There are lots of good things about my stretch of the East Coast rail line.

One is that all the landscapes and seascapes are gorgeous. Another is that I have to go to England just to reach Scotland's capital. Lately, the detail has seemed a better piece of comedy than usual.

A sign hangs over the stairs at Berwick station to remind you that the platforms sit where a castle's Great Hall once stood. In 1292, just over there, where people check phones or scold kids, Longshanks had his pick of claimants to Scotland's throne and decided John Balliol was his boy. That detail can set you up for a day in Edinburgh.

I like Berwick, the anomalous town. I like the conceit that it has been at war with Russia - Putin's surrender is awaited - for far longer than it has been a part of Northumberland. I like the sharp, insistent smell of the River Tweed. Mostly I like the idea that when I buy my train ticket I am contributing to the public purse.

The East Coast line is functioning proof that rail privatisation was an immense, willed catastrophe, and that public ownership works. Twice the government sold it off; twice the experiment ended in abject - strictly commercial - failure. In 2009, when National Express gave up the struggle with its business imperatives, Labour risked upsetting the City with a version of public control. East Coast has been an embarrassing success ever since.

The Treasury expects to get £235 million from the service this year in premiums and dividends - a 12% increase on the year before. Passenger satisfaction was 91% this summer and could have been higher, if historic maintenance failures - electrification legacies - had been addressed sooner, or if Tory dolts had not split train operators and track ownership in the first place.

Regardless, East Coast has returned £1 billion to the taxpayer over five years while being run on the taxpayer's behalf. Who would argue with that? A trick question. Despite consistent polling evidence of an overwhelming public desire for renationalisation - two-thirds, at least - the Tory-owned Coalition aims to have the line back with one of the usual suspects by next March (ie, before the General Election)

Conservatives could argue that this time, at the third attempt, nothing can go wrong. Instead, the transport minister, Patrick McLoughlin, told his party's conference in Birmingham that the Labour alternative to a record of failure involved "state command" while allowing the RMT union to "call the shots". Even a £1bn return for the Exchequer is unacceptable, it seems, in the face of red tyranny.

It was a nice, lurid conference fantasy which involved shunting the truth into a siding. Ed Miliband's Labour is neither offering itself as the vanguard of the RMT, or embracing renationalisation. As the leader explained to a disgruntled party's National Policy Forum at the end of July, his pink wish is simply to allow public sector bodies to bid on equal terms against the privatisation pirates in the usual squalid auctions.

It isn't much of a demand. The first gathering of the Berwick station Soviet might have to wait. A Prime Minister Miliband, with the reserved rights of the Railways Act 1993 (as amended) at his disposal, could renationalise at will as franchises lapsed. He would rather not. Instead, he hopes only to address the extraordinary fix that has prevented those "public bodies" from being in the game. Still, the unambiguous lesson of East Coast would be ignored under his government.

So let's board a northbound train. Around Holyrood last week Labour and the transport unions were furious, so they said, because the ScotRail franchise had been taken from First Group and granted to Abellio, a Netherlands company. The SNP administration's inability to affect the Railways Act was not disputed. The Nationalists' record of attempting to have relevant powers devolved was not contested. Abellio's offer, couched in terms of quality of service - yet to be tested, of course - did not become an issue.

Instead, the argument ran that the refranchising process should have been suspended in the hope - or belief - that pre-referendum promises of "more powers" would be delivered and, moreover, give life to the Miliband version of public control. Labour pursued the latest version of Labour policy, in other words, and asked voters to imagine this would prevail in the horse-trading of the Smith Commission on devolution. McLoughlin and his friends could be ignored.

It's an interesting version of a rollover bet. You'd have to bet, first, that Abellio wouldn't win fair and square in any case, even under Labour's scheme. You'd have to believe that the scheme, first rolled out as Gordon Brown's personalised plan for Scotland, would survive the Westminster mill in general election manoeuvres. You'd have to forget to ask why Miliband and Scottish Labour are not demanding ScotRail's renationalisation.

The railway row is one test of the many consequences of a No vote. It says, yet again: don't ask too many questions, just trust Labour. Then trust that Labour will get Miliband into Downing Street. Then trust that Labour, having had 13 years in which to fix the rail privatisation scandal during its last shot at office, will do something serious next time.

So does allowing a public body just to get into the ring with the private firms and their lobbyists, as Labour promises, sound like a good bet? If East Coast is a shining success, what hinders Miliband from making a vow to nationalise the entire network? It's a vote-winner if ever there was one. Before anyone in Labour works up a froth over ScotRail, let them explain their leader's attitude to East Coast.

The referendum vote was clear. Given the nature of Britain and those who run Westminster, another contest is inevitable, but we will have to wait a while. In the meantime, issues such as transport press hard on Scotland. Berwick station serves me well; the A1 is handy. Go a few miles inland, though, and even the promise of a new, 30-mile stretch of a revived Borders rail line fails to stitch the country together. It is, at best, half a gesture.

Where I live, skeins of geese make their way across this country with more ease than the average local. Go north of the Central Belt and things are tougher still. As though in reprisal for a Forth crossing and a referendum campaign, Virgin withdraws flight services. Subsidised buses and ferries, those thin threads, keep communities alive. ScotRail is just one part of a bigger story for those who claim to serve a country's interests.

Abellio might be terrific. There is a five-year cut-point in the contract, says the SNP government, if the customary wonderful promises are not met. We'll see. But if transport infrastructure is essential to lives, environment and prosperity in Scotland, questions of beneficial ownership await an answer.