All change How renationalisation will affect the rail industry and passengers

At 6.14am on Sunday, the first train to carry the Great British Railways branding will make its way out of London Waterloo to Shepperton, emblazoned with a red, white and blue logo and proudly renationalised to boot.

- Gwyn Topham

At 6.14am on Sunday, the first train to carry the Great British Railways branding will make its way out of London Waterloo to Shepperton, emblazoned with a red, white and blue logo and proudly renationalised to boot. The Labour government hopes to grab the moment to demonstrate to an increasingly impatient electorate that the wheels of change - in rail at least - are finally turning.

The first renationalisation, landing on the late May bank holiday weekend, is one of Britain's biggest commuter services - though the trains, including the one currently having the GBR paint job at a Bournemouth depot, will still run as South Western Railway for some time. As the first emblem of a potential new era pulls into the station, what does the shake-up mean for the rail industry - and will passengers notice the difference?

How did we get here?

Legislation to bring train operators into state hands barely needed one sheet of A4. The bigger puzzle, in which renationalisation is one crucial piece, is achieving the goal shared by all parties of an integrated railway, where track and train are managed by one directing or guiding body. A consultation on the plans to create a dedicated public body only finished last month - about four years after the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, announced his own Great British Railways, declaring an end to a "broken system".

GBR proved not to be dead, as some once declared, but it does not live yet; a 100-strong "transition team" spent £135m working on the restructuring before being quietly disbanded in March. Industry figures insist that Labour, with the ex-Network Rail chair Peter Hendy as the rail minister, has given fresh impetus to the process despite perceptions of continued drift.