestion that the Labour government's promise to nationalise the railways depressed their share price. However, I still think you're ignoring the fact that even the GWR wasn't making a big profit before the war and the LNER was barely profitable at all, with the other two somewhere in between. The financial position of the Big Four was pretty much always quite weak, and the legacy of the war and the other changes of the 1950s I've been over above would soon have made it much worse, and turned modest profits into big losses.

I suppose an offshoot of this debate is what the effect would have been if, in 1921 (or more likely in 1924), the Government had nationalized the railways instead of dividing them into four.

As for profitability, I am not ignoring it - just pointing out that the GWR and the rest (apart from LNER) did make a profit, despite the usually terrible economic conditions between 1921 and 1939.

I'm not trying to portray the Big Four as 'entirely luddite.' Of course there were innovations, and in areas where there weren't there were sometimes good reasons for that. Main line diesels in Britain, for instance, didn't make sense in the 1930s when coal and labour were cheap and high-quality steam engines were readily available. However, in many respects services and working practices remained old-fashioned, there was little attempt at rationalising services and as I pointed out above, it's easy to be taken in by the prestige trains and forget that a lot of rail services in the 30s frankly weren't very good.

The services appear not to have been that good, but then neither were BRs for nearly all of its existence (and nor have, for example, Virgin).

Meanwhile, in response to your first sentence all I can do is reiterate what I've said at least twice already: major rail cuts would in all probability have happened anyway. as you rightly point out in your last paragraph, closures were already happening, albeit slowly, but with the precipitate decline in rail traffic in the 1950s that would almost certainly have speeded up, nationalisation or no

Some lines would have been cut, but I would be absolutely amazed if there would have been more, or even the same number of, lines cut if the railways were still in private hands (either the Big Four, or a hypothetical independent national rail company).

 

[Isambard]

Thanks for the info. That matches my hunch that behind doubtlessly fast and impressive showpiece routes like the TGV lie local services of variable quality. Of course, semi-independent and local authorities can be bolstered by cash & loans from central government. Perhaps the key lies in getting the balance right.

Azrael, not a personall diss but I really think you are clutching desperately at anything between the lines to relatavise the report and say trains in the UK aren't that bad really.

Of course there is variety across Europe so you need to compare like with like.

Within one country there are always gong to be differences in the various local authorities, available stock, electrication availability, demographic, population density, traffic flows, local traditions etc etc and these will result in different levels of local services.

Certainly there are discussions on the role the big national carriers want to play. Perhaps the big player like SNCF, DB, RENFE, FS want to play a bit like the airlines, transporting passengers fast between major population centres and not caring so much about the regional services. If that is the case then it is perhaps an oppurtunity for other operators to fill the gap though it is most likely to be Arriva and Veolia.

Europe outside of the UK faces the same trends in terms of demand and population shift and restricted public financial resources etc etc etc but across the board, offers the passengers a better deal than the UK does.


BTW, European rail operators don't just offer cheaper turn up and go fares, they also offer railcards and other discount schemes for regular travels as well as UK style special offers if you book in advance for a fixed train.

 

[Isambard]

The services appear not to have been that good, but then neither were BRs for nearly all of its existence.

You have to measure inputs and outputs.

For relatively little money and despite constant siege from various governments, BR brought us within my lifetime for example: The HST, ECML electrification, Cross City Line in Birmingham, re-opening of Snow Hill in London etc etc etc.

For the ammount of money the government is pouring into the system now and and thef fares that passengers pay it should be better than it is in the UK.

 

[Roadkill]

This is starting to go in circles a little, but very briefly to try and deal with the points both of you raise.

Perhaps for all of them, but even if the Big Four weren't in rude health, the Beeching cuts, being national in scale, are intrinsically unlikely to have been implemented by a private system. For one thing, would private railways have been so eager to tear up thousands of miles of track that could, potentially, have been profitable? I know cuts began under the Big Four (and maybe earlier, would have to read up on it) but they were relatively conservative.

The Big Four had closed the odd branch line, and this continued after 1947. Beeching only happened after the failure of the Modernisation Plan, which was one of the nascent BR's worst cock-ups. Obviously precisely that wouldn't have happened without nationalisation, but closures almost certainly would, and probably on a large scale. To repeat, private railways in the US were savagely pruned back in the face of road and air competition (the latter obviously less a factor in the UK), and there's no real reason to think the UK would have been very different. Cuts might have happened over a longer period of time and been rather more rational than happened after the sudden shift in policy in the early 60s, but they might well have gone just as far or even further.

I had more of a bias for the efficacy of the market in the past than I do now. I have no opposition in principle to the state running the railways if it's best suited to it. (I have no objection to the state running the emergency services and the post office, after all.) My major concern now isn't private v. public, but centralisation vs. localisation. Central government can only do so much. I support a private system only because I think it could be best suited to the railways, but there are public alternatives (like the one I suggested).

As for post-war Britain, as agricola said, it was an extraordinary circumstance. The government could have given the Big Four secured loans, as they did with the LPTB pre-war (and possibly the Big Four too, would have to read up on it). A private system doesn't have to exist in total isolation: that's impractical, and not how the railways were ever run.

I had missed the significance of your example of the LPTB, and as a model for a nationally-owned railway with greater independence from the Treasury than BR managed there might well be some merit in it. More, definitely, than in the suggestion that the Big Four should just have been left alone.

About whether there was some sort of workable half-way house that could have been arrived at between leaving them alone and nationalising them altogether we could speculate all day. Like as not some sort of arrangement could have been devised whereby the government would lend support to the railway companies in return for some say in their decisions and greater coordination between them, perhaps via some sort of 'railway executive' composed of directors of each of the companies and others, but that's all hypothetical. And whether such an arrangement would have offered any advantages over nationalisation is a moot point.

As for profitability, I am not ignoring it - just pointing out that the GWR and the rest (apart from LNER) did make a profit, despite the usually terrible economic conditions between 1921 and 1939.

Yes, but that doesn't mean their position wasn't always weak, or that it wouldn't have become much weaker in the 1950s - especially once petrol came off the ration!

British Rail was far from perfect. Initially it was top-heavy, bureaucratic and insufficiently centralised. It was also badly run at times, and as a result among other things it made two monumental cock-ups in the 50s (the Modernisation Plan) and then the 60s (Beeching). However, after 1968 it began to improve, once it was in receipt of a formal subsidy to support necessary but unprofitable services and once its debt to the Big Four's shareholders (and they got very generous compensation after 1948) had been wiped off. By the 1980s it was arguably the most efficient railway system in Europe given what it achieved on a shoestring budget. Back in the 60s it had electrified the WCML to great effect: in the 80s it carried through ECML electrification a lot more cheaply and quickly than could be done now. It had introduced the hugely successful HST. Although money was tight it had an active and ongoing programme of improvements and reopenings, some of which, such as the Chiltern Line upgrade, turned around the fortunes of lines that until then had been in apparently terminal decline.

BR had its flaws, but I think its record in a lot of respects is much stronger than some people credit it for. Moreover, if as we have been above we're going to deal in counterfactual proposals for what should have been done with the railways after 1948, as I said a few posts back there's plenty of scope for arguing that a nationalised railway which was differently structured, better funded and better managed could have worked very well indeed. But we'll never know.

 

[Azrael]

Azrael, not a personall diss but I really think you are clutching desperately at anything between the lines to relatavise the report and say trains in the UK aren't that bad really.

Not so much that as questioning if European trains are as consistent good as is often applied. All too often showpiece routes like TGV are treated as representative. Which they might be for all I know, I just wanted to establish a wider picture.

As it happens I don't think British trains are as bad as is often said. My local commuter service into London is very efficient and reliable, ditto the line up to King's Lynn, and the Tube goes greatly under-appreciated. For a 150-year-old monster it's not doing too badly!

Where Britain undoubtedly lacks is in fast, showpiece inter-city routes like TGV. With High Speed One and the like, this may be improving, but only slowly, and I agree it's a national disgrace that we haven't upgraded this aspect of our system long ago. I just like to see it as one element of a broad picture.

This is starting to go in circles a little, but very briefly to try and deal with the points both of you raise.

Well, my adherence to the free market isn't what it was, but yes, basically I'm more of a fan of private railways than you.

Where should we go from here, given the lessons of the past? Initially, I'd like to see operators given control of infrastructure, and the ability to construct new capital projects (like restoring the Beeching lines) if they can find the investment, or convince the Treasury to underwrite a loan. At a guess, you'd like to see a return to nationalization, but how would we go about this? (Apologies if you've answered elsewhere, but you're such a mine of rail history. )

 

[Isambard]

Studies like this though compare like for like.
The ONLY area I saw in the news where the UK came out better was the frequency, but as Roadie pointed out this is a specificly UK trait so it's seen from a UK perspective.

 

[Azrael]

Studies like this though compare like for like.
The ONLY area I saw in the news where the UK came out better was the frequency, but as Roadie pointed out this is a specificly UK trait so it's seen from a UK perspective.

We might loose out overall, but I'd like to see how regional and suburban services compare: and what's considered like for like. A national picture is still drawn, isn't it? Even so, we might loose out. What I'm really getting at is that not all trains are so bad as the media puts across at times. Or, for that matter, how people talk about them.

Take the rush hour: the Tube's so bad because, simply, we're at least two Tube lines behind where we should be. Also, we have no express lines like New York enjoys. But ultimately a rush hour is unavoidable, whatever technology you employ. The Paris Metro gets praised, but the rush hour there was just as hellish, at least when I've visited. And some of the older lines were pretty ropey (albeit reliable) which is the sort of thing that reports can overlook.

I'm more than willing to believe that Europe has better train services overall: I'm just wondering if it's a more nuanced picture than is sometime's said.