They were often dirty but at least they were more spacious - something I dearly miss. They often ran late but the same is true now. There were strikes but then I'm not unsympathetic to strike action if there are good grounds for it.kenneal wrote:They were filthy, always ran late, spent a lot of time on strike as did all the other nationalised industries, and, just as now, you couldn't find a member of staff to help you. The big difference was, though, in those days they employed staff by the thousand.
Much cheaper for taxpayers? Which country are you talking about? Certainly not British Rail. The railways would be much cheaper now if the government didn't screw quite as much out of the franchisees before they are allowed to set up shop. The franchisees are spending a lot of money on new rolling stock, which is a thing that didn't happen in the time of British Rail. The only thing they spent money on was wages.
Its a fact that British Rail was much cheaper for the tax payer. Look it up. The reasons for it are complicated, in fact the complexity of how the system now works is partly to blame, but implying that the fault is entirely with government lease charges is a waste of everyone's time.
The decision to separate infrastructure from operations in the early 90s was a big mistake and management in both the private and public sector have led us from one crisis to another since then. We now have a situation where UK trains are the most expensive in Europe while the services aren't much better than the poorest countries in Europe.
). But this tends to disregard human nature which is always wanting more and always wanting an edge over one another.
