If you're mentally unwell enough to know about this board on this website, and unlucky enough to live in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, you probably know about this already. Still, for everyone else, the railways of GB are soon going to change from being privately-operated into public operation from next year.

The fine details are yet to be hammered out, but in short this means that the railways will have a single Government department 'in charge': rather than simply looking over railway companies' shoulders, the newly-formed Great British Railways will own the track and stations, set timetables, collect fares, and contract rail companies & rolling stock companies to actually run the trains day-to-day.

Anyway, this new department needs a head office, and it needs to be outside of London. Forty-two towns and cities expressed interest in hosting the new GBR HQ, and of these forty-two applicants, six have been shortlisted:
>Birmingham
>Crewe
>Derby
>Doncaster
>Newcastle
>York

You can take a look at all the shortlisted places' 'Expressions of Interest' here:
>https://gbrtt.co.uk/hq-competition-public-vote/

...and you can vote for where you think would be the ideal location for the new GBR HQ here:
>https://consultations.gbrtt.co.uk/great-british-railways/gbr-hq-vote/

The vote is open until the 15th August, so, go vote. It's non-binding of course, but it'll be used as 'taking the temperature' of public support. Me personally, I think it'll be down to York (home of historic railway companies' head offices and workshops) or Birmingham (home of the Industrial Revolution, global companies' UK head offices, and 'what's the closest place to London that's not London' Londoners), but I could see Crewe being a 'dark horse' entry (having came into existence due to the railways); and I'm honestly surprised that Bristol didn't make the shortlist, due to its historic association with I.K. Brunel and the GWR.

What are your thoughts?