RAIL industry officials warn-ed at the end of last year that commuters were facing increased travel chaos because of a collapse in the morale of Railtrack staff.
Services on busy routes into London and across southern England suffered particularly badly in the aftermath of the financial collapse of the rail infrastructure firm.
Industry sources warned last December that delays would continue until the Railtrack ''mess'' was sorted out.
Commuters in the South- East suffered worse delays at the end of 2001 than over the previous year when speed restrictions were imposed across the country following the Hatfield train crash.
Delays caused by signal and track faults soared over the last few months of last year, which rail officials blamed on the low morale of Railtrack staff, although this was strongly denied by Railtrack.
Andrew Haines, managing director of South West Trains, said in December that he believed the morale of Railtrack workers had collapsed.
He described reliability at the time as ''awful''.
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