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There is no doubt that privatisation delayed investment in the railway. The 0164 day hiatus is a case in point. Another is Railtrack's preference until recently to patch and mend rather than spend, spend, spend.
In fact the investment famine really dates back to the 1990 recession and privatisation merely served to delay the recovery. No matter: the end result is that as the brave new 21 st Century dawns the railway is waiting to catch up with a decade of under investment.
Still, the message from the spin doctors is that the good times are about to roll. The first Interim acceptance certificates, which will allow the new electric multiple units to enter passenger service are being signed. Railtrack has swung from Scrooge to Daddy Warbucks. Soon the customer will see the long promised new railway.
If only it were that simple. New train orders under the original franchises are notable for the lack of the growth builds which Network SouthEast planned when ridership last reached current levels. Worse, crashworthiness and disability provision mean that the new trains will have fewer seats than the ones they replace.
Similarly, it is going to take at least five years for Railtrack to alleviate the first capacity bottlenecks, particularly in commuter-land.
But we have the answer to that. Running the railway more intensively, with trains slotting through bottlenecks to the second, and you can get more capacity out of infrastructure and rolling stock. The new panacea is Japanese Operation.
There is no doubt that the Japanese railways run service which combine unmatched levels of intensity and reliability. The question is how can we replicate this in Britain – as we must surely do if, for example, the West Coast Main line is going to run at 2.5min headways in the search for precision capacity or Virgin Cross country provide clock face arrivals and departures through Birmingham New Street station.
Japanese operation will be the key to success. But how do the Japanese do it?
A comparative study showed that one highly regarded Pacific rim metro operator was several times worse than Japanese best practice when it came to service reliability. Suspecting a propaganda exercise of a quirk of definition a team was despatched to Japan and found the comparison valid.
So that's the solution then. Import some ultra reliable Japanese equipment smartish. Unfortunately not. While inherent reliability is important, the real key is massive redundancy throughout the system.
In Britain Railtrack pats itself on the back for fitting microswitches with gold plated contacts to make point motors more reliable. The Japanese approach is to duplicate point motors, track circuits, indeed, anything where failure can bring the service to a halt. And have gold plated contacts to maximise the risk of failure in the first place.
Not that this is totally new in Britain . The new EMUs have modular traction packages in which failure of one module does not bring the train to a halt. Indeed the SWT Junipers have three modules when two would do the job. In normal service all three run a part power, but should one fail, the other two on full power can keep to time.
And Solid State Interlocking needs only two processors for safe operation, but has three so that if one misbehaves the other two shut it down and the signalling is unaffected.
That may be why Railtrack thought SSI was expensive, when in fact it was just ahead of its time. But applying the philosophy of reliability across the network is going to cost serious money.
And that is before you bring people into the operation. The quality and motivation of railway staff suffered grievously when privatisation terminated BR's Leadership programme. The resulting cynicism was reinforced by the invasion of the bean counters and the cost cutting visionless busmen. The speed with which Intercity standards went down hill in Virgin's hands was a classic example.
But now, Japanese Operation will demand that middle and junior railway management staff and their teams on the platforms, in signalboxes and control and on the footplate work with unprecedented intensity day in- day out. And this too will cost money, to be spent on more hands on managers, more training and higher wages to attract the right level of talent.
We believe that the present railway, with its lack of control masquerading as empowerment, its poor communications discipline, even where vital safety is concerned, and with staff levels determined by budgets not service or operation, simply cannot deliver what forward looking franchises will need to deliver their business cases, let alone the new visions Sir Alastair Morton is seeking.
This is not to diminish the existing work force who in many cases are lions led by donkeys. But there counterparts in other industries have become more professional. And Japanese Operation is all about professionalism which is the basis of discipline.
Thus the railway has to catch up and this means a massive retraining programme at all levels, but particularly at supervisor level since these men and women set the standard at the places where the railway really happens. And this applies to both operators and Railtrack.
It won't happen over night. And no doubt some Train Operating Companies will not see the need, or be able to afford the costs. But what we need is a shining light, a route where Railtrack and the operators commit to Japanese Operation – which may yet prove unworkable in the British passenger culture.
Any volunteers? No? We nominate Ken Bird and LTS Rail. And ‘old BR' operator in the best sense and a railway free from outside interference.