Should rail franchises cover a smaller area in future?

Yes it does seem a good idea, as c2c and Chiltern have demonstrated, it can be made to work.

Intriguing, but why drag the situation even further back into the pre-1923 era? How many of those companies ever made a profit, or would be able to do so now? Don't let's forget that some of the southern companies even in those times made a lot more from freight haulage than is now possible (vide the City Widened Lines that Thameslink now occupies) and how far back from the suburbs into Kent, Herts etc would you have to extend a given franchise to balance that lost revenue potential with the greater distance commuters travel now to London compared to 1917?

Surely train companies must make a decent profit these days, rising passenger numbers and rising ticket prices must put masses of profits into any railway operator when run by competent people......Remember the East Coast mainline paid a very decent dividend payment every year to the Government when in state ownership.

The more you fragment the railway the more administration you create with each franchise having its own pen pushers and bean counters. Add to that the lawyers fees when one franchise delays another and they argue over how much the one owes the other in compensation.

Fragmentation has been a disaster, further fragmentation is not going to make things better

Don't confuse profits with the sum paid by the TOC to the government.

With DOR on the East Coast, these payments might have amounted to the same thing, but, for TOCs not owned by "the operator of last resort", the payment to the government (the premium) does not come from the train company profits. Indeed, as is most likely the case with VTEC, it is the premium that is driving the TOC into loss. Busy lines like East Coast, West Coast and, indeed, some of the London suburban TOCs make enough money to pay a premium to the government. In part this is because TOCs don't pay Network Rail their full fair share of the costs. Some comes as direct grant from the government, partly funded by the premium payments.

Note, it wasn't like this at the start of privatisation; at that time, more TOCs got a subsidy and all Railtrack's income came from TOCS.

The financing money-go-round of the railway industry isn't easy to understand. This link might help:

orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/22982/rail-finance-statistical-release-2015-16.pdf

Is that the same Mr. Corbyn who sat on the floor of an empty carriage, for some reason?

Several politicians, notably John Prescott before the 1997 election, promised the same thing.

As an economic, rather than political point, it would not be easy or cheap to do so - lots of shareholders to buy out. A major factor in the huge debt mountain the original British Railways was saddled with by the early 1960s was the nationalisation compensation stock issued to the former shareholders of the Big Four, with its guaranteed interest rates, (a much better deal than the Big Four's shares, few of which had declared a dividend) - and there are many more than four owners of the railways now.

Before you decide on the size of things like franchises someone needs to decide what they actually want from the railways. Understanding whether you want more trains to run, more money to be earned, investment and improvements to be delivered or something else may help you decide the best "structure" to deliver your objectives. Let's face it the franchise map has been mucked about with since privatisation just as the internal structure of BR and prior to that private company structures were. We've never really had an optimal management, engineering and operational structure that worked for all parts of the railways. In the past we've had good Inter City services but shoddy urban and rural services. When they improved Regional Railways other bits of the railway didn't get money or management attention. We've had hugely variable franchise requirements depending on the prevailing circumstances.

OPRAF and DfT have had all sorts of franchise models / shapes over the years. The routes out of Liv Street have had one, two and three franchises at varying times. We're currently back at three with TfL controlling two of them. Is anyone demanding we return to the halcyon days of "One" at Liv St? Don't think so. Euston, Kings Cross and Paddington have always had multiple operators whereas there's actually been more stability south of the Thames with just the basic historic structure of the old BR divisions holding sway with the addition of Thameslink over the top. As already said routes like London, Tilbury and Southend and Chiltern leant themselves to sole operators and that's undoubtedly helped. I would, though, argue that longer franchises with ongoing investment requirements over the franchise term have certainly worked better. You can't escape the basic nature of railways which is that assets are long lived and need regular attention to keep them working well. You also need some level of operational coherence to deliver reliable and effective services that take into account the infrastructure that exists. There will always be places like Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham where operations meet and overlap so you are never going to achieve "simplicity" in those places.

Coming back to London and its commuter hinterland I think a more consolidated approach generally works well and that's mostly what we have got. The exceptions are, of course, where Thameslink runs and also the devolved operations under TfL control. Generally TfL's operations run well *but* that is because of money having been spent to improve services and a more generously funded service spec. However there are also extremely rigorous performance requirements on Arriva and MTR and Network Rail which prioritise TfL services. This is not without its consquences on other operations and is not an approach that can be forever rolled out if TfL were to gain more devolved services. I personally support more devolution to TfL *provided* they have the money to deliver and sustain genuine improvements. I do think devolution south of the river will be a significant challenge both operationally and in terms of delivering substantive investment. There are operational efficiences in how trains are rostered today that would be lost if you draw the devolution lines in the wrong place. We saw the consequences of this on West Anglia where rolling stock and crewing issues are less efficient now and where performance collapsed for months until TfL and MTR / Arriva got their act together. TfL can't afford that to happen if they ever get Southern, South Eastern or SWR inner area services. I do not support the OP's idea of sub dividing something like South Eastern down to almost line level. That would cost a fortune for no great gain. In short get the objectives clear, balance your operational / engineering / financial priorities and grant longer contracts with stretching but achievable targets for investment and operational delivery.

As no one, even those advocating it, have explained how nationalisation would work it's nigh on impossible to know what would be involved. I agree that it doesn't come for free for all sorts of reasons. There are a myriad of issues beyond the big ones you cite. Possibly the biggest "cost" is that arising purely from trying to reorganise things. Every time someone faffs around with structures management gets distracted and there are real risks to operational performance, reliability and the ongoing delivery of renewals and enhancements. The only people who suffer then are employees and the passengers but, of course, this is never acknowledged by those pushing for change. I can't see how any future government can buy back the rolling stock from the ROSCOs and that ignores what you do with freight which is entirely privatised and outwith the direct control of the DfT.

To my mind the real issues are how on earth you make the urban and interurban networks outside London really effective with frequent services, longer trains and attractive stations. A non London version of "London OverUnderground" and what is achieved on some of the SE routes like London - Brighton would almost certainly be very attractive. I'd much rather DfT (or whoever) took revenue risk on all of these services with TfL type service specs. "Inter City" and the longer pan regional services are harder to deal with in terms of where revenue risk sits. You can sort of see that "chasing the revenue" works given the large market and wide mix of demographics / journey purpose. Where it gets difficult is where these same routes are swamped with large commuter flows - Transpennine into Leeds and Manchester, Cross Country into Brum, FGW Bristol - London etc etc. How on earth you make those commuter services more effective without throwing away the attractiveness of longer distance business / leisure travel strikes me as a difficult thing to fix.

I'll stop rambling now but I don't necessarily see nationalisation as a panacea. There are certainly issues with the current industry and contractual structure but do we really need to take an undefined political sledgehammer to those issues to "fix" them? Not sure we do.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a good example of how to post without mentioning individual political parties or political celebrity whilst still offering a reasoned and informative opinion. See the phrase "future government", used without having to mention political colour or celebrity - spot on snoggle. Everybody take note of the technique. 

Of course we all know that politics is intertwined with railways. As long as the context is clear, there's rarely a problem with mentioning it.

The key innovations were their existence, and then the growth of a market that BR (and thus franchising) had basically ignored. A similar argument can be made for Grand Central in their services to Sunderland and, more recently, Bradford.

The on board offering is not especially distinctive, though perfectly decent.

The original concept may have been thus, but the implementation - even during the Attlee government - did not follow through.  The BTC was dysfunctional, and did not try to achieve the efficiencies of a common transport system - arguably, in the way that it split off the non-rail interests of the Big 4 into separate divisions, it even moved against viewing transport in a system way.

In terms of the implications of applying a "rational basis" to transport, I refer you to my earlier comments about Hull Trains.  On the basis that BR operated on such a "rational" basis as an agent of government policy (yes, I know that I'm stretching a point!), it seems implausible that this sort of operation would have been created - yet it has a genuine market niche, and the trains it runs are consistently busy.

Referring to the main subject of DD, can I also point out that nationalisation did not bring London Transport properly into the fold and, as we see with the Croxley Link, the organisational and associated political boundaries remain an impediment to integration.

There was also the Wrexham & Shropshire operation, which only lasted three years, and various others such as Alliance Rail, (aka GNWR, GSR, and a resurrected GNER) and Go-Op, which have not got beyond the planning stage. It is very much hit and miss, and with no real co-ordinated planning as to where services are needed (as opposed to where there is money to be made). Indeed, GNWR has at different times proposed its service from Euston would serve places as diverse as Southport, Whitehaven and Leeds.