In terms of operations, the carriages were sold off for a song as 3 theoretically competing rolling stock operating companies (ROSCOs), which the francisees are

In terms of operations, the carriages were sold off for a song as 3 theoretically competing rolling stock operating companies (ROSCOs), which the francisees are pretty much obliged to lease from. These remain a license to print money. The stations were all sold as part of Railtrack, although with a few exceptions they are operated by the train operators. The initial franchises were largely for 7 years - the 14 year model came later. There was also no involvement from other national operators at this time - North-east and GWR were management buy-outs, although they fairly quickly sold themselves on to bus companies, Bus companies took over most of the rest of the franchises as well, leaving the rest to Sea Containers, Virgin (working 50-50 with... a bus company), and Connex which was basically a French bin lorry company. National Rail is effectively just the remains of the BR branding, and was passed alongside the Rail Settlement Plan (which is very broadly the ticketing operation) to the Association of Train Operating Companies. The East Coast line was abandoned twice as being not-profitable within the constraints of making the required premium payments to the government. Nationalization was reasonably successful, and the nationalized company did make premium payments, but they were not as much as National Express would have had to pay to retain the franchise.