Periculum privatum
THE seal of the Stockton and Darlington Railway shows four coal trucks pulled by a horse. The directors would not go nap (says my railway correspondent, I.K. Gricer) on George Stephenson's new technology. At the top is the company's motto, in Latin: Periculum privatum utilitas publica. Private risk and public usefulness have come back into fashion in railway finance, and as the franchises come up the air is full of golden promises. Stagecoach offers new stock and new trains if it keeps the South West Trains franchise, and First Group, bidding against it, proposes double-deckers which would cross London in tunnels. At franchise time, the television contractors would suddenly put on productions of Hamlet, but Sir Alas- tair Morton, the railway supremo, will want something more. (One of the southern franchisees will surely be shot, if only to encourage the others.) Running the rail- ways is no longer a matter of managing decline. These businesses are growing again, they need investment and they can support it — so long as their regulator does not confiscate their money. Judging by his treatment of Railtrack, which he threatens to punish but seems to have put on proba- tion, this point has been made.
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