Source: Common Wealth analysis of Office for Rail and Road, Companies House, and RMT data.

Note: The Office for Rail and Road’s rail industry finance data reports the profit margin for the train operators. In our analysis, we include profits made by the rolling stock leasing companies (who rent the trains to train operators), the outsourced staffing companies and the Network Rail subcontractors to get a more accurate picture of profits made in the rail sector.

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Source: Tables 7210, 7226 and 7216, Office of Rail and Road Safety.

Note: The train operators receive direct subsidies through the Department for Transport (DfT), and indirect subsidies via the Network Grant from DfT to Network Rail, which since 2002 has lowered the operators’ track access charges to make their profitability possible without further fare hikes. These artificially low access charges also push Network Rail into losses that end up on the public balance sheet, and which we therefore also treat as implicit subsidies. Since 2020, these subsidies have accounted for more than 50% of total industry income, overtaking operating income from ticket fares and other typical revenue streams. Our figures here calculated unsubsidised income as the residual of industry income after subtracting both the Network Rail losses and the net government support payments both to passenger and freight operators and to the infrastructure manager (Network Rail). Six per cent of total industry income and expenditure is accounted for by freight operators, High Speed 1, the Core Valleys lines and Northern Ireland Railways.

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Source: Companies House.

Note: Select line items taken from three rolling stock companies: Angel Trains Limited, Eversholt Rail Leasing Limited, Porterbrook Leasing Company Limited. Together, these three companies made up 76% of the rolling stock market in 2019. Capital expenditure only includes spending on property, plant and equipment. Finance costs to group and related parties are interest payments on debt payable to other companies in the corporate group or related parties such as shareholders, bondholders and investors.

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