It's depressing that these campaigns just wont ever ammount to anything.

If every soul in the country signed a petition to bring back BR, then they'd just double the ammount of franchises and raise the ticket prices even further above inflation?

What you SHOULD do is start a petition to make the railways more confusing and irrelevent, and then the government will read this and, after giving it to a few think tanks and whatnot, renationalise the railway.

Or maybe they'll just go where the money is.

Lets remember that British Rail was not wonderful and had many faults. For years it had a policy of managed decline and running down of services in order to close them - the Settle and Carlisle was a prime example. OK it didn't happen, but that was due to a huge public campaign not British Rail policy.

Their freight policy was appalling a monolithic structure concentrating simply on bulk and unable to be flexible or really competitive. Much of the freight traffic on the railway today would have been lost years ago as it has been in Ireland under similar management.

Lets remember the reasons for those things is because BR was either bound by legislation or denied any funding, that forced them to act that way?

BR when given the chance did some pretty amazing stuff.

Well now, "British Rail was not wonderful"! , "Mmm", that comment alone needs to be answered, but if I answered it the way I would like I would probably get banned from this site and I DONT WANT THAT.


So very quickly I will say,Sorry Jack you are wrong me old son, dont blame British Rail management for their failings AND closed lines etc,blame the Government,the management was only doing what they were told by the Government of the day.
British Railways and British Rail WAS wonderful, especially to work for, and if you wish to continue this topic with me please send me an e mail, and then we can really get down to the "nitty gritty"!!!!!!!!!!!!


48111

I worked for British Rail for a while in train control.

Yes there at the root of this was a lack of funding and political will - and true not all management was lacking in vision, and certainly - given the funding now we might have had a better railway - but that is far from proven with state systems.

We all applaud the French for TGV but has anyone travelled over the secondary network it can be dire as elsewhere in Europe. Eastern European state networks can be incredibly awful - my wife and I have travelled extensively on them don't go to the loos anywhere either on the trains or the stations and as for air conditioning well take my word for it you either roast or freeze!

I rest my case on BR's freight policy we must never re-nationalise that it will be the end.

Give me your email!!

I worked for them too it was NOT WONDERFUL!!

I have two e mail addresses, I have sent you both, look forward to hearing from you.

48111