In favour of nationalisation? Take a look at Network Rail

We don’t hear enough about Network Rail these days. By that I mean that the entity recently described by the Sunday Times as ‘synonymous with incompetence and delays’ doesn’t receive anything like the abuse it deserves for failing to provide the infrastructure essential for a 21st-century railway. I refer you to the Crossrail project, in which the inability of new trains to connect with old Network Rail signalling systems is one reason for the delayed opening that has become a major national embarrassment. I invite you to observe LNER’s expensive new fleet of Azuma bullet trains that were due to launch in December but delayed by incompatibility with Network Rail signals. And of course if you’re a London commuter, you’ll have your own observation of the frequency with which track and signal failures ruin your day.

But I’ll bet you don’t know who controls Network Rail, or whether it sits in the public or private sector or (as Labour ministers pretended when they confiscated its assets from Railtrack shareholders in 2002) somewhere in between.