British Railways
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Meanwhile... back in blighty, the victorian rail builders forged the embryonic rail system, most lines starting in London Town and fanning out to serve various counties and regions. Several rail companies controlled these lines, and most profitably built up a vast network
Post Second World War Britain found itself with new political masters and an agenda of greater government control, resulting in the seisure of the train network and creation of the new umbrella public corporation. Thus! lo and behold! The birth of BRITISH RAILWAYS!
This idealogically sound non profitteering train entity was to last for nearly 50 years, the public finance concept, however, probably being its own undoing. Almost immediately, it became a burden, a draw on resources, a political football.
This potential cornerstone of Britain's infrastructure never truly flowered as it was forever the soft target of reassessments and underfunding. The 1960's saw the network taking a sad savaging from thrift-crazy official axemen, meaning the closure of many treasured little rural community lines, and 2000 stations. That dastardly Doctor Beeching ruined the Railways forever. What a cad and a bounder. This selfish folly inspired the beginning of the end for the great British Railway dream. Future decades of ministerial misery ensured that this greatest of ventures would capitulate into dissolution.
Fast Forward to the 1980's, and the gradual break up of the now BRITISH RAIL into groups ripe for eventual sell off back into Private Companies. And by the centurys end, BR was over. The tranportation millstone severed from the governmental neck.
It was a new dawn and a new century. Trains and services, now under private ownership, battled it out in a cost cutting war of supremacy and statistics. Meanwhile, ownership of the Track, Stations, and hardware were handed over to the new privatised company RAILTRACK. With their outfit of cavalier managers and thirsty shareholders they bullwhipped the lines into a profiteering frenzy.
One might have expected this to be the end of the story, what with all the greatest expectations, but in only a short time, everything was on the rocks. It was time for the government to shoot RAILTRACK down in flames and replace it with a non profit version. Well, not too much profit anyway, once they've bought off the shareholders. These new bandits are called NETWORK RAIL. Oh dear... Same old **** under a different name, as we Railwaymen used to say. They are the mob that control the still functioning ghost or son of the RAILTRACK that still haunts our every journey. And so the joke continues. When will this fiasco really come to an end. When will politicians and businessmen stop interfering with out public services? The whole thing should be run on infinite funds by people who love trains and care about passengers. Bring back BRITISH RAILWAYS say I!
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