British Rail

Uncommon card · No. 81295

British Railways, which traded as British Rail after 1965, was the state-owned company responsible for rail transport in Great Britain from its inception in 1948 to its privatisation in the 1990s; the organisation was dissolved in 1997. From its creation until 1952, it was the trade name of the Railway Executive, the subsidiary of the British Transport Commission (BTC) responsible for railway operations; it was then abolished in order for British Railways to fall directly under the BTC. After the Transport Act 1962, it became an independent statutory corporation when the BTC was replaced by a new organisation whose official name was the British Railways Board. Between 1923 and 1947, the railway companies in Great Britain were grouped into the Big Four, which had been designed to stem the losses of a majority of railway companies by consolidating them into fewer with less competition. However, after the economic losses of World War II, this model was no longer viable and the nationalisation...

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