I've got to mention this before I continue with serious posting. During the reading of Tom C's post, I was instantly reminded of an episode of The Simpsons (this has relevance), where Burns sells the nuclear plant to the Germans. The scene in particular I recalled was when the German flag went up over the hand-over ceremony, and everyone's faces dropped into a depressed state, mutterings of 'Uh-oh' and so forth. Point is, I pictured a huge group of us from here being in that scene, with the Tories announcing privatisation for rail, doing the exact same thing. You have to have seen the episode recently (the day before or something is best), and then read Tom C's post. You might get it then.
Into seriousness, the structure of UK rail is a mess. With better funding, I daresay BR would have been the way forward, perhaps with freight sold off to the privatisation lot. I became an enthusiast on the privatised network in late 2003 (October 2003, with some photos developed on 14th October 2003, so probably early October 2003 then), falling in love with HSTs not very long after starting at UWS. I mainly remember things like the RRE livery on units at Hereford, with a bit of IC Swallow, but that's about all I remember about the BR period. I daresay I enjoy my enthusiasm in this period than I would have done in, say, 1992, but then there were more locos in 1992, so maybe not. There are some good things about BR, some good things about privatisation, but it's near impossible to have the best of both worlds.