Rail is fundamentally expensive, though. Compared to hiring a driver to drive a coach on a road, where you can get your coach and your driver so easily, keeping

Rail is fundamentally expensive, though. Compared to hiring a driver to drive a coach on a road, where you can get your coach and your driver so easily, keeping rail running is a nightmare of expense, and the skills are not common and the unions are strong, so labour problems are massive as well. If you think the state-run railways were good, you must have only ridden them in the 1950s, when there was still an empire to fund government stuff, and far fewer people in the country to consume it.