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It is a fair bet that at the Rail Summit, the day before this issue is published, politicians and industry leaders will have talked about ‘the Railway'. ‘The Railway' will have been exhorted to work together, to improve performance, strengthen its safety culture, get new trains in service, put the customer first, invest more etcetera, etcetera.
And on behalf of ‘the Railway' the Association of Train Operating Companies, or rather the Train Operating Company figurehead who drew the short straw this time, will have pledged to introduce new trains, train more drivers, install more bike racks at every station or whatever was the flavour of the day.
But in the 21 st Century does ‘the Railway' still exist? We think not. For ministers and their civil servants it is a comforting throw back to the days of British Rail. Then if there was trouble at t' railway you could always call the BR Chairman in for a dressing down.
Actually, in the latter days of BR, calling in John Welsby was akin to an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile battery in one of the ‘no fly' zones pointing its radar at a passing fighter-plane. But no matter. Today,. ‘the Railway' is unlikely to bite back, unless you provoke Gerald Gerald Corbett who is showing promising signs of Acquired Welsby syndrome.
But while the concept of the Donne railway, in which no company is an island and ask not for whom lord Cullen tolls because he tolls for all of us, the reality is that Margaret Thatcher is the better exemplar.
She famously remarked ‘There is no such thing as society, only families' and that sums up today's railway.
Consider the ambivalence at the Shadow Strategic Rail Authority. Sir Alastair Morton, a corporatist as far back as Harold Wilson, believes that all could be solved if only everyone would only work together. And, as Chris Green shows in the interview on page xx, recreating, as Macaulay almost put it, the time when ‘Railwaymen were like brothers in the brave days of old', can work wonder for performance at times of stress.
But hang on. Franchising Director Mike Grant is setting brother against brother in his franchise replacement programme. How can you expect co-operation when the organisation you are dealing with may be seeking to take over your franchise. Mike Grant wants you to fight to the commercial death for the amusement of the Treasury and Gladiators have no friends.
Meanwhile Rail Regulator Tom Winsor thinks co-operation is for wimps. He sports a variation of the old anti-CND badge. Not ‘Peace through superior fire power', but ‘Performance through model clauses'. Model clauses may be a great deterrent – but only if you really believe that your customer really is willing to go nuclear.
Once again, we see that Railtrack means it. They will go to law to challenge every decision. They can afford to employ ‘designer' QCs, like Presiley Baxendale, who achieved such a high reputation at the arms for Iraq inquiry.
So we make that two to one in favour of the combative railway. And Sir Alastair Morton has in the past complained that TOCs have not stood up to Railtrack – that Flashman of the Railways - firmly enough.
In other words ‘the Railway' is dead. At least so long as the Government through the SSRA, tries to solve the mess it inherited (in its own words) with the system it inherited. As Sir Alastair saidm appropos the proposals for the replacement franchises for the East Coast Main Line, ‘more of the same is not an option'.
Throwing more ever more men and munitions at the barbed wire and machine guns of the existing railway is not working. The SSRA says its wants bigger, fewer, stronger franchises – and then does the opposite.
So what is to be done? Well, stop thinking like John MacGregor and Brian Mawhinney for a start, throw out the Tory shibboleths and redesign the railway.
Here is our radical manifesto.
First, as Sir Alastair Morton has suggested, devolve the Passenger Transport Executive funded services to the regional authorities. Set up Wales Rail and require Railtrack to establish subsidiaries for these two nations' rail networks with Government having a minority share.
This leaves to English regional interurban operation, InterUrban North, based on the Trans Pennine corridor and InterUrban Central providing similar transverse links across the East and West Midlands and into East Anglia .
Establish InterCity as the National network, re-integrating the East Coast, West Coast and Great Western main lines and perhaps Midland . This would create a new company in which Railtrack would be encouraged to take a shareholding when it was floated.
South of the Thames , it's back to 1923, with South West, Central and South East outer suburban services become the Southern Railway. Inner suburban services become a true metro and are handed over to Transport for London .
North of the Thames the Eastern Railway combines LTS, Great Eastern, WAGN and Anglia . After this, thinking big gets a bit harder. There is obvious scope for a North London Metro. Thameslink could be a joint venture between Southern and Eastern.
Thames and Chiltern, Waterloo-Exeter and Wales & West English services are details to be swept up later.
All these businesses, which, overall would need a lot less subsidy now that the regions were devolved would be let as long concessions, something Sir Alastair knows all about. This gives the confidence to invest which a franchise cannot.
We await a storm of protest. But before you knock us down, remember that more of the same is not an option.