| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Balance of Payments Crisis? | |
| Posted by: | Richard Jennings | |
| Date/Time: | 30/09/15 17:20:00 |
| "The worst thing that ever happened to Britain's railways was the nationalisation by the Attlee government in 1948." In my view, two things were worse than that: 1. The devastating impact of the Second World War on the railway companies, for which nationalisation was the Labour government's attempt to recover the situation, 2. The loss of engineering and management skills when the infrastructure was transferred from BR to Railtrack in 1994. "he seems to think that the days of British Rail are something worth bringing back. Perhaps he never used to travel by train ?" Well, I travelled quite a lot by train in the 1970s. I remember commuting home to Reading (22 minutes from Paddington on 125mph trains in 1978). Also Euston to Manchester in 2hr 35 min around 1970 on the newly electrified West Coast line. East Coast electrification in 1991 was completed at a cost (at present-day prices) of £448,000 per track km. The Great Western electrification currently in progress will cost £1.7 million per track km. BR in the 1980s and 1990s did a lot of things right. |