NXEC

[CVR1865]

I wonder, does Mr Brown use the east coast to get to his constituency. For all his many Faults we all know Tony Blair was a GNER customer. Ironic really how when the PM uses your service the quality is a little higher and now he is gone well...

[silver fox]

He must be is it not the only way from London to Edinburgh without changing?

[BringBackGNER]

I wonder, does Mr Brown use the east coast to get to his constituency. For all his many Faults we all know Tony Blair was a GNER customer. Ironic really how when the PM uses your service the quality is a little higher and now he is gone well...

I remember when Gordon Brown became PM he did an interview for Sky News on board a GNER train, supposedly doing the interview as he was travelling to his constituency.

I remember him on TV news about a month or so after NXEC started their franchise and he was on a station platform and an NXEC train in the 'white stripe' livery was in the background which suggested he took the train at that time too.

Who knows if he uses the train outside of publicity. I dare say Gordon Brown is less popular than Blair at the moment so he might want to avoid somewhere so public.

Did Tony Blair continue using GNER even when his popularity was low? I could imagine that after the Iraq war travelling on public transport could have been a danger to his security and those around them. Or are we British not as paranoid at protecting our leaders as the Americans are?

[Ferrybridge Flyer]

We would be---if there was one WORTH protecting!

[BringBackGNER]

We would be---if there was one WORTH protecting!

Well George Bush wasn't exactly worth protecting either, but they still did

[Ferrybridge Flyer]

Would you have taken a bullet for him?Not exactly an honourable death!

[third-rail]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7912580.stm[/qu

£197 million pre tax profit!!!!,should be told to pay up or get out,and no buts
come back gner your livery is still under those stupid white stripes

said it earlier

[Tom Quayle]

Wouldn't take a bullet but id give him one!

[52A]

Local news this morning, NXEC hand over on December 12th, bloody good riddance.

[chaz harrison]

The politics of the railway system have been a constant mess. I have seen it argued that Nationalisation was the only option at the end of the war. It was effectively a sleight of hand to avoid compensating the big-four companies for the damage done by neglect during the war. BR soldiered on with poor investment and the railwaymen did a good job keeping the network going.
The modernisation programme was underfunded and bedevilled by political interference.
Marples was a road man through and through and would, I am sure, have preferred to close down the whole network and cover the lines with tarmac.
Beeching took an accountant's view and some of his decisions look short-sighted from our perspective.
Privatisation was a botched mess, another sleight of hand, a product of dogma and a way of obscuring the full costs from the general public.

Of course private companies have to make a profit if they can, their share holders will not tolerate continuing losses, and this sits uneasily with the need for public subsidy.

Would a re-created British Railways or even a new LNER, responsible for both track and trains, be a success? I somehow doubt that our politcians would allow it, they serve us so poorly.

Chaz

[stembok]

the Modernisation Programme was underfunded and bedevilled by political intereference

While there is a great deal of truth in this statement the faults did not by any means all lie at the feet of the politicians. The Modernisation Plan of 1955, looked at retrospectively, often appears as a 'jottings on the back of an envelope job', with literally tens of millions of pounds wasted. This was due to an insufficient understanding of the requirements of a modernised rail system, compounded by the mistake of trying to graft modernisation onto a run down system actually in need of total rationalisation, -this came with Beeching - at a time of enormous changes and growth in competition for traffic. Two examples being the multiplicity of locomotive types - ordered against the advice of the then CME - and the white elephants of the marshalling yard plans.Loooking at the documents from that era and allowing for the 20-20 vision afforded by hindsight some of the decisions and projections appear astonishingly naive. The politicians certainly did not help matters, but the fact is that the aftermath and long memories of some of the mistakes of the Modernisation Plan sometimes made it extremely difficult for succeeding BR rail chiefs to convince politicians and civil servants of the need for new investment.

[chaz harrison]

You make some good points, Stembok.

As an ex-HOD (as a teacher) I am well aware of some of the problems associated with spending public money...

You have to spend all the money, carrying over not an option, with the threat of getting less next time if you don't.
Money is allocated (I believe the modern term is ring-fenced) to particular areas, even if you know it would be better to spend it elsewhere, you're just not allowed to.
You don't have a free hand with suppliers, these often being dictated from higher up.

I imagine BR was not allowed a free hand, all sorts of interference, vested interests etc would have prevented them from investing as they wished. And then of course their own lack of experience with modern traction would have made a fertile ground for mistakes.

Chaz

[stembok]

Very much so. According to one academic paper, around 1954 the Chancellor of the Exchequer found he had some money available and BR was told to do something with it, all very rushed, unsatisfactory and asking for trouble ,which duly arrived! There was certainly much pressure and lobbying brought to bear from locomotive manufacturers to receive orders and use the Plan as a shop window for their often -unfortunately- sub-standard products. There was of course no question of buying from America and using their knowledge and undoubted expertise in this area. It is apparent that in general the most successful of the British suppliers of traction were those with a background and history of building diesel locomotives, such as English Electric .
The original idea had been for a pilot scheme involving the ordering of 174 locomotives of three main power classes and various engine/transmission configurations and to allow some three years testing and evaluation before large orders were placed. An accelerating deterioration in the BR accounts, with rising costs, recruitment problems, declining coal quality and a precipitous decline in certain traffics meant this idea was discarded and a 'dash' made for dieselisation, leading to many well documented problems. Also, the more centralised BR regime of 1948-53 just may, ironically, have coped with all of this better than the more fragmented post -1953 management structure. From 1962 centralisation was again the order of the day, But, even so three Transport Acts in fourteen years! A serious structural problem suggested here I think!
Finally, Riddles and Co and their neglect of the possiblities of looking seriously at diesel traction, with the LMSR diesel locos and the LNER proposals and the introduction of diesel railcars, lost the chance to at least prepare the ground and hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls encountered post-1955.

[chaz harrison]

....even so three Transport Acts in fourteen years! A serious structural problem suggested here I think!

Stembok - I think the education world might be able to match this, or possibly exceed it. The number of acts and the "quality" of political interference has produced similar nightmares for teachers and school management.

A plague on the lot of 'em.

Chaz

[hq1hitchin]

Just heard them say on Radio 4 Today prog that NXEC reverts to state control after 13th November. Cannot help pondering on Christian Wolmar's question 'What exactly are franchises for?'