6/2004

In 1997 Deutsche Bahn AG founded a subsidiary, DB AutoZug GmbH, to modernise car carrier and overnight passenger services. Since then more than 75 carriages with seated accommodation and 150 couchette coaches, restaurant cars, and service vehicles have beeen overhauled and in most cases completely refurbished. Finally, to provide overnight services with a brand new image and economic foundation for the early 21st century, an entirely new design of sleeping car was developed, and a batch of these built.

The old British Rail may be alikened to the disappearing Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Everything has gradually vanished, save the famous double-arrowed logo introduced in the early 1960s. Privatisation of the network has come in for increasing criticism over the past ten years, while as the big fish in the passenger franchise pool start gobbling up the lesser ones, and the State assumes an increasingly active role in controlling the franchise purse strings and infrastructure management, the spectre of renationalisation by stealth hovers, vulture-like. Both good and bad have come out of the process which was started in 1994 - so what lessons can other European rail operators and governments learn from the British experience?