East Coast Main Line woes

Shock horror: National Express has given up the prestigious East Coast Main Line because it’s losing money, but the public and media seem incapable of seeing the real story – or rather they are just beginning to.
The public think these main rail routes are subsidised by the Government. In fact it’s the other way round: the greedy Treasury wanted more than a billion pounds from this operator for the privilege of running this London-Edinburgh-Aberdeen route. Gordon Brown was inflexible in the face of a recession which has severely hit the more expensive fare grades (you don’t make business travel if you’ve been made sacked). Result first GNER (the previous very good operator) and now National Express have been driven to the wall. New Labour wants for its own reasons to be seen to be punishing not helping these train operating companies; talk of corporate greed pleases their supporters. Odd when it is Brown’s greed that has caused the crisis and he flung countless billions at banks, etc.
The other factor is overcrowding. British Rail would have simply rolled spare stock our of the sidings for summer Saturdays and other peaks. The companies are charged a fortune by rolling stock companies for rolling one yard, even with carriages that were paid off years ago by British Rail. That’s why people are standing from Durham to Southampton while lines of perfectly good stock lie hidden in old airfields and military bases round the country (I’ve seen them, hundreds were there even when the Government promised 1,300 new carriages in a great Labour spin that didn’t come true). It’s the logical outcome of an illogical system.
Now the Government have got what they want, a temporary nationalisation, a deal will be eventually struck that could have saved either company. Playing politics with our railways, again. Bad enough when the Tories created the useless Railtrack in the first botched privatisation.
The good news is that this superb railway will keep running whatever political deals are done. Ironically the reason why it is so good, reliable, fast, environmentally friendly etc is entirely down to British Rail – the track, electrification and trains were that nationalised industry’s last great fling of modernisation. The privatised companies have added diddly squat, apart from some style, in the case of GNER, and removing it again, in the case of National Express.
So take this for the loveliest main line in Britain, particularly from Newcastle up to Aberdeen. Book well in advance and reserve a seat and you will have a joy, a bargain and an scenic experience you will recall with pleasure for years to come. And forget who the operator is or isn’t, nationalised or not. The real shock horror is that it doesn’t make any difference.

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