FARES up by more than double the inflation rate. Lines closed and services severely disrupted because of the now customary overruns in engineering work. Oh, and the lavish bonuses for Network Rail executives, with a New Year knighthood for chairman Ian Macallister.

Welcome aboard Britain's dirty, overcrowded, unpunctual, outrageously expensive railways. Or if you're one of the tens of thousands whose lines failed to reopen after the great Christmas shutdown, just hang around and wait for the replacement bus service.

How did the nation that gave railways to the world come to this?

For more than a decade, ministers have been promising to coax us out of our cars and on to greener public transport.

Will that ever happen while we have a Byzantine railway structure in which no one (apart from the taxpayer) is responsible for anything and the rail companies go on treating their passengers like livestock to be fleeced?

Colin Henson, Ullswater, Woodthorpe, York.