Lord Beeching led the way there, once all of the railroads were taken over by the government.
Thatcher tried her best to undo the British Rail fiasco, by re-privatizing. But all the lefties even in her own party stood in the way, and it got half done.
The funny thing is, instead of building this HS2 boondoggle, there are some of those closed main lines that could be upgraded to high speed for cheaper.
I noticed when I went to England last year that Virgin took over most of the routes in Eastern England, which is the one we took from London to York.