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Hi folks. It's a been some time since I've been able to post on this forum. Virtually the whole of European Railways, national and private, have despaired with Fret SNCF. After a long battle private operators are getting onto the French network, and showing up SNCF something rotten.My latest International/European magazines, web sites, plus the UK freight forum, Freightmaster Interactive, have been amused, by one operator gaining a traffic flow on a north - south route, about 400 miles at most, which has been hauled and delivered in a matter of hours, as it should be. The customer was amazed, he had become used to SNCF delivering in nine days! A US railroad would have land bridged over your country from west to east coast in far less than that. Before I get too much on my high horse, I must remember, that when I joined BR in 1962, nine days was normal for a distance less than that. The trouble was the British disease of assuming nothing ever changes. Whilst this attitude was fine before decent sized road trucks arrived on the scene, somehow, the powers that be were in a + or -1910 time warp. It has generally been assumed, that this was UK rail's golden age, and how on earth sentient beings were able to virtually ignore the massive hemereging of freight defies my comprehension. I have no preference over nationalised railways versus private operators, but when the old BR tried to save wagonload in the 1980's, with Speedlink, they ended up with costs twice as much as revenue! Even before Wisconsin Central bought most of the rail freight business in the UK as EWS, the "shadow" companies were set up, and given a much more decision power and hands on attitude, than the old system, with almost everything, needing approval from at least the Regional Freight Manager. We used to call this nonsense "always ask Dad before you can act". In consequence the wagonload business was restarted and well on the way to successs, before Privatisation and Ed B showed up. During the 20th Century, the proportion of freight handled by rail fell from about 60%, at the start to 8% by 1994. It is still growing, and although 11% seems a small percentage, it has been achieved from a near terminal position. When Beeching arrived in 1962?, if correct, the year I started work with BR, the first thing he noticed, was that wagons "in transit" were sat in marshalling yards, for most of the time. A journey from say the London area to Scotland, may have to pass through on average 3 to 5 yards, maybe waiting for days before wandering a few miles to the next yard. I used to get a lot of fun from reading the weekly "lost wagon" lists, well before TOPS. The sort of thing was "10 tons of  vegatables in non insulated van, missing since 10th June" the memo dated 14th October! We may have thought Beeching was in leauge with the Devil, but he did kick start the 2 steps forward, 1 step back, to where we are today. Sadly SNCF seem to be in a similar mess, partly perhaps due to fear of change. To be fair the workforce will go on strike at the drop of a hat. Indeed in 1955, the UK Footplatemens Union ASLEF, went on strike for several weeks, and this alone cost a permanent loss of about 20% of freight to road just in that time, which never came back. Cheers, Andy
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