It seemed such a simple job. The Barking – Gospel Oak line was becoming so heavily used both by passengers and freight that upgrading and electrification was clearly needed. After much prevarication and pressure from the local user group, the need for major improvement was finally recognised in 2013 but now, six years later, the passengers are still waiting for their shiny new electric trains, hundreds of millions of...

It is one of the great ironies of rail privatisation that it was supposed to free up the private sector to be innovative and groundbreaking and yet the train operators have often proved to be more conservative than British Rail. This is not in fact always their fault but is a result of creating a fragmented structure that is also highly regulated and their need to satisfy the short...