>>1667118This wasn't true 30 years ago and it's not true now either. BR was in fact one of the most efficient railways that has ever existed, they had to be given how desperately underfunded they were for most of their existence, and government investment and subsidization of rail has in fact gone up substantially since privatization. Most of the "advantages" seen after the switch and often attributed to the "efficiency" of private rail were in fact the result of massive government investment spearheaded by exactly the same politicians who'd strangled BR's funding only a few years prior.
There are also major economic knock-on effects that aren't usually included in the cost calculations, most notably the numerous British loco and wagon/carriage builders who'd been kept in business by BR contracts but lost them to foreign companies after privatization, and whose collapse resulted in major job and economic losses all across Britain and, even more critically, the loss of a strategic industrial base that will probably never be recovered.
