As I'm writing this it's 2023 and I just watched a tv show that somehow popped up my tv called Paddington 24/7 a show where it talks about the lives of people working for GWR in multiple industries like management, customer services, engineering etc. The episodes I saw were made when electrification and the IETs were being introduced on the GWML (season 2 episode 1 and 2). It got me thinking, what's going on with Britain's TOC's companies 2023 and beyond as while I know they are some stock changes etc I don't know what's going to happen to them. As with GBR being in limbo with no official date and the chance of it being canned is possible. Now I've only talked about GWR as a example but feel free to answers questions or inform us on anything that's happening to any British TOC now or beyond. (rules don't be rude, be kind considerate etc and mention the TOC your talking about like south eastern etc).
Well I can talk for ScotRail very freely here because they are incredibly open. They've got a new line coming in the form of the Vale of Leven line, branching off from Kirkcaldy to the mentioned Vale of Leven. They have got new stations popping up everywhere, most recently being Inverness Airport station. So, ScotRail's now getting to serve more people. Not much changing with the fleet at present. ScotRail continue to work with Network Rail Scotland in the 'Scotland's Railway' programme which enables all of this, and is incredibly effective. Train strikes seem to be extinguished to a degree up here thanks to Scot Gov's speed and effectiveness in getting a deal. So, as they say, 'all's good in the hood.'
Just found this out yesterday but EMR (east midlands railway) are planning on taking the class 180 adelante out of service before april instead of next year when they were going to be replaced by the 810. Also I've known this for a while but the class 313s are finally getting withdrawn by southern in April or may either or. Vivarail's (late British train manufacturing company) assets have been purchased by GWR for possibly electro diesel battery operation on the Greenford branch line which could use converted networker turbos or a new train to replace them. Thanks trainsimplayer for letting me know about Scot rail's new stations and old lines coming into service by the looks of it Beeching cuts are finally getting fixed in Scotland all thanks to Scotrail.
I can only dream that this were true as these were my favourite EMU's, sadly the 310's were all scrapped years ago!
Just realised the mistake I wrote class 310 instead of class 810 A train thanks for letting me know. Somehow I thought it was 310 depiste them being extinct.
As a non-Brit, can someone please explain what's going on ? I heard something a while ago, and the only bit I understood was that ( maybe ) the franchise system was getting scraped, and replaced by an entity 'Great British Railways'. Is it something like the old BR ? What does it really mean to the common folks ( of UK ) & the staff ? Are any new trains / equipment on the agenda ? maybe reversing some of the Beeching Axe ?!
Great British Railways was... Interesting. Emphasis on "was" British Rail(ways) was, of course, the definition of nationalisation in the UK. But of course, now we have the opposite. The UK Government (for one reason or another) has nationalised London Northeastern Railway (LNER), Northern Trains (Northern) and SE Trains (Southeastern) - can't remember any others. Whilst this is unconnected to GBR, it's a hint at what Nationalisation looks like today. GBR also aimed to include the operations of Network Rail, who do the tracks and infrastructure. However, GBR's system, when you look at it in depth, was all to be operated under one brand, one identity, but run on contracts. In a nutshell, privatisation lite. To throw a further spanner into the works, Scotland and Wales' devolved parliaments (Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly | Senedd, respectively) both nationalised their own operators, ScotRail and Transport for Wales (TfW). Because Transportation is a power devolved from the Central, UK Parliament to the National Governments, the UK Government - and therefore GBR - cannot overrule ScotRail or TfW. So that's (probably) why it's dead in the water on paper. To add to it, the GBR Project was a creation of (former) Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps. Who is no longer in the job. And with the new Sunak administration, GBR seems to be forgotten. At least, it has gone quiet since Shapps went out the door. Surprisingly, the prevalent train strikes haven't revived the prospect of a unified rail network. Perhaps forcibly changing their employer isn't a great idea as of now. TLDR Really just Privatisation, just worse. Legal Issues Clashes between UK and Scot/Welsh Gov'ts Political Changes Train Strikes
Just found this out today but TPE (trans pennine express) was grizzled by parliament due to i's poor perfomance and cancellations. To make it worse they've had over one thousand cancellations and the rule is up to 2200 trains on a timetable can be remove by any TOC. TPE cancelled trains 1048 times over 4 weeks this year between Jan to Feb. Which is weird as we used to praise them for their new fleet and push pull trains.
Thanks... So can I safely assume that ( for the moment ) it's just a concept, nothing concrete happening on it ? Are the 'nationalized' LNER / NR / SE doing better than their private counterparts ? Also, as an outsider... it seems really 'interesting' how the decision-making process in the UK govt. is 'person centered' & not 'policy centered'. I ain't praising the policy centered idea, we've seen many times how one govt. messes up & the next one has to fix what the previous one broke. Also, bills need to pass in the parliament to change the policies.
Great British Railways... Seemingly designed to eventually be simplified in name to 'British Rail'. In effect, it's a nationwide implementation of the concession system used for London Overground, which works very well. That said, pretty much every franchise now is a concession post-COVID. Anyway, the system will be the government makes the big decisions and private companies do the day-to-day running on a contract and have no branding of their own. Much of the railway network is nationalised anyway now... Southeastern hasn't done any better than Southeastern (Govia), but that's not a bad thing since SE was generally good anyway. LNER I believe is better than Stagecoach (just with uglier liveries). ScotRail and Transport For Wales, I am not aware of any major improvements. Northern is better though. GBR as it stands is happening, although it is taking a while and the small details haven't been worked on yet. As far as I'm aware GBR is a gradual process, as they have to wait out the existing franchises as they can't be cancelled prematurely. It'll be like the privatisation of BR then, which took multiple years. There is a government scheme to reopen lines previously closed by the Beeching Axe but if anything concrete is happening with that I do not know of it. Luckily the government have not made any new orders for trains specifically for GBR, which is a brilliant thing I am very pleased about.
Yeah, as of now it's gone quiet and there's talks of it being scrapped (our ruling Conservative party don't like nationalising things at large scales, which GBR would be, to an extent.) Northern I would say is better - under it's previous management it was arguably the worst in the UK. Delays and Cancellations were essentially part of the timetable. LNER is also improved, partly due to the introduction of more modern trains (Classes 800/801), however Virgin's service wasn't too bad either. Southeastern as commented above has had a good service for a while, so there isn't much nationalisation does for it; unlike the others, SE was nationalised because of a financial misreporting / scandal (iirc), as opposed to poor service. In the case of GBR I think it was less that the Conservative Party (the government) wanted it, and more that Grant Shapps had a plan and was pushing it through. With the instability the Johnson Government showed, it was easier for cabinet members to do their own thing and enforce their views. UK Politics is very individual based because, and not to be too political here, the members of the current ruling party would be very quick to backstab each other if it meant they have a political legacy, fame, or just money.
I think I can safely comment on this part: Regarding LNER the bounce back from the pandemic has been much stronger carrying more passengers than before. Also it was in the LNER period where the new trains were introduced, though that was going to happen anyway. The other two I haven't a clue on anything certain though as said above Northern have become much more reliable.
Was the railway actually privatised? As far as I'm aware these toc's still rely on millions in public money from the government each year to operate! It all started privately and was a mess. then the government stepped in and we ended up with the big 4 and it was still a mess, then the railways where nationalised and still a big mess. Then the government said to cut public money being spend the railways would go back to private ownership. But technically its not private. Companies like govia, that have several different franchises and owned by god knows how many different companies? Run on railways that they don't own! They bid on contracts to operate on the railways owned by railtrack. Taking large injections of public money each year to run at non profit. Maybe they are charity's? Anyway my local operator southeastern that's no longer southeastern. Now southeast trains but still run by southeastern? Failed to declare 20m in profits so they was stripped of the franchise! Since its reverted back to a company run by the government, or on behalf of the government? Its taken a massive turn for the worse! Hundreds of daily services have been cut! Off peak trains local to me now run hourly instead of 2 per hour. Even when it's 2 per hour them 2 services literally leave within minutes of eachother! Now I find myself waiting upto an hour waiting for a connection instead of several minutes. Canceled trains, delayed trains. The other week I see crowds of people waiting at the rail replacement bus stop because southeastern said the trains weren't running when infact they was running! This is a bad reminder of what it was like the last time the railways were nationalised!
The beeching reversals really had my hopes up for a moment but it would seem the only lines that are gonna get reinstated are the lines that are still there. Either freight only operated lines or lines that have been left dormant for decades. As for the ones that have been ripped up and built on, I don't think there's ever a chance of these coming back to life. Highways England had a bright idea recently to infill all the bridges and tunnels on abandoned railways which pushes up the cost of reinstating the lines by billions! Then you have local councils pushing thru applications for the old lines to be turned into cycle paths pushing the chance of reinstating the lines even further away. I'm all for a greener Britain but seriously are people going to cycle 40 miles to work and back every day or drive.
The privatised railway was at the start close to being fully privatised. The railways were not owned directly by the government, instead owned by Railtrack but that ended in 2002, replaced by the state-owned Network Rail. While those talking about how everything was better under BR are mostly talking through rose-tinted glasses, by the 90s British Rail was really improving and much of the upward trend that happened post-privatisation (the franchise era isn't as horrible as people like to say) may have happened had BR never been chopped up. That said, freight improved by a significant amount post-privatisation, with EWS being the main driving force behind turning around our flailing freight industry. Govia only has GTR now, everything else has been shut down. Also, Govia were never stripped of the franchise. It was marketed as such to make the government look proactive, but in fact they just didn't have their franchise extended. Stripping a franchise is a much more complicated process than transferring operators, although it has been done many times before. However, up until COVID GTR was pretty much the only profitable franchise. Southeastern wasn't losing money as far as I know (I wonder why?), but most operators were otherwise. Post-COVID I believe most franchises were put on effective life support, although I am not certain about this. I'm not sure where on the Southeastern network you live. The mainline and high speed parts have been good for years, so I assume you're on the inner suburban network which has had not much love for years, although an upcoming Networker replacement should help change that.
Sittingbourne area. Yes it has been brilliant up until recently. Recent service cuts and timetable adjustments have made it harder to travel off peak. I'm only going by what I've read. My era of train travel was the switch from br to the likes of network southeast and connex etc.. When I used to travel in this period, if a train was in time you had to wonder if you was still in the same dimension.
South Western Railway I overheard are planning to replace their Class 158 & 159 DMU's by 2040 as apart of a NetZero goal. You can read more here. https://www.railmagazine.com/news/n...onsiders-dmu-replacements-to-achieve-net-zero However the company are in a pretty good state when we look at how many people still use the company per day. However this year they hopefully will start bringing their 701s into service in the Waterloo & Surrey lines this year which means they can haul more passenger's and hopefully less people being late for work because the train was late. That's how I see it anyway.
You should try and download the Flying Scotsman one. It's very interesting and my personal favourite. Another one is called The Railway 24/7 which is a Transpennine express version.
There was also 1 series done by Sky called All Aboard: East Coast Trains about that operator and the ECML (I think this is available on Sky on Demand or Now TV). The TPE one was done by the same channel as the Paddington 24/7 series (Channel 5) and both are available on My5 (2 seasons of Paddington 24/7 are available on BritBox).
On the topic of TV, BBC (Scotland) have a very good show, of a similar nature to Paddington 24/7, called Inside Central Station. Being on BBC Scotland, it's limited to, well, Scotland. Although, I may be possible to change your region on iPlayer if you're desperate to see it, provided you're in the UK. If you are outside the UK and extra desperate to see it, there's a chancer posting it on YT. Might not last forever, though.
I'm not in Scotland and I'm able to watch it just fine. It's just the TV channel BBC Scotland that's only available in Scotland.
As far as I'm aware all UK BBC content can be watch on the iPlayer anywhere in the UK, including BBC Alba and S4C.
