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Back
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Person Code
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NA12250
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Corporate Name
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Scottish Region
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Dates
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1948-1997
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Activity
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British Railways was the collective title of the railway industry in Britain following its nationalization. Britain's four major railway companies were nationalized with effect from 1 January 1948 under the terms of the Transport Act 1947 (10 & 11 Geo. VI, c. 49). This act gave the assets of the railway companies over to public ownership, to be managed and run under the direction of a public body. This body, set up under the aegis of the ministry of Transport to devise and apply an overall transport policy affecting all sectors of Britain's nationalized transport system, was the British Transport Commission. The Railway Executive was the body charged by the Commission with running the railways, and the Executive in turn operated the railways through a set of regional railway executives. A Scottish Region was created by amalgamating the Scottish lines of the London Midland and Scottish railway (LMS) and the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). In effect, the 150 or so original private railway companies in Scotland, having been through a continual process of amalgamation since the nineteenth century, had now become part of the single publicly-owned service to provide travel and freight carriage by rail in Britain. The regional executives were replaced by area boards in 1953.
The British Transport Commission and its various Executives were dissolved in accordance with the the Transport Act 1962 (10 & 11 Eliz. II, c.46) and responsibility for the railways passed to a British Railways Board. Railway services in Scotland were to be operated by British Railways (Scottish Region) under the Scottish Railway Board. In 1965, in a corporate identity campaign , the railway service was renamed British Rail. In the following year the main line express services were re-styled ?Inter City? and the goods operation became ?Railfreight?. There was a change of name too for the Scottish Railway Board, which became the British Railways Scottish Board in 1969. With a change in political emphasis in the 1980s, a movement towards returning the railways to private ownership began in 1985 when non-railway activities attached to the railway industry, such as hotels and catering, shipping and hovercraft services passed to new private owners. The Railways Act 1993 (c. 43) authorized the sale of the railway industry to private concerns. The private company Railtrack took over track and infrastructure reponsibilities for the whole railway system. The passenger network was divided into geographical units, and franchises for the operation of passenger services within these units were offered for sale to 'Train Operating Companies'. Freight services had been re-organised and sold to private operators by 1996, in which year the first privatized passenger services began. British Rail had been divested of all operating functions by November 1997. In the former Scottish Region the great majority of passenger services were taken over on 1 April 1997 by ScotRail Railways Ltd, a subsidiary of National Express Group plc, which holds (August 2003) a further eight railway franchises in England and Wales.
A new public body, the Strategic Rail Authority, came into being in February 2001 under the terms of the Transport Act 2000 (c.38) to give general oversight and direction to the industry in the public interest and to award operating franchises. Railtrack was replaced in 2002 by the non-profit making entity Network Rail. The British Railways Board continues in existence in attenuated form, as BRB (Residuary) Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Strategic Rail Authority, and handles the few responsibilities not transmitted to the private owners, foremost of these being the management of non-operational railway land, and dealing with claims - such as for pensions or compensation - against the former Board.
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Jurisdiction
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British Railways
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NonPreferredTerm
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Scotrail (A re-branding name in the 1980s)
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Notes
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'The Oxford Companion to BRITISH RAILWAY HISTORY from 1603 to the 1990s', Edited by Jack Simmons and Gordon Biddle (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997).
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Associated records
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