UK railways are heading into a perfect storm. Now is the time to nationalise them | Christian Wolmar | The Guardian

“So, Mum/Dad, what are the railways for?” That is the question the UK rail industry will be dreading hearing in a post-pandemic world.
This is not quite the existential crisis rail faced in the aftermath of the extensive Beeching cuts to the network in the mid-1960s, but that’s cold comfort. There is a considerable risk that services are going to deteriorate massively in 2022, sending the sector into the kind of downward spiral that was last experienced in the 1970s and 1980s.