[hairyhandedfool]

The government has made all of the mistakes on the railway since privatisation was envisaged. accepting that privatisation itself was a mistake, there were too many franchises to start with, the tracks should have stayed government owned, the trains should have belonged to ther franchises not outside companies, the franchises varied too much in length. then when it was all up and running they stepped in again, "this route shouldn't be yours it should be theirs with their shorter more cramped trains" for example xc lost bhm-cdf trains because railtrack speed restrictions made their service impossible to run, it wasn't the only route that was impossible to run but they picked it anyway. they now have it back but can't go to scotland from manchester. and how they can claim that tpe doesn't belong in xc is beyond me.