My Uncle Erik was a leading executive in charge of the railway system in Holland for many years.

He often visited Britain and although he was polite, he was plainly exasperated by the chaotic rail management we had here.

I was reminded of him this week on hearing that many prospective Labour candidates are urging Ed Miliband to adopt a policy of gradual renationalisation for the rail network.

They include Nancy Platts who hopes to win back the highly marginal Brighton Kemptown seat for Labour at the next general election.

Platts and her colleagues have been boosted by an opinion poll which shows most people back some form of rail renationalisation and even more want franchises brought back under state management as they fall free.

They say this would allow fares to be kept under control and for profits to be reinvested in services.

Memories must be short for these politicians as it is less than 20 years since the last vestiges of British Rail were swept away through privatisation.

Older people will remember British Rail as a national joke forever associated with stale sandwiches, ancient rolling stock and a seemingly endless series of strikes.

The British train system was created by capitalism. Ruthless operators competed against each other for the right to run railways all over the country.

There was such a dense network a century ago that in counties such as Sussex, nowhere was more than five miles from a line.

But the inexorable rise of the motor car and two world wars took their toll on the system. After the first conflict, railways were divided into large and rather unsatisfactory regions.

After the second, railways were nationalised and British Railways (later shortened to British Rail), began almost 50 years of mainly calamitous management.

Running the railways would have been a tough task for anyone but BR was awesomely inadequate.

As other operators in continental Europe electrified their services and introduced attractive rolling stock, BR was still building steam engines at Brighton and other places.

The rolling stock was pitiful. Stations were shambolic and overstaffed. The safety record was appalling with major disasters at Lewisham and Hither Green in the south among the worst in railway history.

Railways were ruined in the 1960s when officials butchered the network. Typical of their cack-handed cuts was to close the line south of Uckfield leaving that town isolated and saddled with his worst service in Sussex before the service was withdrawn.

And when attempts were made to introduce a proper inter-city service who should BR choose to launch the age of the train but Jimmy Savile?

Privatising the railways has been packed with problems. The system is unsatisfactory and needs reform.

But since privatisation, railways have almost without exception reported more passengers year by year.

Private operators are so much better at marketing than BR ever was with the result that people are tempted on to trains – more than at any time since the last war.

Some of them would be prepared to invest far more heavily in the railways if only they were given more security with their franchises.

Running railways is complicated because there is a system of subsidy which means the Government is highly involved despite privatisation.

Raising fares has been adopted as policy by successive administrations because the cost of those subsidies is so high.

The failure of two operators to run the East Coast main line followed by the success of a state-controlled franchise has encouraged talk of nationalisation.

But East Coast is the best equipped rail network in the country, apart from HS1, and the real challenge would be to take on a service such as Thameslink, now run rather half-heartedly by First Capital Connect.

Much depends on the quality of management.

There have been good managers in the south including Sussex. Frank Paterson, Chris Green and Martin Brown are names that come to mind – but they have been outnumbered by mediocrities.

For far too long railways were regarded as a dead end, declining industry with no light at the end of most tunnels. But on a small island clogged with traffic, trains are the answer to many transport dilemmas.

A better mixture of public and private enterprise might work wonders but reversion to British Rail would be a disaster.

What the railways need is pride in the present and confidence in the future. Uncle Erik, whose eyes lit up like signal lamps when talking about his beloved Netherlands system, would surely have agreed.