Spot on.

Agree on that.

Even I think taking back ownership of the railways is a reasonable idea, so long as we don't go back to the old British Rail days of late, old, uncomfortable trains, with no facilities, no investment and total disinterest from rude and incompetent staff.



Hate Northern Rail with a passion, but it has to be said, their trains are by and large on time, even if they are old, smelly, too small and garish looking. They're the rail equivalent of the local council.



Virgin Trains have shown how train travel should be done. After a shaky start, they're now pretty much always on time. They've introduced pendolinos, shortened journey times and added excellent customer service into the mix. Trouble is, they're bloody dear unless you book three months in advance.



No, if we're going to renationalise the railways, then nothing less than the standards you get with SNCF in France will do. But even that's not perfect. Their TGVs make a lot of money, but most of that profit, plus a lot of public money, is diverted into their regional services that lose silly amounts.



And then you have the problem that rail travel isn't always massively convenient. It's great if you live in towns and cities, as you can walk to the stations, it's no good for those who live in the suburbs or in rural locations. Surely there needs to be a massive programme of station building out of town, with lots of car parking available, so people can drive to their nearest station, and get the train the rest of the way? I'd certainly do that, especially if the cost of parking was modest, and added to the cost of the rail ticket, and even better if a nationwide Oyster-style system was implemented.



If the government wanted the railways, they'd take them back, but I'm sure that successive politicians have looked at the books, and looked at the kind of investment that would be needed, and shut the book very quickly.



The sad fact is it will probably take 30 years or more of solid investment to turn the railways into a proud network that is modern, on time, fast, convenient, frequent, fare-dodger proof and reasonably priced. Even if the country had the money, what government is going to instigate this kind of project, with it in the back of their minds that the 'other party' might cancel this investment when they get in power?

No they were not, they had been largely sorted out, just in time to sell them off BTW.

Sorted out? How?



Apart from being divided into "sections", ready for those sections to be taken over by private companies, I don't see how.

I can't help but notice that my ticket from Leeds to Birmingham on the 8.11 on Monday morning has just arrived priced at £53.



The last time I used the service about six months ago, and previous to that, the price was always around £41, same service, same operator, same time train.



Thats not a bad price increase to get away with and I'll bet my seat is occupied again.

Just booked a Hull/London KX return.

Still only £20 when booked in advance and prepared to travel off peak.

Doesn't matter what time you book the Leeds/Brum route, its the same price, even the 03.15 train is the same price

(and I'm NOT getting up that early).



The other thing thats tweaking my tail is that my usual hotel is fully booked because the Conservative Party Conference is in town next week - bloody good news that is, my train arrives in Leeds from Darlington which means it'll be full of North Yorkshire landowners in tweed on their way to cheer on Panface - I'm having to stay in a poxy Travel Lodge out of town which has 83 reviews on Trip Advisor the best of which says "I suppose it was ok", look out for my Facebook updates on Monday

Back in the "bad old days" poor old Peter Parker had to run a railway with very low investment from the government.

He always said that if he was allowed to raise money in the same way that any company could, he could revitalise BR without the need to privatise.

Successive flavours of government wouldn't allow it.



Then it got privatised and loads of investment flooded in, in the form of subsidies, that could just as easily have been provided to BR without the need for loads of it to flow straight out again in the form of dividends and "profit".

On ticketing, the three months thing is wonderful – if you can book that far in advance. But I cannot often do that, so end up paying an incredibly varied range of prices. Crazy.



Robinson mentioned the French system – it's the only one outside of the UK that I've now had fairly extensive experience of travelling on, and it's brilliant.



Although I would say that the local services are also good and every bit as valuable as the big ones.



If you're interested, there's a little bit [url=http://thevoluptuousmanifesto.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/stage-6-la-tour-de-carol-to.htmlhere[/url about the effect of maintaining such small, local lines – and indeed, how it's funded.

I always thought, perhaps wrongly, that privatisation was introduced to allow for competition, and therefore customer choice. It was a surprise therefore to me that railways were privatised, as it's pretty impossible for competition on a route that is fixed on steel rails (all this praise for Virgin makes me think I'd love to use their trains between Sheffield and London, but I can't as East Midlands trains have the monopoly on that). A flawed model from the start for me and time to take back railway ownership.

It was rushed through by John major as well as he didn't think they would get it done before they lost the next election. He freely admits this himself. It was done for ideological reasons, not to give us choice.



The same is true with the utilities. While we can switch providers unlike with rail where we are stuck with the local franchisee the utilities are in effect a cartel whatever anyone says about the regulators powers.