IT is nothing short of a national disgrace that less than a quarter of our passenger rail companies are able to operate normal services.

After being given yet another deadline to bring services back to normal, we have to wonder whether Railtrack is living on borrowed time.

Railtrack's performance following the Hatfield tragedy has been woeful. It underestimated the scale of the maintenance problems on its network.

And, once it grasped the scale of the problems, it has consistently under-estimated the time it will take to rectify those problems.

We do not share Railtrack's confidence to have everything in acceptable order by May. Nor, we suspect, do the train companies and the travelling public, who have been promised several new dawns which all turned out to be false.

Railtrack deserves no more reprieves. This has to be its last chance to put things right.

If this deadline is not met and these pledges not fulfilled, then we expect Rail Regulator Tom Winsor to mete out the toughest punishment at his disposal.

If he feels Railtrack is not up to the job, then so be it. And the Government must have the courage to back him.

Is it any wonder that a survey published yesterday found that the overwhelming majority of the British public wants the railway network re-nationalised?

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that our railways' troubles stem from a botched privatisation which created too many train companies, and put responsibility for health and safety into the hands of the company also responsible from making money out of the network of track.

The potential conflict of interests is self-evident.

Financially, it may not be possible to re-nationalise, even if ministers have the political will to do so.

But the Government must learn from the tragedies and shortcomings of recent times, and take notice of the public animosity towards the present structure.

While we may have to forget any notion of wholesale nationalisation, there is an overwhelmingly case for the Government to wrest strategic control of our railways from the private sector.