Virgin Trains and Railtrack signed a contract in October 1997 to upgrade the West Coast Main Line from London to Glasgow. Initially estimated at GBP 2.1bn, the cost of this upgrade went higher, and it is recently said to be GBP 6bn or 7bn, or even higher. It is incredibly expensive; BBC commented on this project as "Europe's most expensive rail project". This expenditure gave yet another hard blow to Railtrack, which already suffered from the aftermath of the accidents. The company also made the government furious about the dividends it gave to its shareholders after it received taxpayers' money to proceed on with these upgrade projects.

So, it was Mr Stephen Byers, the Secretary of State for Transport, who pulled the plug according to Railways Act 1993 on the weekends of 6 to 7 October 2001, after concluding that any more public money put onto Railtrack will only be wasted.

The form of new Railtrack, or the reorganised rail industry as a whole, is still uncertain. Mr Byers says that new Railtrack should be a "not-for-profit" organisation. Being "not-for-profit", the profit it makes will be re-invested into the rail network, and will not be given to the shareholders. However, it is reported that several take-over bids are proposed, and Mr Byers admitted that it will be considered given that the proposals are "better than what we propose".

Although the Government says it will spend GBP 30bn in 10 years' time, few believe that the future rail projects like West Coast upgrades will go smoothly.

The current Railtrack plc is now under administration of Ernst & Young the accouuntant. It is said that trains will run as normal, no job will be lost, and the creditors will be paid. However, initially it was reported that "no compensation" will be made for the shareholders. Naturally, it made them furious, because they thought it a safe investment. Railtrack's share price just before its bankruptcy on Friday's market close was 280p, which is clearly different from normal enterprises that go bankrupt. It is feared that this "pushy" way of doing things will have knock-on effects on all future PPP (public-private partnerships) projects, like the increase of costs in raising private funds.

The London Underground is planning to do upgrading through a PPP framework, selling off tunnels, tracks, signalling systems and stations while keeping train operation in public hands. Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, who has long been a strong opponent to this framework, made his oppisition even harder. There are now others who claim that it is not natural to sell off infrastructure of the Tube when the Government is doing the effective re-nationalisation of Railtrack.

It was also reported that the "spin-doctor" of Mr Byers sent an e-mail message on September 11, stating that it is a good day to "bury" bad news, making the matters a political confusion.

Of course, as a passenger every framework is acceptable provided that good rail services are available. However, in a Q&A type article entitled "Good at running up big bills" on 9 October's "The Guardian" newspaper...

17. Will this make the trains run on time?
1. Probably not.