Today's Must Read

As Patrick Crozier says, if you read no other article on British railways then read this one. Find out what happens when a reporter from The Times takes a senior manager from Swiss Federal Railways on a tour of Britain's fragmented mess of a network.

A CLASSIC SCENE at Crewe railway station. Every platform indicator is blank. Passengers drift like jetsam in a harbour. A rumour springs up -- who knows from where? -- that a Birmingham train is approaching Platform 5. The station assistant can't confirm it. But then again, he doesn't deny it. We leg it over the bridge.

Then a disembodied voice booms out. "We regret to announce that the Virgin train service to Birmingham is running approximately 70 -- that's seven zero -- minutes late."

Peter Grossenbacher is not given to displays of large emotion. He is, after all, Swiss. But when he hears this gloomy news his moustache twitches, his right eyebrow rises a full centimetre above its normal platform, and he gives a slight but tragic shake of his head. "That's . . . very sad", he mutters.

The article comes to the conclusion that's now obvious to anyone that knows anything about operating a railway. If we want a world-class railways like the state-owned Swiss network, or the privatised Japaneses one, we have to bring back vertical intergration. None of this nonsense of one company running the trains, another company operating the tracks, and a third failing to maintain them properly.