In 1997, the CRT obtained funding to carryout a business study of the plans, and subsequently agreed to purchase the track from Railtrack.

Following the Hatfield accident, the rail infrastructure company Railtrack imposed over 1, 200 emergency speed restrictions across its network and instigated an extremely costly nationwide track replacement programme.

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.

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 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.

Railtrack resisted regulatory action to improve its performance, and as the regulator probed ever more deeply, serious shortcomings in the company's stewardship of the network were revealed.

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

The bankruptcy of Railtrack in 2001 and its replacement by Network Rail following the Hatfield crash brought a reappraisal of the plans, while the cost of the upgrade soared.

The Hatfield accident set in motion the series of events that resulted in the ultimate collapse of Railtrack and its replacement with Network Rail, a state-owned, not-for-dividend company.

Following the Hatfield accident, the rail infrastructure company Railtrack imposed over 1, 200 emergency speed restrictions across its network and instigated an extremely costly nationwide track replacement programme.

These include Railtrack ( and now Network Rail ), which used Gill Sans for printed matter, the Church of England, which adopted Gill Sans as the typeface for the definitive Common Worship family of service books published from 2000, and the British Government, which formally adopted Gill Sans as its standard typeface for use in all communications and logos in 2003.

* John Robinson, British businessman and chairman of Railtrack at the time of its collapse

The intensity of political intervention came to a head immediately after the Hatfield rail crash in 2000, when Railtrack imposed over 1200 emergency speed restrictions on its network because it did not know where else on the network the type of metal fatigue-called gauge corner cracking or rolling contact fatigue-which had caused the crash might occur.

It lasted for a year ; on 2 October 2002 the administration order was discharged and a new organisation, Network Rail, bought Railtrack PLC from its parent Railtrack Group PLC.

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.

The government wanted the SRA to take a more interventionist role with Railtrack and its successor Network Rail, but never gave it the legal powers to do so.

The station's successive owners, British Rail, Railtrack and its current owner Network Rail have been unfairly criticised for underutilising the valuable city-centre spaces available within, there being a legal covenant preventing any upwards extension, which would obstruct the view of Arthur's Seat from Princes Street.

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.

In 2001, Railtrack announced that, despite making a pre-tax profits before exceptional expenses of £ 199m, the £ 733m of costs and compensation paid out over the Hatfield crash plunged Railtrack from profit to a loss of £ 534m.

£ 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.

It is believed that there was £ 532 million available to Railtrack comprising £ 370 million in the bank and £ 162 million of an existing Department of Transport loan facility still available to be drawn down, but Stephen Byers MP refused to allow this, causing shareholders to believe that he had broken the loan agreement.

Railtrack estimated that this upgrade would cost £ 2bn, be ready by 2005, and cut journey times to 1 hour for London to Birmingham and 1hr 45mins for London to Manchester.

The original station was partially refurbished in 2002 by Railtrack at a cost of £ 4 million.

Railtrack who owned most of the canal transferred ownership in 2005 for the sum of £ 1, to Teignbridge District Council for leisure use by the community.

Criticism of Railtrack after the accident was rife, and the company had to pay over £ 700 million in compensation.

On 14 February 2001, Derby City Council, Midland Main Line and Railtrack agreed a £ 1, 736, 000-scheme to connect Derby Midland station to the Pride Park development.

For a four week trial ( and all the preparatory work ) in the UK in 2005 he charged £ 800, 000 to represent the UK government in the largest class action in the UK, brought by 49, 500 private shareholders of the collapsed national railway infrastructure company Railtrack.

Railtrack plc was placed into railway administration under the Railways Act 1993 on 7 October 2001, following an application to the High Court by the then Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers.

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.

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.

* 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.

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.

Keith Rowley, QC, the barrister for the shareholders, alleged Byers had " devised a scheme by which he intended to injure the shareholders of Railtrack Group by impairing the value of their interests in that company without paying compensation and without the approval of Parliament ".

He oversaw the creation of Network Rail, the successor to Railtrack, which had collapsed in controversial circumstances for which his predecessor was largely blamed.

Although he was not at the Department for Transport at the time of the collapse of Railtrack, Darling vigorously defended what had been done in a speech to the House of Commons on 24 October 2005.

The leaked email appeared on the day after Byers had announced the placing of Railtrack, the private sector rail infrastructure company, in administration.

Morton had neither the knowledge nor the powers to do this, and eventually the passenger and freight train operators-who were losing very large sums of money as a result of the severe operational disruption which was taking place-applied to the Rail Regulator for enforcement action against Railtrack.

The administration of Railtrack led to an explosion of costs as the discipline of the company's equity had been lost, and very sharp falls in performance.

The consequences of the Hatfield accident in 2000 caused Railtrack to undertake large-scale track relaying without sufficient planning, and much of the work was substandard and subsequently had to be re-done.

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.

Prior to operating its own locomotives, Network Rail's predecessor, Railtrack, had hired two Class 31 locomotives from Fragonset.

Merseytravel rejected criticism of the delays and cost increase, stating that it had been caused by factors beyond its control, such as the collapse of Railtrack, increasing steel costs and poor weather causing flooding at the construction site.