1948 - No Nationalisation of the UK Railways

Clement Atlee's government loved to nationalise everything in the aftermath of WW2 in order to build a "brave, new society" (where have I heard that one before. The transport industry was no exception and the railways, the canals, road haulage and ports all were nationalised after the Transport Act 1947 under the auspices of the Ministry of Transport.

But let's scupper the nationalisation of the Railways - before 1948, the Big Four railway companies were very powerful entities with a lot of influence in Parliament and could potentially sink the Transport Act or at least get it revised so for the purposes of this exercise, Railways remain privatised but Road Haulage isn't.

Now because of the war, a backlog of maintenance has to be sorted out and modernisation has to take place. BR's profits fell and fell until the mid 1950s where they began recording losses. Can a privatised industry, especially with weaker opposition from road transport, fend off the challenge and remain the number one mode of transport in the UK?

If the railway industry remains out of government hands, there is no need for one Doctor Beeching to be called in to report on the railways.

If the Road Haulage industry remains in the hands of the government, will there be all that money spent on motorways?

I can see two outcomes:

One is a new railway golden age where it makes little financial sense for people to own their own motorcars, especially in cities where trams continue to dominate the local routes as they're not going to be closed. The "big four" remain huge players in the FTSE 100 Index and have extensive conglomorates in property, resorts and ports. The UK car industry sunk in the 1960s when there was just not enough of a domestic market to continue to support manufacture and French companies Peugeot and Renault gobbled up Rover, Jaguar et al.

The other is that the railways continue on developing until North Sea oil is discovered in the 1960s and lobbying efforts from the automobile industry persuading greedy politicians with the lure of cheap petrol and massive kickbacks begin the massive UK roadbuilding programme 20 years later - railways face increasing competition from roads leading to many unprofitable lines running Parliamentary Trains and Ghost Trains.

Ideas?
 
I think it's very likely that the rail companies will have to slash services and branch lines and concentrate on the most popular and profitable routes in order to remain financially viable, and they will probably end up merging and being baled out by the government at some point anyway.

Now there's probably just be a handful of highspeed mainlines left, linking the very biggest cities, with expensive services, so slightly worse than what there actually is OTL.
 
Y'think?

At least if there's no nationalisation, there's no fare subsidy with the exception of local level where there are Public Service Requirements.

Actually, now I think about it, with more rail opportunities to cater for longer distance working, perhaps the flexible working for offices takes off sooner.
 
Why would there be more rail opportunities? What incentive would the rail companies have to run unprofitable services? Why would they keep obscure branch lines open?
 
Do remember, there had been calls to nationalise the railways since the early 1920s from all parties, partly because the British Rail System was a bit of a mess. After WW2 they're in a total shambles and simple fact is, cars will overtake trains by the late 1960s purely because they're a lot more convenient.

A Big Four dominated system continuing after 1948 could have some interesting consequences but probably nothing too good, bar less taxpayers money shovelled on to dying lines, however the government whehther Tory or Labour will end up injecting money into the system just to keep it half viable, and you'll probably end up with a similar mess to the present Public-Private one we have now, with greedy private companies gobbling up hand outs will little obvious improvement.

Really I can see a few extra pounds, shillings and pence in Joe Bloggs pocket, or at least put to better use somewhere else, and a more contracted decline in rail lines to the bare essentials. However this might lead to us having a French style system, with the Big Four maintaining state of the art bullet trains to take you from Manchester to London etc. however local trains will be ancient, poorly maintained and come twice a day if that.
 
I think the railways would be more efficient and that there would be a lot more stations. Certaintly, there will be some closures of unprofitable stations, but nothing like what happened in OTL with Beeching - no attempt was even made to make them profitable. The 'big four' woud go through a lot of structural changes, and I don't think they could 'dominate' in such a way come the 50's, especially if legislation guarantees greater competition. They would inevitably, in whatever form, become profitable I don't think railways will be able to prevent the rise and dominance of road transport though. Railways are simply too inflexible when compared to roads. Therefore I would imagine we would be in situation where railways are generally of a slightly better quality than OTL, with more routes, more stations, and a lot more passengers, but cars will still be the British choice of transport. The average number of cars per household may be slightly lower though. High speed rail travel may also be a reality in the UK by the 90's, but not before.
 
Why would there be more stations and services? There might be in the 21st century but the steady decline in rail goers was due to cars and congested roads are arguably the reasons for record numbers of new passengers, until then profits will not allow it. I don't see the logic, I can imagine better trains, competition might even let us see reasonable prices but services will suffer due to unpopularity. Major road congestion would probably see renewed interests in re-opening lines but not until recently.
 
I can also see the Channel Tunnel being built in the 1970s as was attempted at the time but the talks stalled.
 
Non nationalised railways would most likely have been modernised more quickly with earlier, and more wide spread, electrification. But the network would still have been slimmed down although possibly not as much as by Beechings axe. Expect sparse rural services but more concentration on urban routes. There may be less motorways built with more reliance on local bypasses instead and the oil crisis of the 70s would play to the strenghts of the railways for mass transit of goods and people.
 
Clement Atlee's government loved to nationalise everything in the aftermath of WW2 in order to build a "brave, new society" (where have I heard that one before. The transport industry was no exception and the railways, the canals, road haulage and ports all were nationalised after the Transport Act 1947 under the auspices of the Ministry of Transport.

But let's scupper the nationalisation of the Railways - before 1948, the Big Four railway companies were very powerful entities with a lot of influence in Parliament and could potentially sink the Transport Act or at least get it revised so for the purposes of this exercise, Railways remain privatised but Road Haulage isn't.

Now because of the war, a backlog of maintenance has to be sorted out and modernisation has to take place. BR's profits fell and fell until the mid 1950s where they began recording losses. Can a privatised industry, especially with weaker opposition from road transport, fend off the challenge and remain the number one mode of transport in the UK?

If the railway industry remains out of government hands, there is no need for one Doctor Beeching to be called in to report on the railways.


As another commentator has remarked there were plans to nationalise the railways well before Attlee arrived on the scheme and in practice Attlee's government only nationalised industries that were on the verge of bankrupcy or already largely under public ownership i.e electricity and gas which were largely run by locakl authorities. Churchill was advocating the nationalisation of the railways around the tyime of the first world war.

Road haulage was however fairly profitable and became denationalised fairly quickly. With no government control, Dr Becchings policies would have come in sooner rather than later as commerical concerns would close down unprofitable routes and the growth of car ownership would have an increasingly detrimental effect. There would probably have been a greater variety of designsd for locomotives as there would be no standardisation.
 
Would a few of the same issues stay the same either way?
1. Aging infrastructure
2. War damage due to either bombing or deferral of investment/maintenance etc due to needs of war
3. Changing habits of consumer market
4. Limited resources - where would the needed capital come from in order to meet 1-3? Railways are expensive beasts and then, as now, would require substantial investment resources.

Further, are there any well run or efficient large country rail networks out there that are privatised that would serve as a good example of what Britain's networks would have been capable of, given this POD? I am not a railway expert so in my limited knowledge most large networks seem to be state owned, with the exception of North America
 
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