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The modern era has seen the railways in the UK broken up once again into individual companies – TOCs (Train Operating Companies) with the overall network infrastructure (tracks, stations) owned and operated by Railtrack from privatisation (1994) until 2002 when the company basically went bust, to be replaced by Network Rail, a not-for-profit organisation set up by the government of the day under Tony Blair. Since then Network Rail has run the UK's railway network, receiving fees from the TOCs for the use of the railway. This mish-mash has seen fares rise very steeply in the UK. To be fair there has been more investment in new trains by several companies, improving the service to their customers but the UK railways lag a long way behind some countries, notably France (though is better than some other countries).
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There has been a huge modernisation of the West Coast Main Line, operated almost exclusively by Virgin trains, which in 2002 introduced the Pendolino services in an aim to cut journey times between Glasgow and London to compete with the airlines. Although the trains are capable of 150 mph, in practice they are restricted to 125 mph as a result of the lack of good enough track and signalling systems – despite a multi-billion-pound upgrade. South-east England is also feeling the benefit with new trains from Kent now running along the Channel Tunnel Link into St Pancras and faster trains have been introduced on several other routes, but at the expense of steadily increasing fares. Elsewhere there have been problems with some of the franchises, in particular that on the east coast routes between London and Newcastle and on to Edinburgh. GNER went bust and then National Express pulled out, leaving the system back in public hands. NE also runs two other franchises (Eastern and the C2C service to Southend) and these may again change hands shortly. Virgin's Cross-Country franchise was ended by the rail regulator due to consistent late running, but several other services are failing the public by not being able to run trains on Sundays due to overtime problems that should have been sorted out years ago – the old management techniques from BR days do not seem to be have been overhauled and one often wonders if this is 2010 or 1960.
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Other TOCs have replaced their old carriages with new varieties but services levels are still not what they should be. New initiatives (such as Crossrail running east-west under London – a project talked about for the last 30 years) are in the process of actually happening and links such as the Heathrow Express have been introduced. Yet the UK lacks a high speed rail network to take the bulk of intercity traffic, causing commuter and other traffic to be slowed down. freight has almost disappeared off Britain's rail network, as a glimpse at any motorway will tell you. Much could be done yet with the current set-up of railways in the UK and no overall political drive, it is unlikely that a TGV-type network will ever be set up. Britain will become even more of a railway backwater whilst other countries modernise.
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