*Should* Network SouthEast return?

[Sad Sprinter]

For some reason, Network SouthEast holds a particular fondess in people's hearts. Even for me born in '95, I grew up in a time when most of the rolling stock was still in NSE livery and as a very small child, I can remember the NSE livery being instantly recognisable and familiar. Whilst many people, such as myself would have loved to have seen NSE continue, is there any serious argument for it in the present day?

Focusing on issues like:

What would be the advantages/disadvantages of a single operator across the entire NSE territory?

Would the NSE brand be dated now, or could it still work?

Mods: I posted this in the wrong forum, thought this was Speculative Ideas. Could it be moved please? Apologies.

 

[bramling]

For some reason, Network SouthEast holds a particular fondess in people's hearts. Even for me born in '95, I grew up in a time when most of the rolling stock was still in NSE livery and as a very small child, I can remember the NSE livery being instantly recognisable and familiar. Whilst many people, such as myself would have loved to have seen NSE continue, is there any serious argument for it in the present day?

Focusing on issues like:

What would be the advantages/disadvantages of a single operator across the entire NSE territory?

Would the NSE brand be dated now, or could it still work?

Mods: I posted this in the wrong forum, thought this was Speculative Ideas. Could it be moved please? Apologies.

Yes and no for me.

NSE would be a great thing for glueing together any tidemark between London and the wider south-east. However how do you sort out the artificial parochial boundary which now exists at the boundary of the London mayoral area?

I think NSE worked very well as part of the NSE/IC/RR/SR structure, but I’m not sure how it would fit with the current TOC structure. So to recreate NSE you’d probably be looking at a return to the whole early 1990s setup. How easy it would be to untangle some TOCs like GWR or GA would be a case in point.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Yes and no for me.

NSE would be a great thing for glueing together any tidemark between London and the wider south-east. However how do you sort out the artificial parochial boundary which now exists at the boundary of the London mayoral area?

I think NSE worked very well as part of the NSE/IC/RR/SR structure, but I’m not sure how it would fit with the current TOC structure. So to recreate NSE you’d probably be looking at a return to the whole early 1990s setup. How easy it would be to untangle some TOCs like GWR or GA would be a case in point.

That is true, I didn't think about GA and GWR. I suppose that GA could be incorporated entirely into NSE2. After all, London to Norwich isn't as far as London to Weymouth or even London to Kings Lynn, but the need to expand the territory to include Cromer and Great Yarmouth won't be of much benefit to your average commuter at Crystal Palace.

GWR I think would have benefits being put back to NSE, if anything for the ease of sharing dual voltage stock with the Southern Region.

I suppose, bringing the Lea Valley locals into NSE might help TFL's balance sheet too a bit. As it was in the 90s, investment in inner-London's railways to bring it up to 'Overground standard' could be payed for by the more lucrative longer distance commuter services.

 

[HST43257]

I think NSE should return, but there should be similar systems around the country.

London (all NSE pretty much)
North East (Tees Valley Metro + Tyne & Wear)
Yorkshire (Anything Yorkshire commuter)
Manchester & Mersey (Merseyrail + Manchester commuter)
East Midlands (Derby/Nottingham Midlands Engine stuff)
West Midlands (All WM Commuter stuff)


For me (even though I was nowhere near being alive when it was around) it represents an intergrated, recognised solution.

It would probably open the door for IC to come back as well as Regional Railways, which would have significantly less operations (just the rural routes mainly)

 

[HamworthyGoods]

GWR I think would have benefits being put back to NSE, if anything for the ease of sharing dual voltage stock with the Southern Region.

But how would that work with the IETs that are shared between Oxford and Bedwyn workings with Intercity trains (and the 5 car 800s which have to work the Bedwyns are maintained at Stoke Gifford in Bristol).

Likewise the turbos are largely going to be based at St Philips Marsh once the 769s come in so you would have the inefficiency of maintaining a small turbo fleet for the Thames Valley.

 

[ac6000cw]

as well as Regional Railways, which would have significantly less operations (just the rural routes mainly)

...which would highlight just how bad the financial performance of a lot of those 'rural routes' is, and hence probably put them under a tight financial squeeze - is that what you want?

 

[JonathanH]

But how would that work with the IETs that are shared between Oxford and Bedwyn workings with Intercity trains (and the 5 car 800s which have to work the Bedwyns are maintained at Stoke Gifford in Bristol).

Likewise the turbos are largely going to be based at St Philips Marsh once the 769s come in so you would have the inefficiency of maintaining a small turbo fleet for the Thames Valley.

There is no reason why the London to Oxford and Cotswold services shouldn't stay with the Intercity operator, including the short workings from Paddington to Oxford.

There is plenty of sentiment on this forum (not mine) for 387s to run London to Newbury with a Newbury to Bedwyn Turbo shuttle. Indeed, there is some sentiment for London to Oxford fast services to be run with 387s after electrification.

As posted elsewhere, the Turbo fleet at Reading would be 10 dedicated 2-car units. That is happening in any case.

 

[ac6000cw]

But how would that work with the IETs that are shared between Oxford and Bedwyn workings with Intercity trains (and the 5 car 800s which have to work the Bedwyns are maintained at Stoke Gifford in Bristol).

Likewise the turbos are largely going to be based at St Philips Marsh once the 769s come in so you would have the inefficiency of maintaining a small turbo fleet for the Thames Valley.

The Turbos could still be maintained at Bristol (under contract) and the IETs are maintained by Hitachi anyway. A TOC is not necessarily a 'rolling stock maintainer'.

 

[JonathanH]

GWR I think would have benefits being put back to NSE, if anything for the ease of sharing dual voltage stock with the Southern Region.

Even in NSE days, there was dedicated rolling stock for each route. To all intents and purposes, NSE Thames & Chiltern did not 'share' any rolling stock with NSE Solent & Wessex or NSE South Central. The Reading to Basingstoke line moved from "Solent & Wessex" to "Thames & Chiltern" in 1993.

Would the NSE brand be dated now, or could it still work?

No one would expect 1980s branding to be reapplied in the 2020s. An umbrella grouping for the London commuter franchises does not have to be called NSE.

Don't eulogise too much about the NSE brand - "Notwork" South East comes to mind.

What would be the advantages/disadvantages of a single operator across the entire NSE territory?

It wouldn't be a single operator as such. The area covered and number of services is just too much to manage. Instead, there would be sub-routes which report to a top-level board and cross-marketing. NSE was an amalgamation of a number of different operations - eg LT&S, Great Eastern, West Anglia, Great Northern, Thameslink, North London Lines, Thames & Chiltern, South Western, South Central, South Eastern, Island Line etc, each with a team running those services. Thames & Chiltern was later split.

Advantages are the cross-marketing of services as a complete network. There are disadvantages in not being able to maintain a consistent identity / service quality across all routes because of the investment cycle. Therefore, all of the "Network South East" brand is affected by its worse service offering rather than just one operator.

 

[camflyer]

I've always had an attachment to the NSE brand having grown up in the North East where going on a train was a major outing, I moved to Surrey in 1990 where catching the train was just something you did every day to get around. In more ways than one it was like moving to a different country where Network South East offered a good service and everywhere was just had the inferior British Rail.

 

[Hadders]

In many respects I'd love NSE to return, the branding was excellent and timeless - a visit to Downham Market station (painted into NSE colours a couple of years ago to mark NSEs 30th anniversary) shows how it is a design classic.

That said the railway and life in general has moved on and we shouldn't go back.

Interestingly I wonder if in 30 years time people will be saying we should return to GWR, Avanti, Thameslink branding etc.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think everyone has a halcyon view of what was the case when they were growing up/coming of age.

But on the original question, should there be some level of co-ordination of London and South East commuter services, probably yes. Should it be called NSE and be painted in toothpaste colours? Possibly not.

 

[bramling]

In many respects I'd love NSE to return, the branding was excellent and timeless - a visit to Downham Market station (painted into NSE colours a couple of years ago to mark NSEs 30th anniversary) shows how it is a design classic.

That said the railway and life in general has moved on and we shouldn't go back.

Interestingly I wonder if in 30 years time people will be saying we should return to GWR, Avanti, Thameslink branding etc.

Doubt it. Most of the privatisation brands are either a distant memory or a drop in the ocean to most of the population.

The only ones I’d say are in any way memorable are GNER and Virgin, and perhaps Chiltern if you happen to live or work in their neck of the woods.

GWR and LNER could work well, but there’s a long way to go to reach that point.

 

[yorksrob]

I think that there's a lot to be said for a unified railway network around London. The ever increasing scope of Thameslink, Crossrail etc lends itself to this.

And why not have the toothpaste brand of toothpaste livery and blue blaze moquette. These looked good on 1950's slammers and 90's networkers.

Wouldn't be the same of course, what with everything being modern slidy-door things.

 

[bramling]

I think that there's a lot to be said for a unified railway network around London. The ever increasing scope of Thameslink, Crossrail etc lends itself to this.

And why not have the toothpaste brand of toothpaste livery and blue blaze moquette. These looked good on 1950's slammers and 90's networkers.

Wouldn't be the same of course, what with everything being modern slidy-door things.

There is indeed a lot to be said for it.

We now have a bit of an odd patchwork consisting of
1) LU
2) Overground
3) TOCs
4) Elizabeth Line
5) Thameslink (I know that’s a TOC but it very much crosses traditional lines

Of those, 1,2 and 4 are embroiled with the mayor, 3 exists within and outside the London boundary, and 4 extends as far as Reading which is hardly London. Meanwhile 5 is part of a TOC which goes as far as Southampton, Hastings and Kings Lynn.

I’m dead against LO as to me it’s simply a parochial Mayoral vanity project.

NSE isn’t a bad shout at all, but would face modern-day challenges of how to separate it off from the long-distance non-commuter services, and how to put TfL back in its box.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I’m dead against LO as to me it’s simply a parochial Mayoral vanity project.

Thus spake someone who obviously has no concept at all of just how utterly, utterly dire Silverlink Metro was. County (Northampton Line) was competent, Metro was awful.

 

[yorksrob]

Yes, it u

There is indeed a lot to be said for it.

We now have a bit of an odd patchwork consisting of
1) LU
2) Overground
3) TOCs
4) Elizabeth Line
5) Thameslink (I know that’s a TOC but it very much crosses traditional lines

Of those, 1,2 and 4 are embroiled with the mayor, 3 exists within and outside the London boundary, and 4 extends as far as Reading which is hardly London. Meanwhile 5 is part of a TOC which goes as far as Southampton, Hastings and Kings Lynn.

I’m dead against LO as to me it’s simply a parochial Mayoral vanity project.

NSE isn’t a bad shout at all, but would face modern-day challenges of how to separate it off from the long-distance non-commuter services, and how to put TfL back in its box.

Indeed. There used to be a fairly good demarcation between LT and BR. Difficult one to square as that set up was never designed for the mayoral system.

I suppose you could have all suburban services as a giant PTE.

 

[Mikey C]

The big issue isn't the livery or how rolling stock would be split between "NSE and other routes" but how this would be managed politically

The London Mayor and TfL have a lot of power over many lines in London now, and would be reluctant to hand back the Overground and Crossrail routes, but there are no similar organisations outside London to "co-manage" a new NSE

The borders of NSE were always a bit weird to me anyway, thanks to the slightly artificial split between NSE and Inter-City, and the current Network Card route map continues this, going all the way to King's Lynn and Worcester but not including Ipswich or Swindon!

 

[Wolfie]

Thus spake someone who obviously has no concept at all of just how utterly, utterly dire Silverlink Metro was. County (Northampton Line) was competent, Metro was awful.

Absolutely correct.

 

[yorksrob]

Thus spake someone who obviously has no concept at all of just how utterly, utterly dire Silverlink Metro was. County (Northampton Line) was competent, Metro was awful.

This discussion is about NSE, not early privatisation companies.

As a man of Kent, that's like me saying that NSE is a bad idea because I didn't like Connex.

 

[paul1609]

The borders of NSE were always a bit weird to me anyway, thanks to the slightly artificial split between NSE and Inter-City, and the current Network Card route map continues this, going all the way to King's Lynn and Worcester but not including Ipswich or Swindon!

Not to mention that Gatwick Express was "Intercity" as a revenue raid on the Brighton Main Line to mitigate the huge losses that the MML and Cross Country sub sector made and pretend that the Intercity sector was profitable!

 

[Wolfie]

This discussion is about NSE, not early privatisation companies.

As a man of Kent, that's like me saying that NSE is a bad idea because I didn't like Connex.

The comment came up in the context of criticism of LO which l note that you didn't make similar comments about. Pre-privatisation NSE/BR services on what became LO weren't great either

 

[yorksrob]

Not to mention that Gatwick Express was "Intercity" as a revenue raid on the Brighton Main Line to mitigate the huge losses that the MML and Cross Country sub sector made and pretend that the Intercity sector was profitable!

I loved the fact that NSE went all the way to Exeter though !

The comment came up in the context of criticism of LO which l note that you didn't make similar comments about. Pre-privatisation NSE/BR services on what became LO weren't great either

The post I commented on mentioned Silverlink Metro, not LO.

That said, I disagree with some of LO's policies, so I'm happy to put the boot in on those.

 

[Journeyman]

I think too much has changed now, and several TOCs now seamlessly combine classic NSE services with much longer distance ones, and recreating the old NSE would be tricky.

I think there's a lot to be said about a common branding and possibly single operator for London inner suburban services, though, and I don't think it would be too hard to do.

 

[bramling]

Thus spake someone who obviously has no concept at all of just how utterly, utterly dire Silverlink Metro was. County (Northampton Line) was competent, Metro was awful.

I wouldn’t say Silverlink Metro was *that* bad. Operationally they were pretty competent, the biggest issue was they became notorious for “personal security issues”, and that was more because they served and linked what were at the time some absolutely dire parts of London.

Other TOCs manage to run quite decent inner-suburban operations - the Moorgate to Welwyn / Hertford route isn’t bad, same goes for the south western. Nowadays only Southeastern has a slightly run-down feel.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The comment came up in the context of criticism of LO which l note that you didn't make similar comments about. Pre-privatisation NSE/BR services on what became LO weren't great either

I don't think the NLL was much cop under NSE either. It was an underinvested backwater. LO was transformational.

 

[bramling]

I think too much has changed now, and several TOCs now seamlessly combine classic NSE services with much longer distance ones, and recreating the old NSE would be tricky.

I think there's a lot to be said about a common branding and possibly single operator for London inner suburban services, though, and I don't think it would be too hard to do.

I’m unconvinced about “London inner suburban”. It’s too parochial, especially on routes where it’s much harder to segregate off the inner-suburban services.

And why should there be a tidemark at the London (+ mayoral) boundary?

London seems to want to build a wall round itself at the moment, and I’m not sure that’s helpful to the wider area.

I don't think the NLL was much cop under NSE either. It was an underinvested backwater. LO was transformational.

It was an underinvested backwater because the areas it served were bad. Since then many places on the route have become quite trendy, and I’d argue that’s more just because of the natural cycle rather than a response to LO - indeed the process was already happening in Silverlink days.

Same as how on something like the Northern Line the likes of Clapham, Balham and Tooting were horrific in the 1980s but are now reasonably smart, whilst by the same token the likes of Edgware, Golders Green or Finchley Central were smart but are now starting to look increasingly dumpy.

 

[Wolfie]

I don't think the NLL was much cop under NSE either. It was an underinvested backwater. LO was transformational.

That's what l was trying to say.

 

[Hadders]

There seems to be a proposal on here every week to transfer inner-suburban services to TfL. Normally led by calls to transfer the Moorgate inner suburban services. As far as the Moorgate services are concerned there really is no reason to transfer them, it would mean the loss of operational flexibility and to be honest GTR really has got it act together since 2018.

In fact I've travelled through a number of LO stations recently (for work purposes) and they some of them really are starting to look a rather tatty with ingrained dirt and peeling paint. Sticking roundels on everything is the easy bit - the hard bit is who funds the improvements.

 

[yorksrob]

I think too much has changed now, and several TOCs now seamlessly combine classic NSE services with much longer distance ones, and recreating the old NSE would be tricky.

I think that that's an issue.

Marlylebone - Birmingham services are too valuable nowadays. I think in classic NSE days they used to terminate at Banbury.

That said, as part of the BR family, NSE wasn't really supposed to compete directly with InterCity. There's nothing to say that modern day NSE wouldn't be able to compete with longer distance services. It could be market differentiation. New NSE could offer the cheap - walk up slow option, while the longer distance operator could offer the faster, higher quality alternative (I'm aware that this already happens on the WCML).