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Upturn in TPE’s fortunes is a good advertisement for public ownership

TransPennine Express 68023 Achilles stands at Doncaster on September 8 2022, on the rear of the 0926 Cleethorpes-Manchester Piccadilly test run. The ‘Nova 3s’ were withdrawn last year after the discovery of body cracks - a low point from which Wolmar says TPE has staged a recovery under the government’s Operator of Last Resort. KEITH PARTLOW.

One of the strangest aspects of the current structure of the railway industry is that effectively, four train operating companies have already been nationalised, as they are run by the government’s Operator of Last Resort.

They can be considered as the vanguard of the ‘renationalisation’ policy that is at the heart of Labour’s plans for the railways. Except that there is an inherent problem - they have been taken over precisely because they were failing in the private sector.




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