Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Wednesday the 10th of December.

You may have seen the colours and lines of the Union flag being used, the red, white and blue as the logo for Great British Railways.

This is the nationalised body that's going to replace the current patchwork

of mostly private train firms running on public infrastructure. I've been hearing from the

rail minister, Lord Peter Henley, about how he believes untangling the current corporate conflicts

will deliver benefits for the traveller.

First of all, what about this rebranding?

Wasn't it a rather expensive indulgence, given that there's so much more to do with the railway?

The brand has been developed in-house in the department at a very modest cost.

I believe developing the brand cost about 30 grand, which is very little indeed.

We're not going to repaint anything unless it needs repainting. We will put the name GBR and Great British Railways and the double hour on the side of trains,

because we know one of the reasons this policy is really popular with the public is that everybody wants to regard the railways

and network. So there's no harm and there's a lot of good in having GBR, Great British

Railways and the double arrow on the side of every train. But we're not going to repaint stuff

willy-nilly and we're not going to waste public money or taxpayers' money in repasting trains

unnecessarily. We'll repaint trains when they need to be repainted, so the net additional cost to doing that is nothing.

Lord Hendy says that a unified operator of tracks and trains will benefit the train.

The railway is absolutely stuffed full of big and small contracts, all with different terms,

all producing

real confusion about how we serve customers and passengers better.

People spend all their time arguing about how the railway works and not what it does.

And what it does is create economic growth, create jobs and builds homes.

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