Was British Rail better than todays privitised rail service?
I wouldn’t expect BR to be very efficient in any incarnation. Britain doesn’t have a culture of excellent rail management, in turn because they don’t reward rail entrepreneurship. You can’t expect companies to have a go if you strangle them with regulation. Look what deregulation did to America… the freight RRs make gigabuck profits, haul like 40% of America’s freight, and at one point Amtrak’s farebox ratio was over 80%. (it’s since been pulled down, as states pour subsidy into their in-state Amtrak service to improve it to genuinely useful levels). Required reading for rail executives: “The men who loved trains” by Rush Loving.
