This year is going to be an important one for the railways. More former franchises are to be renationalised soon: the next will be West Midlands Trains on 1 February, to be followed by Govia Thameslink Railway on 31 May.

Because WMT and GTR both had more than one brand, these two renationalisations will mop up not two but six operators as far as the public is concerned, and by 1 June the programme of returning the passenger railway to the public sector in preparation for Great British Railways will have passed the half way mark.

GBR itself is also making progress, because the Railways Bill is now at committee stage in the House of Commons, having been debated in Second Reading on 8 December, and it is hoped that the Bill will have received Royal Assent by the summer.

These moves mark a handover from the private to public sectors, and go quite some way towards reversing the privatisation of the railways in the early and mid-1990s.

The reverse is only partial, because most rail freight and the businesses of building and leasing rolling stock will still be in private hands, along with at least some heavy maintenance.

But as Network Rail was effectively renationalised from when it was set up in 2002, and became officially publicly-owned in 2014, the return of nearly all the passenger railway to the public sector after 30 years of privatisation will be a significant event.

The private sector open access passenger operators will continue – at least for now. The government has promised to respect their existing track access contracts, although the Railways Bill does provide for them to be terminated early if the Secretary of State chooses to do so, with potential compensation also provided for.

What the Bill does not do is provide any comfort for further open access operators, a number of whom have been turned down since 2024.

At this point we can try to compare the merits of a public railway with those of a private one.

The big argument in favour of a directing mind is that many aspects of the railway’s service will become consistent, and therefore easier for passengers to understand. These details include such things as a single website for planning journeys and, if wished, buying tickets, along with a standard layout on the screens of ticket vending machines and a uniform design for printed publicity, including timetable booklets. Behind the scenes, our directing mind will bring together track and train, so that many industry decisions will be taken by a co-ordinated group of people rather than by more than a dozen separate groups, some of whom may have conflicting agendas. Since many internal conflicts cost money, their abolition should reduce railway costs.

We may remember that it was exactly a lack of co-ordination which was blamed for the disruption following the introduction of the May 2018 timetables, particularly on Govia Thameslink Railway and Northern, and which was followed by the comprehensive review of the industry’s structure carried out by Keith Williams. In spite of the change of government in 2024, his recommendations are now becoming a reality, at least to some extent, although he had felt that franchises should be replaced by private sector concessions, which give the operators much less commercial freedom than franchises but would have kept the private sector on the rails.

One problem with the private model is that there is a lack of consistency, as far as the railway’s face is concerned. A passenger accustomed to buying tickets from vending machines run by Avanti West Coast may have to pause for a moment when faced with machines operated by Govia Thameslink Railway or Greater Anglia. For instance, some operators allow tickets to be bought from a variety of starting points, while others insist that the journey must begin at the station where the machine is installed, while each operator has had its own rules about when ‘off-peak’ actually starts each morning.

The whole business of charging for travel is monstrously complicated, and has given rise to such nonsenses as ‘ticket splitting’, which would not have been out of place when Lewis Carroll’s Alice travelled by train [‘ “If you had bought another ticket when we reached the last white square, you would have saved at least half a crown by now,” the Guard told Alice. “Half a crown, half a crown,” chorused the other passengers. “She ought to get off the train now, and walk the rest of the way.” ’]

On the other hand, the private sector may be able to attract more innovative managers, and other staff may also feel more enthusiastic about working for the private sector. Indeed, they can buy shares in the relevant owning group.

Perhaps GBR could have used its powers to reduce the inconsistencies even if the private sector was still running National Rail concessions, but the process would not have been so straightforward.

Meanwhile, the open access operators are still there and seem set to stay for some time at least, in spite of the Railways Bill. It remains to be seen how our future ‘public/private railway’ will work out in practice, and what the contribution made by open access will really be worth. Will it abstract an unacceptable proportion of revenue, or provide valuable additional services?

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