Tanya Jackson
provides an engaging overview of the organisational life of British
Rail, it is an affectionate account – which makes the case that the
50 years interval of public ownership was the most golden of our
railways’ various golden ages in their nigh on 200 year history.
As we bid farewell
to two iconic BR legacies with the withdrawal this year of the HST
and the Pacer, one beloved the other ridiculed but both in fact
successful responses to BR’s rolling stock needs, nostalgia for BR
in is fashion.
We can play “what
if” imagining where BR would be today if it haven’t been broken
up – passenger numbers have risen but we can debate whether that is
because or in-spite of privatisation etc. Would the economies of
scale of a single national organisation have been paying dividends,
or inflated bureaucracy crippling innovation (because in BR’s
history you can find plenty of examples of both).
We might suggest it
all went wrong when BR was made to sell its ships and hotels – it
went from providing an end to end logistic solution / customer
experience to “just” running a railway – or maybe that was when
it came into its own.
The current Williams
Review is perhaps going to kick off another major reorganisation of
the way our railways are run – it seems unlikely that the answer
will be a triumphant return for BR but lets hope it doesn’t throw
the baby out with the bathwater.
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