I have no doublt that the post privatisation railway has brought a whole host of innovations. But BR's ability to innovate was probably more
different than more
restricted: notably having a 'whole system' view rather than just control over one small region or line's trains offered scope for cost-effective innovation that could be rolled out effectively. Having said that, a desire for consistency might have made regional innovations less likely.
Would they have produced a 125mph tilting WCML with Pendolinos within 5 years?
No: but they had been developing the next generation of high-speed trains in the form of the Intercity 250, intended to run at 150 mph+ with upgrades to the track and signalling on the West Coast Main Line. The project was quashed by the recession of the early '90s - which had also
temporarily suppressed passenger numbers, which had previously been increasing since about 1982 at roughly the same rate that they increased after (but not necessarily due to) privatisation as the economy recovered. I suspect that when passenger numbers picked up, the project could have been revived, but with better co-ordination between track upgrades and rolling stock.
Inter-city Bi-modes (769s don't count)
Probably not: but since BR continued to develop push-pull trains, it would have been possible to move from diesel to electric or bi-mode locomotives without waiting to change the carriages.
How long would it have taken them to develop a retail ticketing web site and ATMs to match
BR operated increasingly complex Ticket Vending Machines extensively in the South East, and it would have been a logical progression to upgrade them and roll them out more widely as technology changed.
Delay-repay (when did BR ever refund any money for poor performance?)
John Major's Citizen Charter brought in refunds or extensions to season tickets linked to delays and poor performance on British Rail.
The Passengers' Charter of 1992 (before the General Election of that year sealed BR's fate) introduced specific compensation, both for single-journey and season tickets: a refund of 20% of the single leg for a delay of an hour, and season ticket discounts that went broadly unchanged until Delay Repay arrived.
How would BR have handled Devolution (Wales, Scotland and within England).
BR already had its ScotRail division and Network South East, so it would not have been any skin off their nose to set up a region for Wales. They already worked with PTEs.
I don't think they would ever have been given the money to do it "their way".
That is an interesting point: the cut backs in the 1990s recession is a case in point, suggesting BR being at the mercy of Treasury restrictions; but I suspect there would have been better co-ordination between track and train upgrades, leading to fewer examples of trains being ordered that didn't match track upgrade schedules (the Desiro fleet was delayed due to needing more power than was available and those Pendolinos still don't reach 140mph, if I remember rightly) and possibly better overall use of resources leading to greater overall improvements.
A lot of external events have happened since then, all affecting the railway.
External events were always happening, and BR responded to them. We will never know what their response would have been to more recent events, but they would not have stood still. Notably during the '90s recession they tried both to cut costs and improve customer experiences to attract more leisure passengers: why does that sound familiar?
Possibly an extreme example of this is Northern's £10 (£17.50 weekend) rover ticket. Go anywhere off-peak for a day (or two). But only on Northern services.
1: How would you similarly define which routes (and in some cases, which services on those routes) this would be limited to, absent disparate TOCs?
British Rail did offer some regional rangers: they were simply specified in terms of lines and geographical area. Even in today's railways, this is commonplace, such as a whole host of rangers and rovers in the Great Western region that are limited to specific lines or even counties, sometimes across TOCs.
BR had a website? Really? The World Wide Web was only starting to take off with the general public in 1994 when BR was on the way out.
Unofficial websites appeared, and the residuary British Rail Board got a website, but not BR itself: BR concentrated on introducing regional timetable enquiry telephone bureaux. However, given the speed with which both the Railtrack online timetable and individual TOC websites appeared - including those run by ex BR managers - I see no reason why BR would not have done the same.
One thing that BR did do instead is third-party ticket agents: I used to buy tickets on tractor-feed stock from travel agents, and I wonder if this experience might have led to different ticketing options such as tickets through PayPoint or Post Offices at some stage.
Virgin trains on board shop instead of buffet? First class lounges (or did these in sectorisatuon days?). Engineering innovation would probably have got there sooner or later whether public, unified, private, or fragmented, but marketing innovation was a bit different.
BR's marketing was top notch in its last years, and they were putting significant efforts into improving the passenger experience and actively attracting passengers. I suspect that we would have seen different innovations: for example, they were already attempting to have trains ready for boarding in the platforms at certain terminal stations rather than needing to provide separate lounges; and there were a few Sleeper Lounges, so First Class lounges might also have arrived once platforms became too busy to have trains waiting. As for on-board shops: having used both shops and buffets, I really didn't feel that the shop offered anything that the buffets
couldn't (and often offered a lot less than the buffets did), and I suspect that BR would have come to the same conclusion. Other innovations that feel like post-privatisation things such as audio entertainment sockets and scrolling information displays in carriages, at-seat catering on inter-city services, cheap advance purchase fares, reward schemes and intermediate travel classes were already either in use, on trial or in the pipeline under BR.