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Couldn't agree more. We had a winner in the APT but BR allowed itself to be driven by media opinion and released a product to market that was still flawed and worse still released it in the worst possible weather conditions. Given the amount of money that SNCF 'threw' at the TGV project BR would have seen it to completion I guess. Successive governments have paid lip service to the public service requirement and prefer a 'free-for-all' in both rail manufacture and regulation. I note that the Potters Bar enquiry seems to be eventually drawing to a close 10 years after the tragic accident, leaving NR to pick up the pieces left behind by Railtrack! (no pun intended!) Yet the Leveson Enquiry was thrown together in the space of a few weeks because certain high-profile individuals had had their phones tapped! Priorities are down the pan, obviously! NR bleat about the amount of infrastructure that's being nicked but on a visit to Manchester Piccadilly recently I spotted yards and yards of discarded rail lying in the 6-foot just asking to be stolen! It obviously costs more for NR to recover it than it does "Ivor Flatbed Rail Disposals".
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