Railways Bill 2025: introducing and designing Great British Railways - general topic

[whole diary]

[Electric train]

Is that list really the best they could come up with?

Only civil servants could manage to make it that dry..........I can almost imagine all the "working parties", consultations and Conferences that were necessary before arriving at it..............

I am still having trouble in London knowing my Sufragettes from my Windrushes though I suspect I'll get used to them in time - so perhaps I'm thankful at this current and (?) interim stage the names are recognisable to the previous operations.

Into the future, we may end up with operation divisions such as diesel trains and local bimodes based out of Bristol and Salisbury, under the heading "Wessex Trains",  local and regional trains based out of Exeter and Plymouth as "West Country Trains", diesel services based out of Reading, Oxford and Aylesbury as "Thames Valley Trains", etc ... and I would rather quasi -geographic names rather than "Brunel", "Trevithick", "Whitworth", "Beeching" and "Williams-Shapps".

There is logic behind the GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) names and it would not have been just the Civil Servants the rail industry will have had a large say:-
Firstly, initially it is about brining together 2 separate managements (TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) and NR^» (Network Rail - home page)) so a lot of systems are structured around the NR Regions / Routes and TOCs
Secondly and perhaps the most important the travelling public recognise many of the TOC names therefore maintaining a name link is seen a beneficial as it will reduce confusion.

Also there is a desire in maintaining a safe railway many of the current senior managers and Exec were junior staff at privatisation and saw at first hand what safety problems a "politically" driven change  for change sake brings.

Overtime once all operators are back in public ownership there will be a reshaping.

Interestingly missing Northern Ireland too.

But that is Ireland rather than Great Britain

[Image from here is not available to guests]

wikipedia/commons/4/40/British_Isles_Venn_Diagram-en/size]

Northern Ireland was never part of BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)), also it is already State owned and has been since 1967.

Scottish and Welsh TOC's have been in public ownership since 2022 and 2021 respectively under the control of their own devolved Governments

 

[ChrisB]

Something in a conversation that Roger Ford was having on X/Twitter earlier caught my eye.

The major saving meant to emerge from the move to GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) is supposed to be the 2% or so in fees being paid to the operators for operating their management contracts.

However, unannounced, but contained within the Railways Bill, is the fact that the rolling stock, being hired by the operators from the ROSCOs^» (ROlling Stock COmpany - about) - isn't going back to the ROSCOs to be directly hired by GBR - oh no - the stock is being sub-leased by the operators to DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)/GBR.....probably charging them that 2% in admin charges to continue to do this!!

So no real savings either.....unbelievable

[Electric train]

Something in a conversation that Roger Ford was having on X/Twitter earlier caught my eye.

The major saving meant to emerge from the move to GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) is supposed to be the 2% or so in fees being paid to the operators for operating their management contracts.

However, unannounced, but contained within the Railways Bill, is the fact that the rolling stock, being hired by the operators from the ROSCOs^» (ROlling Stock COmpany - about) - isn't going back to the ROSCOs to be directly hired by GBR - oh no - the stock is being sub-leased by the operators to DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)/GBR.....probably charging them that 2% in admin charges to continue to do this!!

So no real savings either.....unbelievable

Possibly the way the rolling stock financing and leasing contracts were setup, and probably originally agreed by DfT, make it complex and or expensive to change the arrangement.   I would like to think GBR / DfT will be reviewing all these arrangement once the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) are under public ownership

[grahame]

On X there is a video of a class 387 painted in the new GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) livery leaving the shed  at the depot near Brighton.

Sorry that livery just doesnt look right

Here it is - in comparison to a couple of others - a few minutes ago.







None of the passengers seem outwardly concerned at the colour of their train, nor asking if this is the new public railway.  Doesn't feel much different.

P.S. I joined the Gatwick Express train.   It's not going to Gatwick and neither am I.  I understand that I do not have to pay a premium "Gatwick Express" fare.

[John D]

How does the new GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) livery work on units with odd numbers of vehicles as stripy triangular pointy bit faces the nearest end.  Which way will it point on middle vehicle ?

Clearly there are 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 vehicle units around network