Comment: Where track and train integration will be put to the test

There’s no shortage of things being done and things to do on the railway.

Firmly in the first category is Greater Manchester’s creation of Burnham Rail - otherwise known as the Bee Network, which aims to present unified public transport under one brand across trains, trams and buses.

In the second category is South Western Railway’s route between Basingstoke and Exeter, which “fails the most basic tests of meeting passenger needs”, according to a recent report from consultancy Greengauge 21.

Also in the second category is Network Rail’s need to renew overhead line equipment (OLE) on the northern end of the West Coast Main Line.

Meanwhile, we all wait to see how Great British Railways will take shape in the most fundamental reorganisation of the railway since privatisation in the 1990s. This waiting can easily stifle activity, as industry players look around for someone else to provide the answers.

That many look to ministers is the result of the Department for Transport taking increasing control, particularly over matters of money, and then sitting on its hands for many of the past few years.

That’s changing with the creation of Shadow GBR, chaired by Laura Shoaf on a part-time basis and bringing together Network Rail, the DfT and DfT Operator (which runs Northern, LNER, Southeastern and TransPennine Express).

Shoaf describes Shadow GBR’s aim as to integrate track and train and to try to simplify fragmented decision-making. Answering questions from MPs on the Transport Select Committee on January 22, she then listed five areas that Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has asked her to focus on.

First on her list is integration, for which Shoaf said she will aim to drive out duplication, reduce operating costs, and break down silos.

Then followed standards (including passenger information, performance data and customer insights), fares and ticketing reform, strategic innovation, and maximisation of the railway’s social and environmental benefits.

Many commentators argue that the railway’s basic problem is the split between track and train. It might be more accurate to say that there’s confusion about customers.

Network Rail sells its product - track access - to passenger and freight operators. Yet most of its income comes from DfT and Transport Scotland, while enforcement action for poor performance comes from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).

In turn, passenger operators sell travel to people, while freight operators sell cargo capacity to shippers. Freight is entirely private, and companies succeed or fail by the quality of service they offer. Some passenger operators need government subsidy for services considered socially necessary, while others need no direct support.

Northern has always fallen into the subsidy category, while LNER has traditionally generated a surplus that it has paid to government.

A sharper focus on customers by railway players would go a long way to countering Shoaf’s argument that the current railway has no incentive to work together.

There’s a real test coming with NR’s OLE renewals between Warrington and Carlisle. British Rail started running electric services on this line in 1974, so there’s no question that it needs renewing.

NR’s engineering schedules show four two-week closures scheduled for 2026. That totals two months.

Research from the likes of Transport Focus shows that passengers prefer to remain on trains, rather than use replacement buses. For the main passenger operators over the northern end of the WCML, there is an alternative route - the Settle-Carlisle Line.

Avanti’s predecessor, Virgin West Coast, used the line in the 2000s when NR was last upgrading the WCML. Virgin used Class 57s to haul its Pendolino electric multiple units over the alternative route.

However, Avanti has neither ‘57s’ nor crews with route knowledge. Restoring this capability will cost money, and that will need ministerial approval.

TransPennine Express also runs on the northern half of the WCML. TPE Managing Director Chris Jackson told me in January: “My priority is to keep passenger bottoms on train seats, not bus seats.”

Creating diversionary capability has been done before. Again, it was back in the days of Network Rail’s West Coast Route Modernisation. The Strategic Rail Authority corralled rail operators and NR into Project Rio, which ran direct trains between Manchester and London via the Hope Valley and Midland Main Lines, to provide an alternative when NR closed the WCML for lengthy periods.

If there’s a will, there’s a way.

There’s plenty of will in Greater Manchester, as seen by the creation of the Bee Network. This has three phases, with the first featuring the Victoria-Stalybridge and the Piccadilly-Hadfield/Glossop/Rose Hill Marple lines going over by December 2026. This involved rebranded stations and a trial of rebranded trains.

On one level, the Bee Network appears to run counter to government’s pledge to integrate and cut fragmentation, by introducing another brand and ‘customer’. On another, it’s simply reintroducing the concept of Passenger Transport Executive brands, fares and services that became big in the 1980s.

Bee will use crews and stock currently with Northern, although Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s announcement was careful to not mention this troubled (nationalised) operator.

He will need its problems fixed (particularly unreliable Sunday services) if Bee is to be successful. Yet those problems run wider than just Manchester, so it’s not something Burnham can do on his own. He’ll need government support.

Burnham shows that there’s no need to wait for GBR. Rail Minister Lord Hendy admitted this when he appeared at the same select committee meeting as Laura Shoaf. He commented: “We’re joined up enough to be able to work with him to deliver what he wants.”

That does beg the question of why DfT is going through all the work needed to create GBR. It’s to be an ‘arm’s-length’ body, but how long that arm might be is still to be seen.

Hendy admits that it will never be free from government. “You won’t be left alone to run a railway that consumes billions of pounds.

Government will have a say,” he told the Select Committee.

If GBR’s arm is too short, then it risks seeing government as its customer, rather than passengers and freight. Too long, and it risks spending taxpayers’ money without due regard for its source.

Hendy told the committee that ministers should give some freedoms to GBR, but have it earn others. He reckoned that the current situation of DfT telling train operators what they should do just suppressed initiative. But, he added, the Transport Secretary would have some power of direction.

These are some of the same arguments seen at privatisation. Back then, ministers wanted to move the railway away from government. They set minimal specifications for those bidding to run rail franchises.

Having set the railway away with these freedoms, successive governments gradually tightened specifications and reeled operators into closer control, to the extent that nationalisation does little more than change a train operator’s owning group from private to public.

The promise within Hendy’s words is that as rail managers show they can be trusted, then they will be accorded more freedom.

He lent more credence to this view when he told Select Committee MPs: “It’s too easy to conclude that GBR will be some sort of megalithic Eastern European organisation with a massive office with thousands of people in it. If it is, then it will fail.

“The railway runs best at a level at which people can be in individual control of it at route and train operating company level.”

Basingstoke-Exeter will test this. From Salisbury westwards, it’s largely single-track since British Rail downgraded it in 1967. There’s a ten-mile loop between Templecombe and Yeovil, as well as shorter loops at Chard, Axminster and Honiton. Diesel trains ply the route in their third decade of service.

Greengauge 21 suggests that it needs a rolling programme of enhancements, starting with double-track between Exeter and Axminster and a new fleet of battery-electric trains feeding from electrified sections of route along the line.

This makes it bigger than business as usual under managers at route and train operating company level. It will need a persuasive GBR to take a leading role. And GBR will be more persuasive if it delivers what Hendy is asking of it - improved performance, increased revenue, and reduced costs.

Hendy floated the prospect of more detail about GBR’s creation, with a consultation coming from DfT “very soon”.

But the proposed legislation to create GBR will not include its detailed design. Hendy told MPs that this detail would come in response to what people say they want from GBR. In other words, work the design back from the required outputs.

Hendy promised that this consultation would include more details about network access and charging. This is vital for freight and open access operators because they both work outside GBR’s umbrella as independents.

From what Hendy told MPs, it seems likely that GBR (rather than ORR) will be making access decisions.

This is bound to raise questions about GBR favouring its owns services, but in answer to a question about freight, Hendy said: “I would like a structure for GBR that enabled those flows, run by commercial operators, to be properly accommodated on the network, with the train paths that they need on the network. That has to be a function of GBR, which is allocating space on the network - and that is a whole subject in itself.”

It is… and it’s one I’ll return to through the year.