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Light at the end of the tunnel for East Coast Mainline

AS Chris Grayling announced that the government was taking control of the East Coast Main Line, I naturally felt I’d heard it all before. This is the third time a private operator of the flagship Edinburgh to London route has failed.

The last time the line was nationalised in 2009, I was having tea with Michael Foot. Having sat in the Commons when Attlee’s Labour government first brought the railways into public hands in 1948, he was thrilled by the news 61 years later.

Eighty years Foot’s junior, I only hazily remember British Rail. But the new London and North Eastern Railway — a name my step-granddad remembers well from his youth in Newcastle — will be the route’s fifth operator since I became a semi-regular user.

The first, GNER, was also the first to fail. It was the last, however, to offer civility, pride, and a nod to the line’s unique history. GNER’s livery proclaimed that this was the route of the Flying Scotsman, but it also boasted the finest trains of every age, from Mallard, to the Deltics, to the Intercity GNER that also ran silver service restaurant cars, open to standard class passengers as well as first.

When we think of the pitfalls of privatisation, we think of the exorbitant fares and the infinite buck-passing between different fragments when things go wrong. But equally appallingly, passengers have been increasingly sidelined since the railway’s year zero. In the newest carriages, we sit on ironing boards which rarely line up with prison-sized windows.

This week SNP Transport Minister Humza Yousaf said the reality of British Rail did not line up with “the nostalgic view of the railways” promoted by the left.

Right-wingers moan about the British Rail sandwich, but they’re happy to ignore the awkward fact that our most comfortable trains were built before the great sell-off. They’re happy to forget the glamorous — and reasonably priced — fine dining of the state-run railway, and the extensive sleeper network which zigzagged across the night.

Before the latest bailout, the government privatised even the vehicle for rescuing failed private railways — so LNER services will be run by an Arup-led consortium. But this is still a vindication for anyone who has questioned the failed dogma of privatisation. When the rest of the network catches up, let’s rebuild a railway that offers its passengers not just bread, but roses too.

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