End of an era for NX who were at one point the largest operator of franchises, was it 8 in the late 1990s/early 2000s, ScR, MML, Central Trains, Wales and West, Valley Lines, GX, WAGN, c2c plus Maintrain?
And a share in Eurostar UK.
Oh, and NXEC/EA...
I'm going to miss the National Express days - they transformed a few franchises (e.g. Edinburgh Waverley - Glasgow Queen Street was half hourly when they took over, only hourly from Edinburgh to Dunfermline, only two trains an hour on the MML from St Pancras), introduced dozens of new DMUs, had some colourful liveries (I still like the orange/ purple/ green ScotRail livery, though I know it was garish!).
You could make an argument that they rescued the private railway by taking on the basket case of PRISM (Wales & West, Valley Lines, WAGN, C2C) - steadying the ship at a time when those TOCs seemed to be tanking (e.g. Valley Lines sending 150s to Northern Spirit because they wanted cheaper Pacers instead since they couldn't afford the Sprinters).
Some mistakes made, some questionable decisions (though I'd argue that anyone following GNER on the ECML faced a tough battle), but lots of good. Or is this just my nostalgia for the late '90s?
Please elaborate on why you think it is acceptable for foreign STATE OWNED "companies" to run rail franchises and generate profit from us passengers here in the UK to spend it on their own networks?
Abellio recently admitted that their UK operations required very little investment and generated a good amount of profit which they could invest on their home network.
It simply seems wrong to have these state owned companies playing in the supposedly free private market. These organisations have vested interests in their nature to provide for their own taxpayers first and foremost.
If we have a privatised railway then I don't really care who makes the 3% profit on my ticket price.
We enthusiasts all complained when a "bus company" won a franchise. Now we all complain when a "foreign government" win a franchise.
But, if we are to have a privatised railway then isn't it better to have an organisation with experience of running railways (rather than one with no experience)?
I get the whole "private v public" argument, but that's a different kettle of fish - if the railway is privatised with organisations bidding to run TOCs then who would be better to win some (than an organisation that already runs thousands of train journeys)? The RMT? G4S? Camelot? WH Smith? Innocent Smoothies? Seriously - who would you rather ran TOCs? (
unless the argument is that we should have a fully nationalised railway, but that's a whole other argument)