West Coast Franchise

[Eden Blyth]

Don't worry Pinza - you could always vote for Nick Clegg...

I don't know if anyone else has read Matthew Engel's "Eleven Minutes Late"(*) but his take on the reason the Major Government privatised the railways is because they had basically run out of policy ideas and had to be seen to be doing something. IIRC the idea was floated during the late 1980s but there was no appetite so it kept getting ignored/postponed. Then when it happened, they rushed it through with very little thought.

The book concentrates on privatisation but also includes a two century history with an interesting take. For example the capitalist robber baron approach (he claims virtually unique to the US and UK) led to a large amount of short term inefficiency and duplication - but this often paid off many decades later - eg. the existence of working relief lines during wartime or with growing traffic.


(*) Yes the title is a Reginald Perrin reference. Eleven minutes late - escaped Puma at Chessington North, etc.

An excellent book, I thought, and the hilarious cameo of the steward with a grudge is especially topical!

[kudu]

Perhaps a better model would be to have say 4 regional companies responsible for track, services and their own rolling stock?

Seems familiar!

I've always reckoned when it comes to rail privatisation there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that if you're going to do it at all, the Government probably did it the right way.

The bad news is that I'm talking about the Isle of Wight.

Kudu

[Mickey]

Deleted

[Boris]

Will someone explain to me what 'East Coast' is.
Is it government run, does it make a profit for the country instead of rich shareholders.?

[Andy W]

East coast is just another train operating company. It is basically the old GNER or National Express East Coast with a government appointed team of senior managers.

In a conventional TOC you bid a certain "profit" to the government (or "loss" if it is not an intercity one) but here that profit goes direct to government, without any cut for the owning group that runs the franchise.

As Network Rail is funded directly by government for such a large proportion of its finances, the amount of profit or loss made by each TOC is largely academic as it doesn't pay for much of the real cost of the infrastructure it's trains run on.

What matters to government is the TOCs contribution to them and whether it is what you have promised them because the sum of those figures are what they are on the hook for with the Treasury.

[PinzaC55]

This is worth reading http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2013/06/ ... eport.html