Reduction in Fragmentation?

BBC NEWS | Business | Network Rail takes repairs in-house

Over the past few months, Network rail has taken maintenance of several parts of the rail network back in house. Looks like this has proved a success, because they've now decided to stop using contractors for maintenance altogether.

This comes hot on the heels of Jarvis' latest cock up.

On Thursday, more than �60m was wiped off the stock market value of Jarvis after claims that the engineering firm falsified documents relating to rail upgrade work.

The 16% fall in the company's share price on Thursday followed news that Network Rail is investigating the company over allegations that records of substandard rail upgrades were falsified.

During the cold weather of the past week Network Rail has found there are major question marks over the quality of work done over the summer to upgrade the west coast main line.

A 40-mile segment of track between Stoke-on-Trent and Macclesfield had areas where the track had been laid incorrectly - not stretched to the right degree.

And Network Rail has had to introduce 20 temporary speed restrictions which have slowed trains and caused delays.