BEATTOCK For Moffat is the finest short story by RB Cunninghame Graham, who during his lifetime was a pioneer in both his literary work and his political activism. He began his public activity as Liberal MP for Lanarkshire North West in 1886 before defecting to help found the Scottish Labour Party and then losing his seat in 1892. Nothing daunted, he adopted any number of radical causes, including Scottish nationalism, and was a founder member of the SNP in 1928. He is the only man to have led both Scottish Labour and the SNP, though at different stages of his career. We do not make Scots like that any more.

Today the two modern political movements exert themselves to disagree about almost everything, and perhaps we would need to go back to Graham’s own era to find them in spontaneous concord on matters of public moment, instead of seeking discord where none need exist. A salient example is the nationalisation of the railways. In 2015, Jeremy Corbyn restored the idea to a plum place in Labour’s manifesto – in fact this was the first idea of his own he ever announced to an electorate that had scarcely heard of him.

It did not take most voters long to decide they disliked his offers and rail renationalisation was stillborn. Even so, I would like to believe there are quite a few folk who regret this – as actually I do myself. Yes, though I have supported capitalism in principle and in practice for my entire adult life, there is one sphere where I have regretted a universal application of it – and that is the railways.

Most of us have forgotten what a range of delights the railways once gave us. There were first of all the steam engines in their array of elegant designs to complement the sheer power of propulsion from the gleaming rocket-like machines that billowed their way across the countryside. The train drivers were labour aristocrats, well-paid for being the masters of this modern technology and lording it over mere guards and porters. Moneyed passengers could give them a comradely wave in passing from a snug waiting room to the first-class carriages.

After settling in, these passengers would be summoned from their reserved seats to the dining car, there to partake of an ample meal, with three courses and wine. Bottles of decent vintages would be amply supplied. Especially if the passenger had occasion to break his journey at some respectable spot – say Carnforth on the west coast or Alnwick on the east – then that evening in the dining room of the local British Transport Hotel he could choose a wine from the full, and fine, BTH list with the help of one of the 224 sommeliers the network employed. For example, it was at the Central Hotel, Glasgow, that I had my earliest-ever sip of Chateau Montrose 1970, at the start of the viticultural climax of my life.

READ MORE: Scotland could have a world class railway system after nationalising ScotRail

All this was held in the clasp of a nationalised industry, in the brief post-war period when people reckoned with better service from them than from private corporations. But by the late 20th century the railways and all the other public services had fallen victim to incompetent management and financial irresponsibility under the UK state, which proved only how unfit it was to run public enterprises.

With passengers in growing despair, it came as no surprise that the Tories privatised the railways again. The injection of money and ideas still failed to solve some basic problems. More people travelled by train than ever before, yet the standards of service languished and railway companies remained risky investments.

One thing they do not lack is experience of different economic environments, and the pandemic is just another. Last year the Scottish Government spent £452 million to keep ScotRail and the Caledonian Sleeper running for a drastically reduced travelling public. Now the Scottish Transport Secretary, Michael Matheson, has said he is going to nationalise our trains.

At the moment the Dutch transport giant Abellio holds the franchise for the Scottish system. We might ask why it can make a success of its arrangements in the Netherlands though not in Scotland, but there seems to be no easy answer. At any rate its performance over here has been poor, with the result that Matheson will not renew the franchise when it ends a year from now. Our network will then come into public hands by default.

Matheson said the rail network could not remain private property because “the current franchising system is no longer fit for purpose”. Instead, the services will be provided through an “arm’s length company” owned and controlled by the Scottish Government. The minister explained: “We need to take decisions about successor arrangements within the current legislative framework. I have decided that it would not be appropriate to award a franchise agreement to any party at this time, either through a competition or a direct award.”

The whole trouble has been put down to the pandemic, then, but to my mind there is a better reason. In fact most successful railway companies all over the world are publicly owned. Even countries otherwise devoted to free enterprise will entrust the railways only to the state. There is no better example than the Swiss railways, the best on the planet. Their timetables are works of art, charting a system consisting essentially of branch lines.

THERE are no high-speed expresses in Switzerland, only a dense network of branches that go everywhere. If your train arrives at a remote rustic spot under the snowy mountains you will find, just across the platform, another waiting to take you on to your final destination. If there is none, that means you have come to one terminus of the network and must continue instead by bus. Don’t worry, the bus will be waiting for you outside the station.

In fact, every mode of transport will be on time. It is the same for freight as for passengers. This is among the reasons why the Swiss, one of the richest nations in the world, regard travelling everywhere by train as perfectly natural. The wealthy among English-speaking peoples would not be seen dead outside their own flash limousines, with which they cut up other drivers while honking at pedestrians.

Switzerland as a result has the densest network in the world, with more than 5000 kilometres of track even though the Alps cover 60% of the area. The economic driving force in the system is passenger demand. Each of the 7m inhabitants travels 2500 kilometres a year by train. Virtually 100% of the network is electrified. It is regularly ranked first in European rail systems for its intensity of use, quality of service and strong safety rating. Switzerland captures high value in return for public investment, with cost to performance ratios that far outperform the continental average.

I hope Matheson, as he proceeds with his Scottish renationalisation, will set his own and the nation’s sights just as high. He should promise that at the end we will no longer have a slow, unreliable, uncomfortable, dirty railway system, but one with all the opposite attributes. It will be the system of an elite, in other words, maintained that way by the pride of its own staff. The people of Scotland, like the people of Switzerland, will actually want to travel on their nationalised railway system. It will then be sure of the revenue to improve itself still further.