Can someone precis the whole Scotrail adventure please?
My understanding is all was fine and dandy for a while, everyone went to bed one evening, woke up the next morning and the whole network was on fire.
You've got it pretty much, other than the bit about the network being on fire. It isn't, it's performing pretty much to the standards of a year or two years ago. My personal take on it is that the whole tedious saga is a short sharp case study in post truth politics. Others may like to put forward their own historical accounts, and I'd be interested to read them.
This thread, which started in early October but fizzled out in mid November, might give you a few clues:
http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=136317
This one started with upset over £1m per month (annualised a sum that wouldn't even buy us a wayside halt at Network Rail's prices) in profit going to Abellio, and seemed to irrationally touch a raw nerve politically. It seemed to be okay for previous incumbent First, based in Aberdeen, to rake off similar amounts to service its international debt mountain.
But before that, as far as I can see the 'crisis' was spawned over the summer when there was significant disruption caused by the closure of Queen Street High Level for six months for EGIP and tunnel works. Many of us were inconvenienced for quite a long time but, ironically, the closure itself was very well handled by both Scotrail and Network Rail from a passenger point of view.
We were also inconvenienced by cancellations caused by the conductors dispute, long since resolved, and (personally for me) a spate of technical faults, which partly coincided with the Queen Street upheaval. I was getting pretty cheesed off myself at that time.
Then there's the issue of overcrowding, almost entirely caused by the UK-wide shortage of diesel units and a few (most of them unavoidable) decisions taken by Transport Scotland.
The unions and Labour agitating for nationalisation as the answer to all of the railway's challenges and seeing an opportunity when other voices started to be raised.
A lazy political class of all parties, and a cash strapped and lazy media who have latched on to an easy narrative to keep them going through the autumn. They've been particularly active in poring over irrelevant performance statistics and quoting them in best post truth style.
An inexperienced and hapless Transport Minister who thought it was a good idea to join in the chorus and then looked a bit surprised when people started to demand his resignation.
Abellio could have handled their PR rather better, they seem to have been on the back foot constantly, but I don't know what instructions, helpful or otherwise, they've been taking from Transport Scotland or the Minister.
That's what I think anyway...
