On the Wrong Line How Ideology and Incompetence Wrecked Britain's Railways

Christian Wolmar's acclaimed Broken Rails charted the disastrous privatisation of the British railway system in the mid-1990s. Now, in an updated and expanded version of the book, Wolmar highlights the failure of New Labour to get to grips with the legacy it inherited. The railways now absorb more taxpayers' money than ever before, while performance has reached an all-time low. Wolmar suggests that the railways may soon be under threat from a massive round of cuts and closures - or that debts, already at USD10bn, will mount up with catastrophic effect. But he argues that there is a third option: a return to a rational railway in which the disparate pieces are reassembled into a functioning network.