Hopes deferred
ONE school of reorganisation now wants to dig Railtrack up and bury it, and perhaps the trains should never have been parted from the tracks — or not on purpose, any- how. Still, the great digging-up of British Railways is now behind us. What the dig- gers never foresaw was that transport by rail would became a growth business again. Passenger traffic is up by one-fifth and freight by one-third, or they were until the accident at Hatfield put the railways into hibernation. These are or could be good businesses and would reward investment. This year's contenders for franchises cer- tainly thought so. On the Brighton line a new bidder has unseated Connex, to the relief of its patient passengers, who call it Chronix. All these hopes have been dimmed or postponed. The outbreak of second-guessing that has followed Hatfield must have made the railways less attractive to investors and to managers. Since Rail- track needs running, my choice would be Chris Green, the old hand who was brought in to lend credibility to Virgin Rail, but I cannot raise my railway correspondent, I.K. Gricer. Either he is in a tunnel or he is hid- ing from the headhunters.
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