Could ‘Great British Railways’ finally build up a head of steam?

The rail industry is agreed that something has to change, amid chronically disrupted services and costs far in excess of revenue. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Observer

Rail’s great zombie hope lurches on. Great British Railways, the future once unveiled by Boris Johnson – declared at times dead, or alive, or simply locked in stasis – came juddering back into the picture last week.

The late arrival of a draft reform bill could, rail minister Huw Merriman claimed, still mean that plans for a new “guiding mind” for rail, separate from government, come into law this side of an election. “We will put decision-making in the hands of Great British Railways to integrate track and train,” he promised.