The government also nationalised other means of transport such as: canals, sea and shipping ports, bus companies, and eventually, in the face of much opposition, road haulage.

The BTC was a part of a highly ambitious scheme to create a publicly owned, centrally planned, integrated transport system.

Once the Conservatives were elected in 1951, road haulage was soon privatised and deregulated, but the railways and buses remained regulated, and were left under the control of the British Transport Commission.

Following the Second World War, the Big Four railway companies of the grouping era were effectively bankrupt, and the Act was intended to bring about some stability in transport policy.

Shares in the railway companies were exchanged for British Transport Stock, with a guaranteed 3% return chargeable to the BTC,[1] and were repayable after forty years.

The exchange of potentially worthless private stock for government gilts based on a valuation during an artificially created boom could thus be considered a very good deal.