Great Western Coffee Shop

The current franchise model is to say the least poor, franchise operators try to keep cost low by refurbishing stock instead of buying new(mainly due to the short amount of time to recoup the costs).


So my question is, would a full privatisation model(pre:1947) work in the current time?

If each area's where to be returned to their original form, GWR, LNER, SR, LMS, with each franchise merging into the specific company once the contract had expired.  Network Rail being split between all four companies, and then merging into each, with a small section left a outsourcer for the measurement trains and other equipment etc. And the leasing companies being axed and each train company taking ownership of their stock.  And the company shares could be 60:40 (40% shareholders/stock market), (60% - 10% staff shares, with the remaining 50% being owned by the company, and managed by a board of directors employed by the company)

Myself, I believe this would work, here's why:
1) It would take all cost off the taxpayer funding the railway
2) Where as currently the Dft makes decisions on infrastructure, the individual train company could, and work it around the best time possible, meaning that overcrowding, delays etc would be more short term than long term issues.
3) More investment could be made, as it could be recouped over the full working life of the train by that train company.
4) It would also allow the swapping of trains during the change over from franchising, meaning a more concise fleet could be achieved.
5) With the train company running the infrastructure as well as the train service, decisions could be made easier than the current model which sees the Dft telling Network Rail who manage the timetables, and hand them over to the franchise.



I would love to know your thought on this, could it ever work? Would it reduce cost long term?  Or is it to impractical and expensive.

No ........ not in the old big four companies, most if not all of the competing routes have gone, BR were driven down that path by Government to cut costs and become efficient.

If the national network as it stands to day were to be vertically integrated  :o ie a TOC became the infrastructure operator they would always give preference to their trains over other TOC and FOCs irrespective of what legislation was put in place there would always be loop holes.
 
Certainly the franchise system is not working very well, Government departments are just not very good at efficient contracts and procurement     

The tax payer is paying less and less this has been successive Government policy for the last 20 odd years that's why the fares are so high, however there is still a large input of public money hence the Government will have a say in how it is used so pile on layers of bureaucracy because the railways have to justify what it does to you and me the tax payer or at least that's what the suits in the ministry say.

MPs have never forgiven or trusted the railways ever since since William Huskisson MP was run over on the 15 September 1830

I think if it were done it would not be right to assume that the 1923 geographical split would be right for today as there was duplication of routes within companies and it might be better to change the boundaries to promote competition.  

Regarding your specific statements:


It is not clear to me how this proposal reduces costs to the industry as a whole. It might reduce the money passsed between a TOC and NR, but that does not reduce the industry's costs.  


The costs of the railway come from government of the fare box. As I understand it at present the fare box pays to operate the current railway and the government pays for improvements.  Unless fares are to go up therefore, government will still be involved in decisions on improvements.  

Please also remember that most of the improvements in the 1930's were financed by low interest government loans to promote employment.  


Yes it could, but the same could be said of longer franchises.  Chiltern has demonstrated the benefit of long franchises.  


In GWR the franchise boundary and the proposed company would be the same so there would be no change.


There might be some improvement here, but I am not sure there would be as much benefit as people claim.

Other questions to be answered are:

What would happen to cross country routes? Most of these routes would go across several companies. Look at a pre-war timetable and many of these services were not as good as they are now.

Would there be damage to the freight sector where many of the flows would be across company?

Would open access still be allowed?  Arguably this has stimulated companies to introduce new services to areas that were previously poorly served.  

You seem to miss understand what I said about a train company becoming the infrastructure manager.  It would only be for the routes they operate i.E  GWR would managed GWR territory.

The competing routes could easily be introduced, and what is to stop the government giving loans as and where needed, instead of buying a brand new fleet of Japanese bullet trains, or proposing a very expensive high speed train line to Birmingham, it could have let the train company buy the trains and reopened the Paddington to Birmingham Snow Hill line, which would only need redoubling on the New North Mainline and a few other places such as High Wycombe, along with some speed improvements, to match that of the West Coast!

Interesting question.   I'll let others answer - I'll just pop up up and say "welcome to the forum, devonexpress".

To Reply
 So what your saying is that brining back the New North Mainline and having a faster Paddington to Birmingham to connect with CrossRail & Heathrow Express would be a bad thing???



Regarding your specific statements:
 I did not say reduce cost to the industry, I said the taxpayer meaning that train companies would recoup investment from fares, as well as other sources such a freight etc.

We're not on about the present system, I am talking about an old 1930s model, which is used abroad and works well! If the railway company manages the railway, it is removed from government control, unless planning permission is needed.

Please also remember that most of the improvements in the 1930's were financed by low interest government loans to promote employment.  

  Yes but think how much more could be done if the company owned all the tracks and stations.

I don't think that there has ever been full privatisation. Government has always legislated for routes, safety, charges, service standards etc. It has also interfered in company structures preventing or enforcing mergers.

A truly private competitive model is only possible if an industry is at 2/3 capacity, i.e it has about 50% excess available for competition. Only a hungry lion hunts. That's why we can't have competitive railways, hospitals, schools etc - they'd have base costs 50%  higher than a planned system.

If the truth is told, our present system is pretty good. It could be better if the TOC's and NR reported to a strategic BR plc, with power to direct better practice and reporting to DfT.

A regional system would only end up with the GWR reinstalling the broad gauge and nationally, 25 different types of Pandrol clip.

OTC

Even in Victorian time, railways were built under acts of parliament and safety systems which started from very little became regulated.   Perhaps the "Wild West" in the USA was the prime example of an unregulated private railway system - but that's from hearsay and not from personal knowledge.    The light railways act ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Railways_Act_1896 ) was - as I understand it - a mechanism to allow less regulated railway construction - "more private" if you like.  To my knowledge, just one such railway (partially) remains as part of the UK national network today, but a number of others have made it into the heritage railway fold and operate under light  railway orders.

Perhaps "fullest privatisation" - the extreme position - would be the entire network using the heritage ethos.   From personal experience, that would mean £10 return fares for a distance of less that 3 miles each way, turning up at the station and finding a "no trains today" sign bacuse of a stock failure, and turning away potential customers who arrived at the station because there were too many people (that's a report from the last couple of days).   The 'good' companies would make sure the worst excesses didn't happen - the bad would take advantage, and the short-termism might prevail.   I recall some refranchising at the end of the SRA (Strategic Rail Authority) era which was harsh on regional and local lines. Without even that safety net it's not hard to envisage significant loss of stations - and indeed a number of lines - across the South West.   It could have been a "new Beeching Axe".

Even fares were controlled to some extent (1d per mile parliamentary trains).

For freight they were deemed "common carriers" (untill as late as the 1960's) which meant if I understand it correctly they had to carry anything at a fixed rate per ton mile (regardless of whether it was coal, milk or gold watches).  This was OK until there was competition from unregulated road hauliers who could pick off the best loads and undercut the railways. 


That's a really good insight.  I hadn't thought of it, but now you mention it is obvious. 

With the cost of capital, most improvements would not be justified on commercial grounds alone so would need government grants so capacity would not increase. 


I think that's about it, but politicians will always want to meddle. 


Despite the obvious economic advantage of standardisation that is the way it tends to go.

I did not miss your point  :)  There very few routes that are solely single train company operated (Isle of Wright and a few main land branch lines) all principle and secondary routes have at least freight or the potential for freight to operate over them, a vertically integrated route the TOC would give priority to their trains even if allowing other operators on their infrastructure was built into the sale any future train paths would be come subject to contractual negotiations.

If for instance the whole of the Western were sold to the First Group would they

• Be willing to pay full market price of the land and assets
  Take on the full liability of the debt
  

That is not what I meant.  I think that 4 was too few.  There was no-longer competition between MR and LNWR on many routes and GCR and GNR of other routes.  There were more examples in the Southern. 


If the government is no longer paying some of the costs either the costs have to come down or fares have to go up unless there is a huge increase in capacity that can be paid for out of the farebox with a large profit.  I doubt that as most improvement schemes need to factor in social costs to get a positive CBA. 


Up to a point but in the end the Oxford line has been funded on NR's credit card as agfter the crash, Chiltern could not raise the capital.

Edited to correct quotes

Since it only seem to be two members commenting, and seem to be very opposed to the idea, lets just have a little think...

Heathrow Airport - private, infrastructure, day to day running all managed by a private firm, yet it can still afford to improve things.

British Airways - Has a brand new fleet of 787's, A380s & A350's mostly funded by bank loans which BA pay off over the lifetime of the aircraft.


So lets customise this for the railways...

For example GWR -  (franchises GWR, Arriva Trains Wales, Parts of London Midland & Chiltern)

Somebody put that First Group would buy it, but did I ever mention that?? No.

I clearly stated that a new company would be formed, 60% company owned, 40% shareholder owned.

Since the current franchise GW franchise has to pay £68 million to government from 2015 - 2019, what if that was directly pumped back into the railways (i.e it never leaves)  instead of going to the Government who then give it to Network Rail.  Any surplus could be either government loaned or bank loaned and paid off over 30 to 40 years.

The current model has to much bureaucracy, for example, the franchise TOC can paint a station, only up to the stairwell height, anything above the stairwell (canopies, buildings etc) have to be painted by Network Rail, at another date, and a different time.

If full privatisation was to happen the RC(Railway Company) could do it all in one go.

I do note that you are suggesting various effects - but the ultimate question is what would be your objectives of the changes?
Efficiency? Social? Political? Changing the slope to the playing field to help other transport modes? To create profitable companies?

What sort of fare and service levels would you like to see?  What size of network?  What (if any) guarantees of any services at all running beyond the short term?   What level of profit is reasonable if you have a totally private company?  I'm noting that your quoted example (Heathrow) is private rail and charges £2 per mile for journeys, no off-peak - is that OK /expected as a general rate? Would you be suggesting that local, regional or national government in any form might purchase service levels, or leave it all completely to the free market?

It seems an interesting time to make that statement given the two recent franchise awards of Northern Rail and East Anglia have gone to bidders who have promised to buy very significant numbers of brand new trains, and we also have a significant amount of new rolling stock arriving on the Greater Western franchise - not to the mention the large fleets for Thameslink, Crossrail, Scotrail and SWT now arriving.

By contrast, the one long term franchise, Chiltern, (aside from the 4 Class 172s in 2011) has only introduced cascaded Class 170s (reclassified 168/3s) and very old (but very well refurbished) Mk III carriages in recent years.

Don't forget that the Mark IIIs werea Wrexham & Shropshire efurb, not Chiltern - they just fell lucky when the former went bust...

I think devonexpress was referring to the actual airport rather than 'Heathrow Express' ?

However Chiltern have spend sizeable sums on the Evergreen projects.

I think so too, but comparing private rail (very much as suggested) at Heathrow with current rail (as currently run) seems a rather good comparison to a model that Devonexpress is asking about.   We could also compare to the cost of a return journey from Portmadoc to Blaenau Ffestiniog, Taw Valley Halt to Blundson, or Llanberis to Snowdon - each fully "private", and each significantly higher in cost mile for mile than National Rail under the current system, but such comparisons aren't like for like - they're like compering a hairbrush to a tin of beans.

They agreed to pay increased track access charges once the work was completed.   Network Rail paid for the infrastructure work in the first place.   Chiltern's PR includes a lot of smoke and mirrors, as is usual.

Paul

.............are there any countries which have fully/near to fully privatised railways and how successful are they?

Eurostar is a private company, although with a large French government stake in it!

Most other European governments manage to give their nationalised industries much more freedom to get on with the job without micromanagement from the government.

This is exactly what I've been trying to convey.  Take the Great Western ,its had problems since 1995 of running on time, delayed trains mainly due to the infrastructure, and its taken over 20 years to do anything about it!

If that was private company, I believe thing's would have moved on and progressed a long time ago.

Would a privatised rail company have kept the Cotswold Line open in the 1970s? Or the TransWilts in the 2000s? Very possibly not. Yet look at them both now. We know what a railway operated purely to meet its own costs would look like - the Serpell Report showed us, and it wasn't pretty.


UK rail subsidies were estimated to be £4bn in 2015. Road subsidies for HGVs alone were estimated to be £5bn. One estimate of the total annual subsidy to motoring was £10bn, even before you look at the market cost of free parking and the like. Despite this, railways cause many fewer deaths and much less pollution. How about getting the roads off the public purse before looking at the much smaller impact of railways?

How about you work on your public skills before launching a personal attack which has nothing to do with the main question :P

Pardon?  What prompted that reply?  Although I have never met Richard I do know he has a lot of knowledge on his subject. 

Could you please explain what I am missing? Your comment seems more than just a little off the mark to me.

What on earth was personal about rhat response? Are you an HGV subsidy receiver perchance?

This site provides a forum for discussion of various views - but explicitly requires members not to resort to personal attacks. From our introduction (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1761.0):

Neither I nor my fellow administrators can see anything what so ever in Richard's posts that make them personal attacks - in fact I can't think of anyone less likely to indulge in such behaviour.    I do, however, see a personal attack against Richards by Devonexpress - "How about you work on your public skills" looks to me really nasty. At initial reading, it looks like at attempt to divert attention from a good question to which devonexpress has no easy answer.

Devonexpress - please explain (your choice of here, or by personal message to any of the admin or moderator team) how you have been personally attacked, and why we should not treat your follow up exactly as such a personal attack.  I and other members would probably much appreciate further background to your line of discussion, including more about the background as to why you're asking, and with further technical comment and thought on matters raised upthread.  A confirmation (here in public, at the same level as your original post) that you did not intend a personal attack on Richard would also be appreciated, and an apology should you decide (with hindsight) that your post was out of order.

edit to correct typo

Considering I was reading it a very late at night, and have just read it again I was going to admit to being mistaken. However since the moderator/admin team have now decided to gang up, then NO, I shall not apologise.

And as for the question I started off with, nobody has actually answered it at all, its all been a very long word response implying "shut up, we like how it works at the minute" Therefore stick the forum up your arse!

Thank you for posting that response, devonexpress.

There is really no 'ganging up' by the admin / moderator team here: we were all simply rather surprised at the tone of your previous post - and indeed other members of the Coffee Shop forum outside the admin team also showed some concern.

I'm therefore going to invite you to reconsider the instruction in your post quoted above.  On this forum, we don't slap a ban on anyone at the first opportunity: we try to encourage an ongoing sensible debate on the subject.

Chiltern may look good to the outsider or the longer-distance traveller, but they have made few real improvements for local journeys south of Bicester. The frequency of service to many stations is no better than 40 years ago and any shorter journey times are only to avoid the local trains delaying their lucrative Birmingham and Bicester Village services. Without the requirements of the franchise they would have closed a number of stations long ago.

I am no fan of privatisation.  In fact I would prefer the railways to be renationalised.  BR wasn't great but it did provide MUCH better value than the current set up. 

BUT the current set up is the worse of all worlds.  The problem is that the likes of First have no "skin in the game".  They own very little because they are no more than thinly capitalised spivs.  That means that when the revenue predictions or performance go wrong (as they will eventually) they can walk away (see NX and SeaCo) or demand fresh subsidies (see Southern).  I'd be happy with NR staying more or less as it is now but with the TOCs moving to be much more like the FOCs or else just being contractors rather than franchisees.

It is instructive, I think, to note that whilst the FOCs have doubled their productivity since privatisation due to investment in equipment (which BR would never have ordered), the productivity of TOCs (ie the real cost of moving a passenger a mile) is virtually unchanged since the days of BR despite record levels of investment, advances in technology and a year on year increase in customers of the kind that most businesses would kill for.     

I'm mindful of the rolling stock problem created by BR that we are still being forced to travel on, many years after it should have been replaced, and its taken this long within privatisation to get a real handle on renewals.

What would have happened if BR was still around I dread to think. I can't believe those around in the dying years of BR can seriously want them back....we'll be back to square one with no renewals in the next generation either. So hit the repeat button in around 50 years time.

The Franchise system is how the government made it. 

The TOCs are "thinly capitalised" because that is how the government wanted it with the trains owned by leasing companies.  Notwithstanding this First Group did buy some additional HSTs a few years ago - I assume creating their own separate leasing company to do it. 

Chiltern did put some capital into track improvements earlier in their franchise, but then they had a 20 year franchise. Government, however decided they did not want any more 20 year franchises so TOCs cannot put money in unless they have a very short term return on their investment. 

As for TOCs walking away their ability to do this is down to the terms of the franchise contract. DfT tried to improve these with some system of guarantees but these were so complicated that they led to the collapse of the whole west coast and GW franchise renewals a few years back. I am not sure what they are doing on this for new franchises now being let.   

The alternatives as I see it are:

a) More long term franchises like Chiltern with incentives for franchisees to invest;
b) Everything being open access and leave it to the market what services are run (that would be the FOC model); or
b) Management contracts like London Overground where all the investment comes from government (if I understand correctly).

agree that any of those 3 options would be preferable to the phoney capitalism system we have now. Your options a) and b) have the advantage of attracting private sector investment which probably means more investment than option c). 

Of course the really expensive investments (billions rather than mere millions) are needed in the infrastructure rather than the train fleets.  Given that NR is on the government's books anyway perhaps that is a minor consideration.

And NR are already having their wings clipped having to move work into CP6, meaning less new work can be accomodated in that period assuming similar spending levels.

So the downward spiral under State control has already started. Be careful what you wish for!

Option b) would mean serious competition across the peaks with no one wanting the socially required very early & late (except maybe Fridays & Saturdays if NR acquiese). You need franchises/management contracts in order to impose those on operators, not a free for all open access.

Again, be careful what you wish for!

I have though of an option d)

d) open access (as (b)), but with government contracting operators to provide the non-commercial services. 

The main disadvantage as I see it for this is that it has been tried for bus services outside London as as manifestly failed. 

Again what would happen to fares?  On some routes competition might force them down, but on others they could just go up.  I am not sure full privatisation has kept bus fares down. 

why do we need to let TOCs set their own fares? 

We don't, but that is the FOC model. 

You might not be a fan of privatisation but it works, you only have to look at British Airways to see how well it has done since it was taken off the public books, this is why I firmly believe the railways could flourish as well.  It might be a bit expensive short term, but long term costs would likely come down.  Most of the problems we have had with the Great Western in the past 20 years since it was franchised has actually been down to infrastructure or the trains being too old.

I wonder if anyone has the numbers on how much it is going to cost GWR to lease trains, staff/management costs, operating costs, and income for the 2015 -2019 franchise.  As all I know is that they are paying £68 million to the government to operate it. It would be interesting to work out how much income is made by passenger and freight traffic and what is going out.

Privatisation worked for BA.  It works on the freight railway.  It was a failure in the bus industry. On the infrastructure front it was tried once (Railtrack) and failed with a loss of both money and lives.

On the passenger railway I'd suggest that privatisation has only really been tried with the Open Access operators which are a success although a very limited one.  The Franchised railway was not a proper privatisation and so the jury is still out on whether privatisation works on the passenger railway.

Privatisation is not a panacea, but it can work to bring improvements if there is an element of competition (proper consumer-driven competition but the pseudo-competition of franchise bidding).

The only thing I am sure of is that the current franchise system is hugely wasteful of tax payers and farepayers money and that it really is the worse of both world and would be better if replaced by either proper privatisation or renationalisation.  Actually, the best option might be a bit of both with some TOCs nationalised and at the same time an expansion of open access operations. 

If privatisation was a success what would it look like?

a) More people use the railway?  Yes - and on that basis it is a success

b) The total costs (to both government and fare payers) would be reduced? Well perhaps not if the number of passengers has increased. So how about the cost per passenger mile is reduced?  Not sure where we are on that one.

c) Good customer service - Still a along way to go here.

d) Growth is accommodated - well to some extent at last orders for new trains to come with increased demand do seem to be starting.  Lets say the Jury is still out on this one. 

I don't personally pretend that privatisation is perfect, far from it, but can I ask you what you think would have happened to the current GWR fleet had privatisation not taken place?  In my opinion, BR would have not been able to justify replacing anything until the magic 35 years old mark was reached, and so we'd have had exactly the same fleet we've got now. To justify that opinion:

1) Back in 1996 the current fleet of Turbos was around 5 years old, Class 158s only slightly older, the other DMU units (143/150/153s) had only just turned 10 years old. 
2) HST's were 10-15 years old, and the Class 180s were five years away from being realised.
3) Most of those units built between 1985 and 1992 were replacing old first generation DMUs (101s, 117s and the like) that had been built in the late 50s and early 60s and had reached the 35-40 year maximum shelf life of a typical diesel train.
4) None of the units currently in use have been in service more than 32 years.  Some of the oldest are about to be replaced by the cascade plan.
5) HSTs (a wonderful success story for the railways) have now reached the magic 35-40 years old, but are in the process of being replaced.

a) agree.  I feel that rising passengers numbers must be something to do with privatisation but I've never been able to figure out quite what the relationship is.  After all privatisation correlates with falling passenger numbers on the buses almost everywhere except London where they were not privatized. 

b) My starting point here is that costs should have been reduced because of improving technology (and private capital to buy it)and greater passenger numbers leading to economies of scale.  The number of passengers doubles but the number of drivers and guards and ticket sellers doesn't need to double to accommodate them.  Likewise the track maintenance costs will rise with more use, but not double.  There ought to be economies to be had here, but the privatised passenger railway has singly failed to get them.   See the McNulty report for evidence of this.  The problem has been the proliferation of expensive things like poorly specified overweight trains, and trains that are simply too frequent and too short (with rising passenger numbers it should have been possible to lengthen trains AND make them somewhat more frequent).  There is a balance to be struck here, but the financial wisdom of a train every 20 minutes all day from London to Manchester is, I would say, doubtful especially when many passengers are on advance fares and so the turn up and go aspect of the service is lost on them).  This to me is the biggest failure of privatisation.  The irony here of course is that the supposedly dynamic private companies are prevented from changing fares and timetables to drive greater efficiencies because so much is specified in their franchise whereas BR would have had far greater freedom to change things.   

c) agree somewhat, but would argue that customer service is on the whole better than BR.

d) growth is accommodated, but only where the Government permits a franchisee to do so.  A real private company would have the freedom to invest to accommodate growth and BR would have had the freedom to re-jig fleets moving them across the country to accommodate growth.   I suspect that accommodating growth is more expensive then it ought to be because of this. 

I wonder if the main benefit has been political.  The politicians (of all parties) are now more pro-rail than ever before.  This isn't entirely logical, but I can't help wondering that this is because they are weirdly happier handing over public money to private companies than they ever were to be seen handing money over to BR. 

How do you figure that rising passenger numbers are down to privatisation?

Do you not think (particularly in London and the South East) it's maybe more to do with demographics and working patterns? 

What we do know is that the forecasting of passenger numbers was catastrophically inaccurate, one of the reasons why we all have to endure cattle truck conditions.

There is a long, long way to go when it comes to acceptable levels of customer service - more unusual in a privatised service industry but not uncommon in a virtual monopoly - much of that is down to an organisational culture and attitude to customers which is still trapped in the mid 1970s.

And has been catastrophically inaccurate up until quite recently.  December 2006 will be a time many will remember with the cuts imposed on the branch lines (which are now thriving), the removal of practically all the trains through Melksham (prompting the creation of this forum!), even cuts to more glamorous and profitable routes such as peak time reductions on the Oxford to London route leading to many complaints.  All specified by the DfT when awarding the franchise, and we are still reeling from the fallout.

Fortunately there are clear signs of a change of strategy with many recent franchise awards specifying a much improved level of service, and with electrification and new trains coming to the Greater Western franchise, you can be pretty sure that will continue after the current direct award finishes - whichever company gets to run it.

Myself I find GWR's customer service to be very good, you do get the occasional rude member of staff, but since I also know people who work at GWR with customers, normally its actually the fault of a moody customer who upsets the member of staff! 

However, I do find that First Class on board many TOC's is very poor, take GWR, you get a free cup of tea in a plastic/cardboard cup, and then either a biscuit or a slice of cake if available, which is fine for short journeys, yet if you want a proper meal for example Plymouth to Paddington with a journey time of 3 hours, you have to for the Pullman service, which should really be either half price to FC passengers, or complementary, after all its nearly £200 just to be on the train in First Class in the first place!

I doubt if the original GWR was around this sort of thing would be happening!

As a daily user of the high speed first class service I spend around 10 hours a week in it, and I am pretty content with the offering. (Although I have often thought that Wine Wednesday could be supplemented by Mojito Monday, Tequila Tuesday and other alliterative offerings.)  If there was a more substantial catering offering then the supplement over standard would have to be more than it is (50%), when all I really want is the guarantee of a seat, a more comfortable seat and table, and a trolley to give me a cup of tea, a croissant, cereal bar and so on.

I regretted the demise of the travelling chef, which in my view was a reasonably priced service, and a good balance between the buffet and full blown restaurant, the latter of which is never going to be included in the ticket price as it is a very high quality product.

Even airlines are cutting back.  BA has recently announced that the second meal to Economy passengers has been axed on journeys of under 8.5 hours.

Blimey!  Would that little lot be followed by wet flannel on the forehead Friday?   :D

One point missed so far in the comparison of public and private ownership is the value traditionally placed on human capital, i.e. on skilled, trained, experienced staff, content to stay in a secure industry for life.

The modern manager, generally of an administrative, legal or financial background, in my experience thinks that there is a healthy skills market place where these can be bought in temporarily and cheaply. This is in spite of the fact that the only formation and training possible is in the very industry that s/he is pruning and ransacking so severely.

Part of NR's, and by extension our problem is shortage of such skilled staff (such as S&T and OLE) which inflates costs, delays completions and will deter future investment.

Unfortunately the modern public sector is only too eager to emulate private sector bad practice - the first examples of skills shortages appearing under BR such as in the Clapham crash (let's not dignify it with the title of accident).

Not the German way,

OTC

Quite possibly but one measure out of a number I still think it is valid. In the old BR days they raised fares to limit demand. So any increase in use is something you would want to inlude.

Yet the government still do this, in line with inflation, yet people from Reading to Paddington still pay the £2000 or whatever it is price of a season ticket, you have to ask yourself why?    I.E they have no choice, raising fares doesn't limit demand, it just annoys people, makes everyone's journey more unpleasant and leaves a cash cow for the train companies.   Ok, you have to expect some overcrowding, I'd say 20% to 30% above the trains seated capacity is fair enough. But when you have a train with 110% above its 465 seating capacity, then really something needs to be done which thankfully it now is, thanks to a £3 billion or so investment by the government, with a very expensive leasing cost, so they decide to get a maintenance package thrown in too risking engineers jobs in the train companies maintenance depots. Good Job!

I'm not understanding the argument relating to privatisation here.  It might relate to rules and regulation though.

Whether the railways are in public or private ownership, the ultimate controlling body can decide whether to have a setup where work is done in-house or where it's sent out, and it can decide whether to set up that system as short or long term agreements.  The work still has to be done, and from a practical view point the majority of train maintenance needs to be done physically close to where the trains are located, and by people who know their jobs well.   Yes - you may reduce jobs within the train operating company, but you increase in-country jobs in the other (in this case supplying) company.  The jobs still exist.

Where you do reduce the number of skilled jobs (and other resources needed) is by using equipment designed to be easier to maintain and more efficient in operation. And that's an ongoing feature of modernisation.   If things has stood still for the last 100 years / no modernisation on rail,  you would still be running with steam locomotive and carriages;  driver, fireman and guard on each train, longer turnarounds with the need to run around (and more infrastructure needed to do that), slower acceleration and lower top speeds reached giving longer journeys, and power sources (locomotives) that had low availability due to the need for longer servicing and slower and more refuelling stops.

Embedded employees of the OEM are commonplace throughout the rolling stock maintenance field already.   Using MTU employees within an Hitachi run depot seems to me to be be a good way of guaranteeing the engines are maintained properly.

Major maintenance of engine modules by specialist staff at a manufacturer's location is also commonplace.

I don't think either would change with a modern version of rail nationalisation.

Paul

£2000? I wish. Try doubling that.

I also don't see how trains being fill to capacity would actually encourage train companies to add more trains if the capital cost are going to be high. If they're making a reasonable return then I suspect the short view of the market would out weigh any thoughts about potentially greater profits in x number of years time.

I think something went wrong with the quotes in that last post

Thank you - fixed.

Whats it matter whether the engineers jobs are with the maintainers or the TOC? Jobs are jobs, unless in the public sector

Why unless in the public sector?

BR rolling stock maintenance did some very good work before privatisation, especially as they were often starved of investment funds. 

Usually better T&Cs in public sector. Hence the unions perpetually arguing for renationalisation

Although not what I would call fully privatised, the company itself is, and can make commercial decisions, this show what could be done:

http://www.hulltrains.co.uk/about-us/news/2016/2016/10/hull-trains-is-the-uk%E2%80%99s-rail-operator-of-the-year/#.WB5iT_mLTIV




Edit note: Link fixed, for clarity. CfN.  :)

Eh? Owned & controlled by First Group

Not a franchise train company, with the ability to control its operations and timetables.(Par Network Rail approval)