Quote Originally Posted by Geoff Parkstone View Post
Swale, re BR efficiency. You can think what you want but as someone who regularly commited in 80s and 90s during the last days of BR and the early days of privatised railways I can assure you BR was appalling. Cancelled trains, late running trains and standing around on platforms not knowing what was going on were regular events - maybe 2 or 3 times out of 10 weekly commutes.

You may dismiss this as simply anecdotal but it was an experience shared by everyone in my office (about 2000 all in) and resulted in many electing to drive in or stay in hotels the night before important meetings. But I guess these facts are irrelevant compared to yours which doubtless incorporate official data where a train is not deemed late if it's only 29 minutes late. Tell that to the commuter standing in the cold/rain/snow or even just normal conditions fretting about being late for work again and having to explain to a disbelieving management. Tell that to the people on hourly pay who were docked money yet had no recourse to compensation on their journeys.

So it was an (initial) breath of fresh air when the railways were privatised - at least for a couple of years - then most of the old failings came back. Underfunding of capital projects, continuous rises in ticket prices and slowly but surely shoddy performance, delays, cancellations etc such that by about 2010 it was as bad as it had been under BR.

So please don't look back on the final days of BR with rose tinted glasses. Maybe where (if) you used it, your experience was better than those of us commuting into the city, maybe the official performance statistics across the network level up the London area performance (and if course don't reflect the reality of late trains).

The last days of BR were in my experience, and that of my peer group, utterly atrocious. Nothing you can say will change my mind. I'm not saying that 30 odd years later it's much better (although more trains running / generally can find a seat) in terms of reliability - but during those intervening years there were some green shoots of improvement, albeit many of those withered on the vine.

But hey this is just 35 years of anecdotal experience so means nothing. Working from home and COVID have eased my pain. The numbers commuting to London will have fallen significantly so may be new BR will have more success than old BR as they will have way less passengers to carry. Hope so for the people still forced into the misery of commuting daily
As I said maybe its a case pf perspective? or indeed a tendency to over emphasise the negative.

In the decade before privatisation, BR streamlined its operations, invested in new trains, including in the London area and was actually receiving the lowest subsidy for a very long time.

Now I'm not discounting your experience, but mine was totally different, I used the trains several times a week in the decade before privatisation, the vast majority were on time, comfortable and value for money. I used mainly long distance trains, with some local and a spell of 6 months commuting into London from Cambridge, Yes there were the odd delay and cancellation, but it certainly wasn't the norm and not even weekly.

I asked my brother who as I say commuted from Surrey into waterloo for over 30 years and his recollection does not align with yours either, certainly the 70's were not a good time, under investment clapped out trains, but in the 1980's a very good manager called Chris green took over and Network Southeast was created, with a focus on commuter routes in the SE, this with considerable investment in new trains vastly improved the service.

I certainly didn't notice a significant improvement following privatisation, just not a deterioration until possibly 6 or so years in. Its a fact that the train service today takes 200% more public subsidy than BR did at the time of privatisation

Now it may be that your experiences were unfortunate, that your memory has been coloured by the decade before or you simply hated commuting, I know the 6 months I did it, I came to dislike it, but not due to the train journey, more the time it took out of my life.

I do note that a lot of people dislike public transport, preferring to drive than use it, I understand there are many reasons for this, but they forgotten ignore the delays and issues encountered on the roads.

But there we have it in a nutshell, the problem with government, how do you keep people happy who all have different perceptions and different expectations?