Posted in News/interest Friday, December 30th, 2011
Nationalisation and after.
The Second World War was to be a testing time for our railway system. Once again they were put under government control. The heavy wartime traffic and inability to invest in rolling stock, track and signalling renewal led to a run down system in 1945. This led inevitably towards nationalisation by the Attlee government in 1948. It is difficult to envisage what would have happened if nationalisation had not taken place, as the LNER in particular was in a parlous financial state. Not only were the railways war worn and expensively worked but the ‘poor bag of assets’ as they were described included more than half a million privately owned wagons, most of an outdated design without continuous braking.
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