Can Boris Johnson make the trains run on time?

It is a moment of redemption for rail, writes Sean O’Grady, but there is a long way to go before it can be considered a success

Just the ticket: a state-led service sits comfortably with the PM (Getty)

Despite the Awdryesque name, Great British Railways cannot but be an improvement on the various flawed structures that have tried and failed since the old fully integrated British Rail was broken up and privatised a quarter of a century ago. The only pity is that it has taken so long for successive governments of all three national parties to finally realise that the old model was as obsolescent as a steam locomotive, but with none of the charm.

For far too long consumers, business and leisure users of the rail network have had to put up with satirically high fare and carriages as overcrowded as anything in Europe. Jam-packed and expensive, the railways were carrying record numbers of passengers despite rather than because of the way they were run. It is fair to say that privatisation has, broadly, brought greater investment and innovation, and a tiny element of increased competition, but the everyday experience of the users was disappointing to say the least.

This was especially true in the north of England, where ancient bus-based trains ran to increasingly chaotic timetabling. Against its older prejudices – in its day British Rail was a national joke – the public gradually came to reconsider its view of public ownership, and the private sector has been put in its rightful place. Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn added to that pressure for reform, and Boris Johnson, who cares little for ideology, has gone with the grain of public sentiment.