So renationalising the service is quite possibly a smaller managerial undertaking than renationalising the bus service of a small town...
??
That's about right for national intercity passanger services. And that was before they shut down a bunch of them.
Basically, our railways were bought by people who didn't want to run a railway, but instead were interested in asset stripping the company then flicking it off to another bunch of suckers. Which they did. So now the public (which has realised it actually needs railways) is going to have to pay to rebuild them. Privatised profits, socialised risks in a nutshell.