JEREMY Corbyn wants to nationalise the railways of Britain. Well, most of the work has already been done for him.
Network Rail, which is responsible for the track, signals and all major stations such as Glasgow Central and Edinburgh Waverley, is already publicly-owned, and LNER, which operates trains on the East Coast from London to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness, is operated by the Department of Transport.
The supposedly private companies that run most other trains in and from Scotland are owned wholly or partly by overseas nationalised railways – we are all aware that Abellio ScotRail is owned by Dutch Railways. In addition to that, Cross-Country, which operates trains from Scotland to South-West England, is owned by Arriva, a subsidiary of German Railways.
In the next few weeks, these will be joined by the London-Glasgow service, where Virgin will be replaced by a company which is partly owned by Trenitalia (guess where they’re from). If you’re lucky enough to see a freight train, it might be pulled by a bright red locomotive with DB Cargo on the side – another subsidiary of German Railways.
To be fair, private company First Group operates TransPennine services from Glasgow and Edinburgh to Manchester (and soon to Liverpool), as well as a share in the new West Coast franchise. And, of course, Serco operates Caledonian Sleepers.
The net result is that a large part of the actual operation of Britain’s railways is already in public, but not necessarily British, ownership.
Iain Maclean, Bearsden.
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