Ripon lost its railway service in 1967.
"First we lost our railway," Mr. Rewniak said.
Steve Hawkins, from Network Rail, explained: "The last time it flooded we lost the railway for two or three days but we lost the signalling equipment, so we had restricted working, for two or three weeks.
… If we lose the railways we shall not just have lost a valuable practical asset.
It had never lost its railway-station look (the Barrault theatre was an independent wooden contraption that sat inside the old station, much as the glass and metal structure of the Royal Exchange in Manchester sits in its building); it seemed rather to glory in its history, and was copied 10 years later by the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.
But finding a buyer for O.S.E., the money-losing railway with huge debts, will be harder.
ATHENS — In 2009, bankers for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley pitched the Greek government on a plan to overhaul its money-losing railway system.
One reason for this was the government's involvement in railways: it had found itself the owner of four uncompleted money-losing railway lines after the private syndicates set up to run them collapsed due to construction cost overruns.
This year the group has endured a fall in revenues partly because of losing the Docklands Light Railway contract, lower income from its Australian Immigration Service business and reduced activity on its IT contract with US intelligence services.
"Of course we're big; we're Teamsters," said Jim Kane, 51, who was rehired by the railway after losing 50 pounds by eating Weight Watchers meals and spending time on a treadmill.
By 1908, the railway was losing money, of which two-thirds was covered by the state and one-third by the municipalities.
