Review of [Principles of Railway Operation] by [John Glover]

I just finished reading Principles of Railway Operation by John Glover last week and have created what I'll call a review. The book helped me with UK terminology but didn't hardly touch the current franchise arrangements other than mentioning 'open access' twice in passing with no detail. Is this whole thing confusing or is it just me and not having a similar arrangement in the US that would assist in my understanding?

If anyone wants me to post my writeup here, let me know.

I've read your informative review, but not the book. It does seem strange that a 2012 book is using 1993/94 figures, particularly as I seem to recall that privatisation took place over two to three years from 1994 after the act of parliament was passed in 1993, so those figures would not be very relevant to the privatised railways in action.

I also have the impression that "open access" is different from franchises. The latter is where a company takes on the running of all passenger trains (and many stations) within a certain region for an agreed period of time. The former is where a company has a track access agreement to run a limited number of trains on certain routes only, on track which is already part of someone else's franchise, eg Hull Trains or Grand Central.

Actually it's just occurred to me to go and check on Wikipedia and it confirms, "There are two types of TOC (Train Operating Companies): most hold franchises let by the government, following bids from various companies, to operate services on certain routes for a specified duration, while a small number of "open-access" operators hold licences to provide supplementary services on chosen routes." You might find Train operating company to be helpful.

Since there is some info in Wikipedia and you agree with what you see there, I'll go take a look.

I take most everything I read there with suspicion until I can locate some better source, preferably a primary one as the quality of what is there on many US subjects is rather bad.

I am a judge for US History Day and mentioning Wikipedia in the bibliography of a paper, presentation as even a secondary source can lead to some reduction in the score. Many times, though, it does lead to some other sources which can be relied on to be accurate.

>3 ulmannc: Agreed 100%. I use Wikipedia mainly to refresh my memory rather than to learn something new or definitive.

I've used Wikipedia fairly heavily in a recent publication, but backed it up with a lot of other sources, both Web-based and conventional. As John said, it's useful as a memory-jogger and sometimes suggests different paths to go down.

This is a case where the primary sources would presumably be either the official documents published by institutions like the Office of Rail Regulation, which tell you how it's supposed to work, or articles in the financial and railway press that try to tell you - more or less accurately - how it actually is working. Railway Magazine and The Economist might be good places to look. As it's all intensely political, you're unlikely to get an unbiased view anywhere.

The only book on railway economics I have ever read that I would recommend unhesitatingly is W.M. Acworth's The railways of England. And that's over a hundred years out of date, written a couple of decades before the last attempt to run the railways on free-market principles collapsed and made the government intervene...

>6 thorold: I've been a subscriber to The Railway Magazine for a dozen years or more, although my air mail copy always arrives in Nairobi quite late. I find it gives a good mix of heritage and modern railway news, and certainly gives quite a bit of information and analysis of the modern railway in UK.