Deprivatisation of railways
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3588785.stm

Which sounds better deprivatisation or publictisation?

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Isn't the term "renationalisation"?

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

:erm: Sorry, yes.

Anyway opinions on it?

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

it depends if you are talking only about the Network or the actaully train franchises. The Netowrk should be run by the Government and the train franchises how they are is fine by me as long as they are hit with BIGGER penalties for late running services

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

no, "Steal it back" is the phrase ;)

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

For a moment I read that as "rationalisation". Not that strange, as it probably is a wise idea... ;)

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

what is the point... our railways are crap, always have been crap, and as far as i can see always will be! :rant:

I can't count the times i have been on late/ cancelled/ early terminating services... i just got used to it now... £45 for a ticket to london... really not worth the paper it is printed on.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I read an article recently that said the performance had increased since they took track maintainance back 'in house', so the Network run by the Govt. would seem to be a good idea. :tu:

I'm not sure about the franchises - the problems with running a public service using private companies is, imo, that the shareholders may get 'priority' over the customers & employees can get the worst deal of all? Having said that, the concept of competion improving efficiency can't be ignored. :shrug:

Perhaps we could also think less about innovation - like higher speeds & tilting - and concentrate more on getting what we have now, working properly? :erm:

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Frankly, one wonders how competition has increased efficiency. The British rail system is one of the most expensive (and dilapidated) in the developed world. And it's about a decade behind continental Europe when it come to high speed trains.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

No, because that's unacceptable to New Labour, hence the Newspeak versions proposed...! :rolleyes:

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

We have high speed trains? :D

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

How about - detorify

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

How about spending the £26bn to try to get the punctuality to 100%! :mad:

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Railways should never have been privatised in the first place.
Look at all the accidents there have been since privatisation !!!

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

It seems that way, but if you go back about 50 years (!!) we actually had a very good rail system indeed. The problem has been a disastrous 'modernisation' plan in the 1950s, which spent a fortune on new equipment but failed to tackle outdated working practices and over-manning; the 'Beeching Axe' of the 1960s that slashed railway mileage on the supposition that the network should be a viable business, not socially-necessary infrastructure (the Tories started this process but Labour reneged on an election promise in 1964 by doing nothing to stop it); chronic under-investment in the 1970s, 80s and 90s; and finally a privatisation plan that was conceived out of political dogma rather than good research and planning, and rushed through Parliament without scrutiny by a Tory Government that knew it was running out of time.

We now have a network which is simply not extensive enough to act as a viable alternative for a great many road journeys, and costs a fortune to use. Consider: I live in Hemel Hempstead. I want to visit a potential supplier of services in Leeds. I can either go on the road (M1, almost literally door-to-door in under 2.5 hours) or I can go by rail 3.5 - 4 hours with two changes of train, and considerable cost when starting a journey before 9.30am).

In the 'heyday' of the railway, there were spells of both national and private ownership. World War 2 finally demonstrated that national ownership of a fully integrated network works best. The system needs to be brought back together. The problem now is that it will take so long to do, and cost so much, that there is little political incentive to do it.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

This is exactly the point. There is no viable alternative to the car in this country for long distance journeys. They put up road tax/fuel tax and so on to try and claim it is to try and get us to use public transport but there is no alternative so we have to use the car and have to pay the taxes.

I could go from Yorkshire to London for £140 by train or £40 by car.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Actually, there are fewer railway deaths per year since privatisation than there were under British Rail (e.g Clapham Junction, 1988, killed 35 people). And despite private contractors like Jarvis getting the blame for accidents like the Potters Bar crash, let's not forget that the engineers who work for the private contractors, especially the older and more senior ones, all worked for British Rail as well. A fact unions like the RMT and ASLEF are happy for you not to notice.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Yes, the common view nowadays is that the privatised railways are unsafe, which is just untrue. Rail is in fact the safest form of travel, media hype is the reason behind these false preconceptions

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Sorry, I first became a regular commuter in 1994, and whilst there were problems (overcrowding, ticket prices), overall the service ran to time and was reliable.

Now we still have the first two problems and can add late running and unreliability.

WHY because pof privatisation!

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

NO not true, if it was renationalised, the government would have to pay for each and every TOC.

They got railtrack for virtually nothing as it was bust.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Had Hatfield, Southall, Ladbrooke Grove, Greak Heck & Potters Bar happened with MK1 stock like Clapham, then there would have been many more deaths.

The only reason there were not so many deaths with these accidents is that the trains involved were more modern. The Oldest train involved with these accidents was the HSTs in Southall and Ladbrooke Grove which are of 70's Vintage.

The IC225 sets and Networkers are all of 80/90s vintage. All are ex BR.

The Mk1 sets at Clapham were of 1950s vintage, a lot had been learned since then and these sets would have been phased out by now under BR, (and are sill in use by SWT, SouthCentral and Connex SE)

Yes the managers used to work for BR but now commercial considerations come into practice. This inevitably means corners are cut.

When was the last time a Railway accident was caused by a broken rail before Hatfield........ Hither Green in the 1960's.

When was the last time the Severn Tunnel was closed by HMRI for essential maintenance before the closure a couple of years ago.....

It had never happened because BR repaired any track before it became a serious enough problem for HMRI to get involved!

WHY???! Because there was a culture of safety under BR.

BR introduced the ATP system that was fully working on the HST that caused the accident at Southall. It was switched off because the privatised companies couldn't be ar$ed to train their drivers to use it. So they relied on the older AWS which was faulty in that train. This meant that the driver didn't even realy have time to blink. Under BR a second driver would have been in the cab to assist with sighting signals, or (more likely) they would have used the ATP.

IMHO although the railways are safer than any other form of transport, they are more dangerous now than they were under BR.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Interesting thread - those that want to look further into this could do well to read

Long and in two parts (I pasted them into word printend them and read it on a train!)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0...183118,00.html

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publi...183429,00.html

What shocks me is the cost when compared to European rail travel. Just got two tickets Paris to Brussels and back on the High Speed Red Thalys train. £35 each. Costs £14 for a day return to London from Hertford!

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

How about renationalisation of the railway but not the companies who run the trains?
Take National Express as an example.
Privately owned transport for the public, but the roads are maintained by the govermnet (oh wait, aren't our roads falling apart too? sorry, got sidetracked, no pun intended, oh I give up)

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

In all honesty the railways need to be vertically integrated, IE the people that own the tracks run most of the trains.

This is how it had always been before the Tory privatisation.

This leads to greater safety as there is one reporting stream for problems that might affect safety.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I would suggest you check back issues of Private Eye (they don't seem to have an online archive, so I can't post links) for what has happened to the railways since Privatisation. There are stories of how the companies have cut maintenance expenditure below what BR considered safe. Which would seem to be borne (spelling?) out by the Jarvis problem.

Anyway, I have to admit, I don't care whether the Government runs the railways or not. I just care they are reliable and safe. Which, TBH, since privatisation, they don't seem to have been.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Actually, you might find the following links helpful, as they back up your stance.
http://www.parliament.the-stationery...t/10116w17.htm

http://www.igreens.org.uk/uk_rail_accident_deaths.htm

Mind you, while I realised more people die on the road each year, I didn't realise the difference was 1000s of percent..

Edit: Can't type for toffee..

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Towny is quite right, there are fewer deaths/year than under BR during its last years of ownership as in 1988, BR had had a ad year with MK1 stock accidents.

Had Clapham happened with a Wessex Electric, (based on the MK3) then there would most likely have been fewer deaths, as the train body would have been much stronger.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I'd just like to go to one source to get ALL timetable info and how much it will cost to get from A to B.At present I have to go to several sources.Unless one of you souls know of such a site?:)

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Thank you. :tu:

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Another one is http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ This also contains fairly accurate information regarding any delays.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Yes, I mentioned this earlier. The cost of rail travel in the UK is absolutely shocking. And I can't understand why. Perhaps rail travel on the continent is subsidised more (most European countries have national railways), but I doubt that's the only reason.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I think Government subsidies is certainly one important factor. The problem is that the UK's railways have suffered generations of "institutional neglect" by governments who weren't interested in them, wanted to close them down, saw them as a way of making a quick buck or as "somebody else's problem".

Consequently the amount of money we're paying for them now is the result of all those years of under-funding and neglect and, of course, the longer you leave a problem, the more it costs to fix.

Privatisation has shown itself to be an utter disaster and what we really need now is a government brave enough to bite the bullet and take them back into public ownership but in a way that will result in them being dealt with in a *sensible* manner.

Labour have sort of got the right idea by introducing Network Rail and making it a non-profit making company, but they did it in the wrong way by "re-nationalising through the back door" and thus pi$$ing off everyone who had shares who got shafted with a deal that was much less than their shares were worth.

IMO the entire network, rail, signals, engines, rolling stock, the works should be run by *ONE* Not-for-profit[1] company which can devote its time and energy into fixing the problem *with* sufficient government money to do a proper job that won't take 20 years to finish.

Only *then* IMO are we liable to end up with a rail system that is worthy of the country that *invented* the thing in the first place...!!

[1] NB Not-for-profit does not mean "doesn't make a profit" it means that any extra money earned goes back into the rail system, not to share-holders or to executive bonuses.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Lots of interesting points:

Firstly - a disclaimer, I'm a railway nut of many years standing who voted in 1992 tactically to try and prevent rail privatisation. My family are also friends of the Bawdens, who've been campaigning since the Potters Bar accident, which killed Nina Bawden's husband and seriously injured her.

Safety - the big accident was Hatfield. This was the one which demonstrated that Railtrack had lost control of the railways to the extent that the rail condition on one of the country's premier main lines was catastrophically Why did they lose control? Because they trusted to the free market and commercial contracts to ensure safety, rather than the historical way built up since the railways started where engineers would be integrated into the management hierarchy and thus have key input into the management of the railway. This was *deliberately* swept away at privatisation, quite deliberately. It wasn't bad management, it was deliberate sabotage of a working structure for ideological reasons. Railtrack was supposed to be a small, streamlined management structure that would basically supervise contracts and rake in the profits. What happened of course was obvious. With the people who understood the railway gone, the suppliers could charge what they liked and do a poor job safe in the knowledge that they'd get paid and no one would have the knowledge to check, which is exactly what happened. Also, consultants could propose grandiose schemes to save money by using untried technology on unrealistic timescales, and there was no one left to say 'hang on a minute'. Hence the West Coast cock up.

BR was a phenomenally safe transport company. You can point to Clapham as an example of disaster, but you really have to point to all the years where no passengers died *at all* in rail accidents. This is actually continuing today. I think the system is still very safe, but privatisation has unleashed a number of worrying new failure modes that were previously kept in check by good engineering management (broken rails and broken points as at Hatfield and Potters Bar). TPWS is already saving lives, how many we'll never know, which is one of the problems with explaining safety projects to bean counters. The annoying thing to free marketeers is that BR managed to be phenomenally safe as a public company with, in comparison to today, a tiny subsidy.

Railways don't work like other industries. They have such a reliance on engineering and the wheel/rail interface that these have to be at the heart of the whole system. The tragedy of privatisation is that both of these key points were directly targetted as being anathema to the concept of the free market, and destroyed.

Another point which a lot of people don't know - Labour's attempt to gain control over the network was to set up the SRA, which is 900 bureaucrats run by the people (Bowker and Steer) who came up with Virgin's spiffing plans to completely screw up the West Coast and Cross Country by means of a cunningly unviable business plan (basically saying 1) we'll get x% more people travelling and 2) we don't actually need to pay to provide capacity to transport them - spot the obvious flaw there). However, Richard Bowker plays music with Mr. Tony so is immune for now. I could go on about the SRA and the political turf wars with the ORR and OPRAF but I suggest anyone interested purchase this month's excellent edition of Modern Railways.

Oh, and another point, try and find out who owns Network Rail and who controls the billions of pounds of public money that it spends. It appears that the answers are 'no one' and 'no one'.

Alternatives to the car - my girlfriend and son are off to a friend in Darlington next week, by plane. It's by far the cheapest option. My attempts to get her to go GNER lasted as long as it took to get the price comparison and work out how long it would take to get to King's Cross.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I think you hit the nail on the head here BBKing.

BR used to run one of the safest Railways in the world, and THE most cost efficient railway in the world.

BR had some fantastic plans for the WCML. Witness the APT, years ahead of its time that, when cancelled by the Government, they had just got right. They then planned the IC225, but the government limited production to cover only the newly electified ECML as they thought the cost too great. BR also borrowed heavily from APT technology to keep the costs down, and the Mk4 Coaches are even designed to be capable of tilt.

With safety. All the accidents brought home the ptoblems with privatisation.

Southall. That the train was allowed to enter service with faulty AWS when there were no secondmen available, no drivers trained with ATP or not turning the train so that the end with the functioning AWS system was not facing the direction of travel.

Ladbrooke Grove. Why were the points beyond SN109 set to the DRL to divert the Thames Train away from the path of the HST? Why was an inadeqautly trained with little or no route knowledge left in charge of a passenger train on his own on one of the nastiest layouts in the country,

Hatfield. OMG some disgusting failures. Why were there no speed restrictions on the damaged rail? Why was the line renewal left for the Winter timetable when it was clearly on the brink? Why was the wrong type of train used to deliver new rails so they had to be returned to the yard? why did it take so long for the danger to get back to Railtrack House for the funds to be released?

Potters Bar. Why was the same company that had been involved in the Hatfield disaster and who was clearly partly to blame still looking after maintenance on the same line just a few miles up? Who checked the line and the points and lied about their condition and why?

Great Heck was the only accident where the railways had no blame, and that tw*t who fell asleep at the wheel of his car ought to be shot.

I again say the railways should be publically owned by a similar body to the old BRB and should be vertically integrated so that the wheel/rail interface is restored.

Anybody who wants to know some of the information that led me to draw my conclusions could do worse than read "Broken Rails"

I also agree with BBKing that the cost of tickets is (in general) extortionate and is driving people away from one of Britains only alternatives to the car.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Spot on there. Unpleasant answers follow:

Southall - Train not turned because GW would have had to pay Railtrack for the privilege of taking an empty train round the triangle at Swansea - under a properly run integrated railway the cost of cancelling the train would have been greater than the negligible cost of turning it, so it would have been turned. Not having been turned, it should have been cancelled as unfit to be in passenger service, but this would have incurred compensation payments and made the figures look bad, so it was run. End result 7 dead, rolling stock destroyed, track torn up, £1.5m fine.

Privatisation caused the previously non-existent pressures to run an unfit train to take precedence over sound engineering advice.

Mind you, the signal that was missed (at yellow) was grossly misaligned and incorrectly designed, which brings us to:

Ladbroke Grove, where a badly designed layout and a badly trained driver missing badly sited signals caused an appalling crash. The layout was designed by Westinghouse and BR in the early 90s under the assumption that all trains would have automatic train protection in case of missing signals. In fact two out of the three types of train on the route had ATP, the exception of course being Thames, as BR didn't fit it to their trains in the years immediately pre-privatisation and Thames didn't in the years immediately afterwards, and the HSE didn't press for it, being too busy nitpicking about footpaths by the trackside and other major threats to railway safety.

The layout at the points was therefore designed on the basis that no trains would go through a red light, so they could be left safely pointing in the direction that was the easiest for the computer signalling to cope with, which unfortunately meant a possible head-on collision in the case of the signal being missed, instead of a possible sidelong collision with a train travelling in the same direction. So cost cutting on the original design, assumptions about the nature of the traffic that were never revisited after privatisation (Railtrack would have said 'Thames has to fit ATP' and Thames would have said 'RT has to make the layout safer' and no one was there to knock their heads together).

Interesting, if slightly irrelevant point about the idiocy of privatisation, the only company barred from bidding for passenger rail franchises in the UK was the only company with any experience of running passenger services in the UK, i.e. BR. In Sweden, which has had private railways a lot longer, the old state railway is still there and running services in competition (and sometimes cooperation) with private companies.

Ding-ding!

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Thought this might slot into the discussion at this point:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3600465.stm

Thames Trains gets a £2 million fine for its part in the Ladbroke Grove crash.

I wonder if it will change anything.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I thought that summed up many other companies, that are now ruled by marketeers :shrug:


I also thought.....

was a reminder of what a 'state owned' system could 'bring to the table' :)

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Nope, the point about "state owned" is that all the extra money goes into HM Treasury which allows any government that's a little hard up to "bilk" the successful parts of industry etc to support the bits that don't work properly, instead of *fixing* the bits that don't work properly like any *sensible* business would.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

True, although the Tory government sold off those bits that did generate the money, but didn't fix the bits that were wrong. So now, we have departments that still have problems and have a lack of funding making them worse..

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Where made money under state ownership? TSB? Rolls Royce possibly. Mind you, I don't think the state had any role in running banks or making aeroengines so selling those off was a good idea.

Parts of BR made money of course, which isn't the case for the same services under private ownership, despite higher passenger numbers and higher fares. Lubricating the interfaces and contracts takes up all the cash.

Having said that, a return to a state-owned monolith would be a backwards step - the infrastructure should be nationally-owned, along with maintenance and renewals, but I see nothing wrong in private companies being contracted to run trains by the national organisation (for instance city commuter services), but not a lot more. Train ownership and leasing is ok in the private sector too, means flexibility. Freight is actually doing very well privately, in fact freight trains are often more modern than passenger trains now, so you can leave that alone. Socially necessary services should be state-run though.

The interface between the network company and the operating companies needs to be thought out in such a way that the network company has an interest in the trains running reliably and the operating company has an say in the track maintenance. Quite how you do that (bringing wheel and rail together) I really haven't a clue, but the state railway certainly requires a division that actually operates trains, partly to get the insanity of modern signalling practice ended.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

However you can point a finger toward the railways. The French TGV network has a fairly simple cable arrangement around all road bridges. If these cables are snapped (by say a car landing on them) all signal in the area trip to red slowing / stopping trains and preventing or reducing the speed of the collision.

I think the way Virgin and GNER have managed to improve the onboard service is a good thing that would not have occurred without privatisation. However onboard service and rail marketing are both things that could be subcontracted, leaving the driving as part of the combined train / rail network interface.

Socially Necessary services can be subsidised. British Airways still recieved state subsidy to run routes to the Scottish Islands that would never be economically viable. This could be shown to be a successful privatisation of a socially necessary route.

/RantOn

And I love how they screw the regular commuters when things go wrong. I commute from Hertford North, the branch loop near Hatfield / Potters Bar. This loop can take about 10 trains an hour.

After both crashes, my commuter services were suspended to enable GNER to get their ICs through, so long distance services continued, but the thousands of commuters could not get to work. Where is the logic in that?

/RantOff

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Of course if a car lands on the tracks, the track circuit is tripped and the lights go to red anyway (unless you're using the cheaper axle counters which can't tell when a train is or isn't in a section*. Guess what Railtrack used on the West Coast? But I digress). At Great Heck the collision was almost immediate - trains can't slow down and stop in an instant no matter how many idiotic drivers fall asleep and drive onto the tracks or how many signals are put to red in front of the driver - there's a limit to how far you can go to stop the once-in-a-million accident (which wouldn't have killed anyone if there hadn't been a freight coming the other way at that exact moment). Trains are generally tougher than cars, several of which get written off, often with their drivers, every year on level crossings, due to driver stupidity.

*OK, they make a guess at whether there's a train in a section by counting the number of axles that entered it and counting the number that came out. If they match, it assumes there's no train, if they don't, it assumes there is one. Misuse of axle counters caused the 1990 Severn Tunnel crash (the only place in the UK where they were used under BR, as it's too wet to use track circuits).

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

At the end of the day I don't really care who owns or runs the railway system.I just want a safe,well run and economical service that arrives on time most of the time.Why this can't be provided is not my problem.I'm just the end user and until the safety record improves and the services improve I'm unlikely to use the present railway system if I can avoid it.
I'm certainly sorry for those who can't avoid using it.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I've seen some insurance claims on these and they are not pretty. Normally in a car crash you can look at the pictures of the car and work out what it was. Not when a train hits it.

The Train Owner also claims on your insurance for the repairs to the train. Thats a helluva expensive bill. You normally bend the first axel and damage the bodywork (or whatever you call it on a train).

Remember one particular claim.
Question - How fast were you travelling 15mph - How fast was the other car travelling 125mph (train) - Ouch.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

True, a State-owned monolith would be a bad thing (BR were better than the current lot at running the Railway, but they certainly weren't perfect).

However, if you get multiple organisations involved, you may end up with a situation like now, where problems are not being solved because the organisations involved are all blaming other organisations. If we can ensure that particular practice is stopped (God knows how). Still, if we do have a system as you describe above, some of the "blame" culture shown today will disappear.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I take great exception to that. The blame for the accident should not fall squarely on the shoulders of that **** as you so elequently call him.

Exactly... what if someone blew a tyre or some other type of crash, the result would have been the same. The Rail authority must take (I believe) the lions share of the blame by failing to ensure the safety of their passengers.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Pierre THERE are track circuits which did put the signals to RED (Danger in Railway speak), but he had been there literally seconds when the accident happened. The accident was unavoidable as the trains had NO TIME TO STOP. I think it is more up to the Highways Agency to ensure that cars don't leave the motorway on bridges (IE better fencing - catch fencing for example).

How fast can a train brake??? Think about it. It generally takes the space of 4 '4 aspect' signals for a 100 MPH or 125MPH train to stop. As these are spaced approx a mile, that is nearly 4 miles!

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Philosophical question - considering that no transport network since the world began has been able to ensure the safety of their passengers, why should this be expected of GNER/Railtrack in the exceptional circumstances at Great Heck.

When I was at school a lorry went into a schoolmates house, on a blind bend. Should the householder be responsible for inconveniently siting his house where lorries could come off the road and hit it? Ludicrous, but an exact analogy.

The lion's share of responsibility lies where the courts put it, on the driver who fell asleep. Secondarily you could say the people responsible for the design of the M62 bridge. The railway, which was in perfect working order and was there before the motorway, is entirely blameless. It's worth remembering that the collision with the vehicle was very minor, the deaths were the result of the derailed wheels damaging a set of points further up the line directing the express into the oncoming freight train. The exceptional consequences should not blind us to the realisation that this was a simple road traffic acccident caused by driving while unfit to drive.

Having said which, it's worth the Highways Agency conducting an investigation into road/rail overbridge safety, particularly on motorways. Quite what you do I'm unsure, a nice big concrete wall would be good, but practically guaranteed to total the driver, who of course survived Great Heck. How far back you run the wall is an interesting question too, there was a wall at the site of course, but the muppet was already off the road by the start of it.

The railway is entitled to work on the principle that, having taken reasonable steps* to stop objects on the line from killing people in trains, they can operate in safety. They should concentrate on miniming risk arising from the operation of the railway, not from the operation of private motor vehicles.

* fencing, track circuits, tripwires (Severn Tunnel has these) are all designed in part or in whole to keep foreign objects off the railway, or alert the railway to the presence of these. Also the express at Great Heck was composed of modern buckeye-coupled monocoque coaches which generally remain upright and in-line and intact in derailments, and did everything expected of them in the accident (look at the line of intact, upright coaches in the pictures after a 142mph impact).

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

One thing most people seem to forget is what happens to road vehicles in a 70MPH motorway pile up. To be frank, deaths could easily be into three figues, yet in Great Heck (a 142MPH impact) there were 10 deaths.

This is a testament to the strength of modern railway coaches, of which the BR Mk3 & MK4 are amoungst the best.

Lets just say (and one cannot get more factual) that there will never be a 100% safe way to get from A-B, but that railways with their numerous and improving systems are safer than most.

One thing I would like to add. The tell-tale wire in the Severn Tunnel is NOT a trip-wire (as in automatically activated by the presence of foreign objects). It is a device that is used to alert signalling staff of an incedent (be it an accident, de-railment or a broken down train or for staff to alert signallers about foreign object)and is tripped by railway staff. It's major function is to put the signals leading into the tunnel to Danger Therefore stopping trains entering the tunnel.

Also the Axle counters are about as reliable as track circuits in the Severn tunnel, needing attention approx once every other month.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

BBKing mentioned provate operators running profitable train routes on a nationalised infrastructure.

This to me defeats the object. Why let private comapnies cream off profits. This could be used by a BR type Govenment board to fund the more social services, and to fund safety improvements. I am all for the idea of leasing rolling stock (in a similar manner to what happens on the Northern Line of London Underground) as long as a strict contract is in force on availablilty and serviceability and that is a drivers (and "BR's") decision as to whether the train is safe. Then newer syle trains (similar to the new Virgin Pendilinos and Voyagers) could be introduced cost effectively. Also BR had initiative of their own (eg they introduced the purple suited helpers at major intercity stations.... Something that was initially removed by both Virgin & GNER upon privatisation - and re-introduced by both after they found their previous decision a mistake Also anyone remember "Silver Standard"?? This was great. For a small fee you had standard class seating but 1st class service.. Cheaper than 1st class and great when you wanted coffee, a meal and a paper from Euston or King's Cross.) I am not saying that BR was perfect - FAR FROM IT. They were a victim of being the Cinderella of Government Spending and some extremely poor management decisions. But they were finally getting it (generally) right when they were privatised, and were doing much better than most (if not all) of the TOCs running today.

IMHO the only sucessful private train company has been M40trains (Chiltern Railways). They have stuck to the culture of safety found in BR(They also have APT and insisted that all their new trains (ordered before Southall) had it fitted. Even though there was only one supplier of the equipment who was ripping them off.) They also benefitted from a recently upgraded line and fairly modern rolling stock anyway, and used sucessful marketing and good management to stay safe & profitable.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

great to have such knowledgeable debate in this thread :tu:

@cjmillsnun - your point about private companies creaming off profits as their 'fat cats' accumulate bonuses for poor performance, is apt.

I didn't mean by my previous post to imply I was favouring a fully state owned Railway, but I do believe that the 'wheels' side of it should be somehow regulated to be more in favour of the customer. Including the routes which may need subsidising. :)

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Here's an example - a local PTE, such as in Glasgow, should be able to get their train services run by whoever they choose, the state railway or a private company. After all, Merseyside is doing roughly that under a modification of the existing privatisation where their trains are run by a joint venture between the Dutch Railways and Serco, who run the Docklands Light Railway. Again a bit of privatisation idiocy there, in that foreign state-owned (and presumably state-subsidised) railways are allowed to operate UK passenger trains, but not the UK state-owned railway.

Long-distance Inter-City services should probably be state run, for no other reason than proper through ticketing and connections, and best use of track. However, there has got to be scope for people like Hull Trains who operate a niche service from Kings Cross to Hull (and I believe Cleethorpes/Grimsby) where the main operator GNER isn't interested. Would be a shame to lose them I think.

Chiltern of course benefit from being the only operator of brand new trains on a brand new railway (the so called Total Route Modernisation that replaced pretty much everything in the early 90s). They've also benefitted from the West Coast nightmare by offering a service to Birmingham that, while longer, actually gets there, and is cheaper too. I certainly always use them to get to my parents in Birmingham.

Rolling stock procurement was always a nightmare under BR due to the long memories at the Treasury of the amount of money wasted in the 50s building steam engines and lots of small, early, untested diesels. After that they weren't really allowed to spend what they wanted, we were lucky to get the HST (being a cheap stopgap before widespread electrification that never came).

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Is this like the pair that run down all LU tube tunnels at shoulder height? The driver touches the pair together gets a little tingling sensation and the signals all go red?

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

If I remember what I read in Private Eye correctly, another part of the problem is that for large capital investment projects, the Treasury will give a loan to a state-run organisation. The interest on this loan is supposed to be set slightly higher than the average rate that a bank would use (the idea being that the Bank of England wants more money back than it would get if it merely invested the money in a bank). The problem came because whenever BR wanted money, they would be charged two or three times the average rate.

I should stress though, I read the above in Private Eye over ten years ago, so I could be wrong (the original article could be wrong, or I could be remembering it wrong).

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

The Treasury certainly required a return on investment above what seemed reasonable (and different to that applied to roads). 8% is a figure I'm dredging up. This was one of the causes of the astonishingly cheap electrification of the East Coast line, £306m. They did have to cut corners a bit on the overhead wires, which is why you often hear of the lines down on the ECML, as the posts were placed wider apart to get the cost down. Compare the £306m (mid-80s prices admittedly) with the £280m recently quoted to a company that wanted to upgrade the short single track branch from Llandudno Junction to Blaenau Ffestiniog for heavier freight traffic. On the whole, infrastructure improvements under privatisation cost about 3 times the price under BR.

I probably have that old Eye somewhere, got 15 years of copies (many of them in a pile by the bed, as my other half will tell you at length).

One of the 'benefits' of privatisation would have been the freedom to borrow as much as the market would lend, or in other words to plunge a national strategic resource into debt, which is more or less what happened.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Exactly the point I was making.. I seem to remember 8% as the figure too..

Anyway, as a side point, it would be interesting to know how much was paid in subsidies to persuade companies to take on franchises. I seem to remember it was in the high hundreds of millions, if not the low billions.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

On a lighter note:
:D

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Similar. The wire is actually very easy to break by hand, and when broken all signals instantly go to danger and an alarm goes off at the signal panel. The driver (or guard) then contacts the signalman by signal post telephone.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

If it's that easy to break by hand presumably it would be broken in the event of a derailment? In the Severn Tunnel instance you'd want it to break if the other line was fouled, as the axle counters, even if they were working, wouldn't detect a fouling, and of course it's dark (of course you've got the poor guard slogging up the line with some detonators, which can't be fun in a wet four mile tunnel).

Can't remember off the top of my head whether the wire in 1990 was broken by hand or by contact with the trains - since it was a fairly low speed shunt I suspect by hand though, but IIRC the opposite line wasn't fouled.

Edit - teach me not to check, the crash was on December 7th, 1991.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I've noticed that they have stopped using Concrete are putting Steel sleepers in on the East Coast Line now!

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Definitely by should be broken by hand, as they (there are two - one each side) are on the tunnel walls.

With the reliability of the axle counters, they may as well have stuck with track circuits. I supose the only advantage is that the engineers don't have to walk through a cold, dark, wet tunnel to fix it.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Sorry to resurrect an old thread. But there was an interesting programme on UKTV Documentary last night about Southall.

I gave details about the crash not shown on TV before, eg how some people died, and how one of the MK3 coaches managed to be bent into a U shape.

Overall though, to think only 9 people died as a result of a 90MPH accident. Would this happen in a 60MPH RTA involving a 1970's coach??? No way. Just shows that BR knew about crash absorbtion when they deigned the Mk3 Coach.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Did BR make their own rolling stock then?

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Yes - I think you can still see rolling stock with BREL (British Rail Engineering Lts IIRC) on it. It was BR's own engineers that designed the APT, which by all accounts, was just about ironed out and ready to roll when the Government pulled the plug on it.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Towny is correct,

BR designed (and built) just about all its own rolling stock from its creation in 1948 to its demise in the early 1990s. One of its last designs was the Mk4 Coach, as used by GNER.

The Mk3 was designed originally for the IC125 of which the prototype went into testing in the early '70s. This is widely regarded to be THE standard for strength in passenger railway vehicles, and was the type of coach that was involved in the GWT trains in the Southall and Ladbrooke Grove accidents.

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

Interesting thing I discovered this morning.

When Connex South Eastern ran our local franchise, they announced they had done a survey and found that people wanted them to redesign the Networker 465 carriages with fewer seats so more people could stand (Of course, I can imagine people saying "Yes, put fewer seats in. If I am standing, I take up less space").

South Eastern trains (who are running the franchise temporarily after Connex were sacked) have announced they are replacing the seats taken out (and actually adding more foldable seats) because, you guessed it, the public wants them..

Re: Deprivatisation of railways
 

I have to wonder exactly how that survey was phrased to get that result!

I wonder if they used Dogbert's consultancy agency...?

"Would you like us to put electrodes on your genitals or would you prefer to say that carriages should have fewer seats...?"

Of course the idea that they might put on *more coaches* probably never crossed their minds...!!!