The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but on 3 October 2002, the main operating arm-the owner and operator of the national railway network, Railtrack plc-was sold by its parent company Railtrack Group plc to " not for dividend " company Network Rail ( a company limited by guarantee ) and was later renamed Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd.

Railtrack Group plc was renamed RT Group plc and was dissolved on 22 June 2010.

The parent company, Railtrack Group plc, was not put into administration and continued operating its other subsidiaries, which included property and telecommunications interests.

Network Rail was formed with the principal purpose of acquiring and owning Railtrack plc.

Originally the Government allowed private companies to bid for Railtrack plc.

However, with limited availability of financial data on Railtrack, the political implications of owning the company and the very obvious preference of the government that the national railway network should go to Network Rail, no bidders apart from Network Rail were forthcoming, and Network Rail bought Railtrack plc on 3 October 2002.

Network Rail's acquisition of Railtrack plc was welcomed at the time by groups that represented British train passengers.

Ownership of the station transferred from British Rail to Railtrack plc in 1994, later passing to Network Rail in 2002 following the failure of Railtrack.

In 2001 the track operator Railtrack plc went bankrupt ; it was reconstituted and renamed as Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd., a private company with no legal owner but effectively government-controlled via its constitution and financing.

Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from its formation in April 1994 until 2002.

Founded under Conservative legislation that privatised the railways, Railtrack took control of the railway infrastructure on 1 April 1994 and was floated on the Stock Exchange in May 1996.

Railtrack was severely criticised for both its performance in improving the railway infrastructure and for its safety record.

Between its creation and late 1998, the company had a relatively calm relationship with its first economic regulator, John Swift QC, whose strategy was to encourage Railtrack to make commitments to improvement.

At times the relationship was stormy, with Railtrack resisting pressure to improve its performance.

In April 2000 it was reported in the Guardian that " Railtrack is adopting a deliberate ' culture of defiance ' against the rail regulator ".

To get Railtrack out of administration, the government had to go back to the High Court and present evidence that the company was no longer insolvent.

Railtrack's parent company, Railtrack Group, was placed into members ’ voluntary liquidation as RT Group on 18 October 2002.

£ 370 million held by Railtrack Group was frozen at the time the company went into administration and was earmarked to pay Railtrack shareholders an estimated 70p a share in compensation.

A lawyer speaking for one of those groups remarked on GMTV that his strategy was to sue the government for incorrect and misleading information given at the time Railtrack was created, when John Major was Conservative Prime Minister.

Railtrack was placed into administration on 7 October 2001 and, the following year, its functions as the track owner were taken over by Network Rail, which is a company limited by guarantee, nominally in the private sector but with members instead of shareholders and its borrowing guaranteed by the government.

* October 7 – Railtrack, in England, is placed under legal administration by Stephen Byers, Secretary of State for Transport, effectively renationalizing the system.

Because most of the engineering skill of British Rail had been sold off into the maintenance and renewal companies, Railtrack had no idea how many Hatfields were waiting to happen, nor did they have any way of assessing the consequence of the speed restrictions they were ordering-restrictions that brought the railway network to all but a standstill.

The legality of the decision to put Railtrack into railway administration was challenged by the smaller Railtrack Private Shareholders Action Group.

Their action against the government alleged that the Secretary of State for Transport at the time-Stephen Byers MP-had, by deciding to cut off funding for Railtrack and asking the High Court to put the company into railway administration, committed the common law tort of misfeasance in public office.

The circumstances in which Railtrack had been put into administration were highly controversial, with allegations in Parliament on 24 October 2005 that the company had not been insolvent at the time ( 7 October 2001 ) and therefore that the administration order had been wrongly obtained.

It was the last mainline station in Gloucestershire to be reopened as British Rail was being fragmented into the ill fated Railtrack at great cost.

The aftermath of the Hatfield crash led to severe financial difficulties for Railtrack and just under a year later-on 7 October 2001-the company was put into railway administration ( a special kind of insolvency for railway companies which ensures continuity of operation of railway services ) by the British High Court on the application of the then Secretary of State for Transport Stephen Byers.

After Union Railways ran into trouble with the construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, it was rescued by Railtrack.

The rail infrastructure company Railtrack, having divested much of the engineering knowledge of British Rail into maintenance contractors, had inadequate maintenance records and no accessible asset register.

These sets have been repainted into either the now obsolete Railtrack blue / lime green livery or the new Network Rail yellow livery.

In exchange for the Council's funding of the bridge, Railtrack and Midland Main Line entered into a " Covenant With Regard to the Footbridge ", that the non-travelling public would be free to cross the footbridge at any time during station hours.

He got into trouble with Cullen, when he was quoted in the press stating that leading counsel for Railtrack where lying to cover up their negligence about the cause of the Ladbroke Grove crash.

Rix founded the group Take Back the Track, which was successful in turning Railtrack into a not-for-profit publicly owned company in 2001.

The Railtrack business ( and its £ 7 billion debt ) had been sold to Network Rail for £ 500 million, and the various diversified businesses it had created to seek to protect itself from the loss-making business of running a railway were disposed of to various buyers.

The station and the railway that it served experienced several changes in management, being owned in turn by the London and Birmingham Railway ( 1837 – 1845 ), the London and North Western Railway ( 1846 – 1922 ), the London, Midland and Scottish Railway ( 1923 – 1947 ), British Railways ( 1948 – 1994 ), Railtrack ( 1994 – 2001 ) and Network Rail ( 2001 – present )

The route was then operated as a conventional railway, until it was closed by Railtrack after the last train on 31 May 1997, for conversion to tram operation.

Upon the privatisation of British Rail, the station became owned by Railtrack and later Network Rail, though, in common with most British railway stations, the day-to-day operation was contracted out to the largest user of the station, in this case Midland Mainline ( East Midlands Trains ' predecessor ).

On 1 April 1994 railway infrastructure became the responsibility of public limited company Railtrack, initially Government owned.

He franchised passenger rail services to private companies including Virgin, Connex ( now known as Veolia Transport ) and the coach companies Stagecoach and National Express, and floated the national railway track and signalling company Railtrack on the London Stock Exchange in 1996.

Railtrack collapsed in highly controversial circumstances in October 2001, and in October 2002 the company emerged from railway administration, a special state of insolvency for railway companies created by the Railways Act 1993, as Network Rail.

Although the accident killed fewer than other accidents, it exposed the major stewardship shortcomings of the privatised national railway infrastructure company Railtrack and the failings of the regulatory oversight which the company displayed in its initial years ( principally a failure to ensure that the company had a sound knowledge of the condition of its assets ) and ultimately triggered its partial renationalisation.

Examples from the last five years in the United Kingdom include the vesting of the British railway infrastructure firm Railtrack in the not-for-profit company Network Rail, and the divestment of much council housing stock to " arms-length management companies ", often with mutual status.