incidentally, here's a take from the Guardian (last year) saying that half the railways
are nationalised - it's just that the nations aren't Britain.
///At Romford station there’s a choice of trains into London: those run by the Dutch, or those run by the Chinese. Anyone heading for nearby Basildon has to change at Upminster and pay a fare to the Italian firm that has been operating C2C since January.
Welsh railways fell to German-owned Arriva long ago, while ScotRail is also in the hands of the Netherlands’ Abellio. The French, as part of Govia, own much of Britain’s biggest commuter franchises, including Southern Rail. Still, the news last week that South West Trains – serving destinations such as Weymouth and Windsor from Waterloo – would from August be operated by First MTR, partly owned by the Hong Kong government, marked a tipping point in Britain’s rail franchising.
With the transfer of this network, which has been operated since 1995 by Britain’s Stagecoach, one in two of the 1.7bn passenger journeys made in the UK each year will be on trains operated by foreign firms. And all of those firms are ultimately owned by foreign states///
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/01/british-rail-franchises-foreign-owners-subsidy