As many of you already know British railwasys are in a dire state right now.
From 1923-1947 all rail services were ran by 4 large railway companies.
– Great Western Railway
– London, Midland and Scottish Railway
– London and North Eastern Railway
– Southern Railway
Because of the competition I expect services were ran well, correct? I want to know if the British Redditors think this model should return
14 comments
Rather have it ran by one publicly owned company. Each city can run their own inner city trains/trams etc so to speak.
What competition? They ran services in different parts of the country. They were not competing with each other except on a tiny number of routes where two companies could reach the same place e.g. LMS and LNER to Scotland.
British rialways have ALWAYS been in a dire state because they started in a big higgledy piggledy way. We were first- we had no role models.
The Big 4 came into being because WW1 destroyed the economic viability of all the little companies and the Big 4 were abolished because WW2 bankrupted them.
No. All railways and railway infrastructure should be owned and operated by one nationalised company. Competition is all well and good but railways are natural monopolies and having several companies develop the same technologies in parallel is wasteful.
There wasn’t really any competition.
If you lived in London and wanted to visit your gran in Newcastle, you wouldn’t go to Brighton instead just because Southern was cheaper than LNER.
I’d rather we bring back British Rail.
Some of us are old enough to remember British Rail being shit before privatisation.
While I’m not advocating for things to remain as they are, don’t go mistaking nationalisation for automatically being good. It needs a cross-party governmental long term vision and there’s fuck-all chance of that happening right now.
That’s not competition? And that is basically how it still is, just with a few more than four. The issue with our railways is lack of funding and too many car owners who get their pitchforkes out anytime anyone suggests actually subsiding environmentally friendly rail travel with their taxes. Unlike other countries we don’t demand a good well funded rail system sadly so instead we have a system that tries to be profitable which is impossible given the way passenger flows work, unlike airlines you can’t just reroute to a popular route at a given time, and for every train you run in one direction in rush hour, you’re running one back mostly empty, that’s before small rural lines – people want them to be profitable and that’s just not possible. They need to be properly funded by the government like in other countries. Just look at Germany and France introducing €49 a month tickets for the entire country while we pay that for a 30 minute commute to the nearest city
There was competition but it manifested in very expensive and needless duplication of routes and stations. Apart from the named trains, punctuality was poor. They barely made their running costs, with only the Southern reliably making a profit in the low two digits, purely because of the commuter trade.
Investment was low. Again except for the Southern which gambled heavily on electrification, the railways were juiced for the money. Even major stations were left to the dirt and grime. Crewe, for example, didn’t get any refurb or upgrade for the entire existence of the LMS.
You might as well just bring back British Rail, although I am sympathetic to the idea of a nationalised railway using regional brands like GWR.
AFAIK the Big Four are Metallica Slayer Anthrax and Megadeth. Although personally I’d sub in Exodus instead of Megadeth
What competition? north west England it’s northern rail, unless it’s longer then it’s transpennine, or a avanti to London, nothing else, no choice really
For those highlighting the success of other countries rail networks, there’s potentially a reason for that. Other European rail operators are big investors in UK rail companies and use the dividends to subsidise the cost of their domestic networks:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/news/europe-mercilessly-mocks-uk-government-27771225.amp
Metallica, Megadeath, Slayer and Anthrax?
Or do you mean Wrestlemania, Summerslam, Survivor Series and Royal Rumble?
Either way yes! Please bring them back to the UK.
I think there is a place for part of the network being locally managed in the public sector. At the very least Scottish and Welsh railways managed by the devolved authorities, Isle of Wight council the rail there.