I don't know.  On one hand there was / is a need for things to move forward - a scheme that was right for the world 30 years ago is not necessarily right for things now, so that even if BR was brilliant when it was set up in 1948,  there were elements of it that looked very dated by 40 years later.  But on the other hand, there are aspects of the current system (the rebidding and rebranding every few years, the fearsome complexity of just working out who is responsible for what and having those people accept the consequence of that responsibility) which make me think that the dated system of BR had its merits.