Amid the usual crowd of tired commuters at Waterloo station, the lady in the red jacket stood out. As she boarded the 6.14am train to Shepperton in Surrey – itself painted in a shiny red, white and blue livery – she heralded ‘a new dawn for our railways’ and said she was traveling with ‘a sense of pride’.
It was the morning of May 25, 2025 and the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, had arrived to greet one of the first services of the newly re-nationalised South Western Railway.
“I was so adamant that I had to be here in Waterloo this morning alongside all these other excited passengers and railway enthusiasts for what is truly a turning point,” she added, vowing to “move away from 30 years of inefficiency, delayed services and failed passengers and confidently enter a new era – the era of the Great British Railways”.
Her fellow passengers were even more ecstatic. Cat Hobbs, founder and director of We Own It, a pressure group campaigning for state ownership of all public services, trilled: “It’s a really positive thing because we’ve now had 30 years of an ideological experiment of trying to pretend there were markets on the railway.”
How has it all turned out now, over a year later? Well, the hapless passengers trying to travel from Surbiton to Waterloo on South Western in recent days may not have found Labour’s doctrinaire experiment ‘really positive’ after all.
In just one hour, no fewer than four services were delayed or canceled – for various reasons. Early risers wanting to board the 7.31am train were told: ‘This service has been canceled due to a derailment at the depot.’
Those hoping to continue to 8.01am were told: ‘This train has been canceled due to more trains than normal needing repairs at the same time.’
The morning of 8:11 am was ‘too late due to a malfunction in the signaling system’. Finally, at 8.41am it was ‘delayed due to a shortage of drivers’ – although heaven knows why the drivers of the canceled trains were unavailable.
So much for that ‘new dawn’. Since Heidi Alexander made her proud ride to Shepperton, the performance of South Western’s trains has only gotten worse.
In the last quarter before renationalization, 86.2 percent of the company’s trains ran ‘on time’ (defined as arriving within three minutes of the scheduled time).
In the first quarter of this year – the last for which the Office of Rail and Road published data – this was marginal down – up to 85.5 percent. The share of canceled trains had now risen from 3.0 to 3.6 percent.
More than a year since the renationalisation of the South Western Railway, the number of trains running ‘on time’ has fallen, while the number of canceled trains has risen
Nationalized railway companies have become predatory. The standard price for a return from London to Edinburgh is a whopping £409 – more expensive than a transatlantic flight
I know how South Western passengers feel. My local service, Cambridge to King’s Cross, run by Govia Thameslink, was re-nationalised in May. On my next trip to London, three weeks later, the service I wanted to take had been cancelled. By the time I got to the station, the next train had also been canceled and the train after that was ten minutes late.
When the train arrived, it had only four carriages instead of the usual eight. I used to think I was lucky if I managed to get a seat; I barely had room to stand. Dozens of other irate passengers were left stranded on the platform.
One of the first changes the newly nationalized railway company made was to cut services in July and August – when many drivers are likely to be on holiday. If that was intended to improve timekeeping, it didn’t happen. The next two times I traveled to London my train was also cancelled. I squeezed out of the sardine tin at King’s Cross half an hour late.
Other recently renationalised services are doing equally poorly. If I can’t get a Govia Thameslink train, I can get a Greater Anglia train to Liverpool Street. That operator was also re-nationalized in October last year, but again this has not led to the glorious new efficiency and punctuality that Ms Alexander promised.
In fact, Greater Anglia has suffered the second biggest drop in punctuality among rail operators over the past year, with only Caledonian Sleeper services worse.
Speaking of Scotland, LNER, which operates services from London to Edinburgh along the East Coast Mainline, was the first franchise to be returned to state ownership in June 2018.
Eight years later, it hardly sets an example: 29 percent of its services ran late in the first quarter of this year. Things have improved slightly since the failing Trans Pennine Express was re-nationalised in May 2023, but not by much, with 27.1 per cent of services still delayed and 3.9 per cent not even leaving the station.
Those still using privatized lines may feel that implementation has been delayed. Avanti West Coast will be nationalized next year, but the government has been in control since 2023 and a recent report suggests its drivers’ pockets will be filled with gold.
The Prime Minister has reportedly agreed that they should receive time-and-a-half pay on Sundays, a pay rise of 3.6 percent above inflation and a maximum of £720 for turning up on the fifth day of a working week.
Expect other unions to beg the government for even more generous subsidies.
None of this will come as a surprise to those of us old enough to remember British Rail. I even worked for British Rail – in the research department. The trains then ran rattling, dirty and invariably late. The passengers were generally treated as a nuisance. When a train service in Devon suffered from overcrowding, the service was canceled rather than providing additional carriages.
One of the first effects of privatization, which began in 1994 under John Major, was a sharp increase in passenger numbers, as railway companies began to attract customers rather than drive them away.
But at least British Rail’s services were reasonably cheap. Despite expectations that fares on a renationalised network would fall because there would no longer be shareholders to skim profits, prices have soared. Few would have predicted how much the Great British Railways would push fares to eye-watering levels.
Last year LNER announced it was ‘simplifying’ its tariffs, which is never a good sign. It abolished ‘off-peak’ and ‘super-off-peak’ fares, forcing passengers to either buy a full-price ‘anytime’ ticket or take their chances with an ‘advance’ ticket, of which there are only a limited number available on each service. If you miss the train for which your ticket was valid, you will have to buy a new one.
For the millions of people who can’t plan their trip in advance, this means the standard price for a return flight from London to Edinburgh is a whopping £409 – more expensive than the cheapest return flight from London to New York (on the airline Norse Atlantic).
I made the trip to Edinburgh in November 2008, when the line was operated by National Express. The cost of my open return Saver ticket was £104, which, adjusted for inflation, would now be £175. This means that the re-nationalised LNER has effectively doubled costs.
Nationalized railway companies have become predatory, as engineering graduate Sam Williamson discovered in 2024 when he took a Northern Trains (nationalized in 2020) service from Glossop to Manchester to take a driving test.
He paid £3.65 for an ‘anytime’ ticket using his youngster’s railcard, but a ticket inspector told him that under the nationalized network’s baffling rules, the railcard was not valid on fares under £12 before 10am (although this had been the case during the months of July and August).
Instead of making him pay the £1.90 difference, the petty civil servant threatened a private criminal prosecution. The case was only dropped when the Department of Transport told the company it was treating innocent passengers as fare dodgers when all they were doing was trying to get around the byzantine rules.
In short, anyone who thinks that bringing back the rattling, wheezing ghost of British Rail will put things right is kidding themselves. In this area, as in so many things, we are slipping backwards.
