[steam for ever]

It would certainly help if network rail (notwork fail) tidied up a bit. The sheer amount of junk that is left around is shocking like you say. Everywhere there is rail, rail clips, bits of tubing and even left over bags/ piles of balast which make the railway look untidy.
The often shady outside contractors that both railtrack and Network rail have used have done a lot to ruin the image of the railway, in more than just aesthetic terms.
Two books in my posession (one of which is by Christian Wolmar) comment on the history of railways in this country, and both state that privatisation is a mess.
I'm going to look for them after, so I can name the book titles if that is of any interest.

The very idiotic bidding system for locomotive and rolling stock building contracts makes the idea unattractive and probably unfeasable to some companies, whereas they may well have fared better if the railways were nationalised once more.
The failings of the bidding system currently used by the DFT has been publicly shamed in the similar situation of franchising. We all know that as the whole Virgin/First group fiasco that is ongoing.

This seems to have stirred up the questions about re-nationalisation to some degree, so hopefully the public may have got behind that cause to some degree.