This article examines the brief and unsuccessful career of the privately-owned infrastructure company, Railtrack, and its part in the privatised railway system in the UK between 1996 and 2001. It discusses the decision of the British government to discontinue public support for Railtrack and to...

Rail privatisation was a controversial, widely unpopular policy whose implementation was not inevitable. This article employs counterfactual history methodology to examine whether the move to rail privatisation in Britain might have failed. It places the privatisation proposals in context by...