Some of the arguments against nationalisation are over-simplified.

For example, the question isn't asked why passenger journeys decreased by 250 million between 1948 and 1995.

We must take into consideration the challenge posed by road transport. Although private ownership of cars had been steadily increasing since the 1920s, the mid-1950s saw the average family wage rise while the onset of mass consumerism saw the prices of many luxury goods (including cars) decrease. The car was viewed as a symbol of freedom for people both is status and in convenience. Also, the railways were viewed as an antiquated mode of transport - a relic from the Victorian era. Transport policy was geared largely towards roads and road-building projects, although the government did invest some money into the railways (see The Modernisation Plan of 1955) - this money which was largely wasted on vanity projects. As more and more people started to own cars, it was inevitable that the railways were going to suffer as a result.

The images below are from a 1967 booklet published by the BRB entitled 'Facts and Figures about British Rail'.



When looking at the period between 1948 and 1962, we see that the amount of passengers carried actually fluctuated. It was not until the Beeching era, passenger journeys started to decline and I'll leave you come up with your own theories as to why.

But lets look at passenger receipts. In 1948 they stood at £123 million and by 1967 they were at £179 million. By 1970, if you look at the BRB accounts for that year, you'll see that passenger receipts had risen to £227 million. So, BR might have been losing passengers but they were not losing money from passenger revenue as it was increasing.

Freight traffic, on the other hand, is another story. Freight traffic was the bread and butter for the railways and it was declining from the mid-1950s onwards, mainly because the demand for coal (the traffic which prodcued the most tonnage) was declining. The revenue created from passenger traffic was not enough to offset this balance and overall profitabilty declined as a result.