British Rail was privatized between 1994 and 1997. Let's just say that for those of us who ride the rails in the UK, it didn't necessarily make things better. (State subsidies rose, punctuality fell, and ticket prices rose faster than inflation.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail

Part of the problem is that the railway tracks were sold off as a unit, the trains/rolling stock that ran on them as several other units, and then a bunch of franchise operations were set up to operate the trains.

Branson has turned Virgin into a branding exercise in recent decades and slapped his logo on a couple of different operator franchises. But he never owned the track and never owned the vehicles, so ...