What are you talking about with "shoestring budget?". Over £2bn was spent on electrifying the GWML, nearly £20bn spent on the Elizabeth line (which included fur

What are you talking about with "shoestring budget?". Over £2bn was spent on electrifying the GWML, nearly £20bn spent on the Elizabeth line (which included further upgrades on the GWML), and completely new trains on nearly every service were bought (at extreme cost). There must have been >£5bn spent on this line in the last decade. Per mile, it is probably one of the best funded lines in the world. GWML is having constant maintenance problems. I don't think this is a budget problem, I think it's NR totally dropping the ball on keeping on top of stuff. NR is extremely poorly run and wasteful; I know many people who used to work for them but left to rejoin via a subcontractor (at a hugely increased cost to NR), to do the exact same job, because NRs payscales are extremely concrete so they constantly lose vital people to this - this isn't a budget problem as they're actually paying way way more for the same staff this way. Subcontractors are also eating them alive because they have no senior, experienced management (see above problem). You have people basically straight out of uni "project managing" subcontractors for 7 or 8 figure contracts, completely clueless.