Broken Rails

📖 The Scoop

In the aftermath of the Hatfield rail crash of October 2000 the railwayystem was reduced to a state of chaos from which it has still not fullyecovered. And it was not just the passengers who suffered; Railtrack, theompany that actually owns and manages the tracks, was transformed from atock market star into a financial basket case; most important of all, ashis book makes clear, the folly of splitting the national railway system upnto a labyrinth of privatised companies all seeking to profit at the expensef the others, was exposed. Setting his analysis within the broaderistorical context of Britain's railway industry, Christian Wolmar shows thatatfield, and the earlier accidents at Southall and Ladbroke Grove, wereerely the symptoms of the dysfunctional structure that had been created byrivatisation.;John Major and his colleagues had destroyed British Rail which,he book argues, was in fact well on the way to creating the most efficentailway system Britain had ever known, and replaced it with a Byzantineystem in which hundreds of staff are employed simply to argue with each

Genre: Transportation / Railroads / General (fancy, right?)