Chris Grayling’s Oxford-Cambridge line will clatter through 75 miles of English history | Ian Jack
Plans to reopen this train route may improve local travel, but Verney Junction’s days are long gone
As he must have intended, the transport secretary Chris Grayling caused a small storm this week by announcing that he intended to bridge the great divide on Britain’s railways – between the infrastructure (the track and the signalling, presently owned by the non-profit public body Network Rail), and the privately owned trains that use it.
The importance of the announcement was talked up beforehand, and the rail unions and parts of the Labour party dutifully sounded the alarm: Grayling, apparently, was taking the first step down the road towards full-scale privatisation, a regression to the share-price-driven and disaster-prone world of Network Rail’s incompetent predecessor, Railtrack.
Related: Chris Grayling unveils plans for fully privatised rail line
Related: The Guardian view on Chris Grayling’s rail plans: small-minded, ideological and partisan | Editorial
Related: For Chris Grayling trains are always about ideology, not passengers | Christian Wolmar
Source: Guardian Transport
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