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 1994 until 2002.

[3] However, Robert Horton, who would become the first chairman of Railtrack and thus play a leading role through the early years of the organisation's existence, lobbied for the infrastructure-holding company to be privatised as well in order to maximise financial gains; this position was also supported by several figures within the Conservative government, such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke and the Secretary of State for Transport Brian Mawhinney.

Furthermore, the company routinely received funding from the British government; the resulting money was largely spent on the railway network in accordance with plans laid out by the rail regulator.

[4][5] Between its creation and late 1998, the company reportedly had a relatively calm relationship with its first economic regulator, John Swift QC, who exercised a strategy of encouraging Railtrack to make its own commitments towards improvement.

[7] According to the railway historian Christian Wolmar, the regulator had intentionally acted weak as to avoid complicating the creation and privatisation of Railtrack.

[2][6] During May 1996, the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange, albeit at a lower than planned price, allegedly in response to a threatened intervention by the Labour Party.

[4][5] Railtrack's initial operations were disrupted by an industrial dispute that largely ran between June and September 1994;[10][11] at one point, the company's management proposed dismissing all of its signallers, comprising roughly 4,600 staff.

In particular, Railtrack's customers, the passenger and freight train operators, were allegedly desperate for regulatory action to compel the company to improve its stewardship of the network and 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.

[6] Railtrack had no idea how many potential Hatfields were waiting to happen, nor did they have any way of assessing the consequence of the speed restrictions they were ordering, largely because the majority of the engineering skill of British Rail had been sold off into separate maintenance and renewal companies.

[30] During February 1999, a significant fall in Railtrack's share price occurred in response to the company's launch of a bond issue intended to finance the West Coast Main Line modernisation and Thameslink Programmes.

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

The attitude of Railtrack's customers – the passenger- and freight-train operators – was much more cautious, especially as they were wary of a corporate structure under which shareholders' equity was not at risk if the company's new management mis-managed its affairs.

[55] 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.

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.

Sir Alan Duncan MP, then the shadow transport secretary, said in Parliament that this aspect of the affair – which was not dealt with in the shareholders' case in the High Court – was "perhaps the most shameful scar on the Government's honesty" and "an absolute scandal".

[64] This personal statement to Parliament was not accepted by the MP who had asked the original question, and the matter was remitted to the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee for investigation.

[65] RT Group plc (in voluntary liquidation) made a number of payments to shareholders during the winding up of the company's affairs before finally being dissolved on 22 June 2010.

[70] That same month, Geoffrey Howe was appointed chairman of Railtrack Group (the part of the business not in administration) and quickly pursued a strategy of seeking compensation from the British government.