IT is becoming increasingly impossible to understand the mess that Britain's railways find themselves in.

In the immediate aftermath of the Hatfield disaster, Railtrack chief executive Gerald Corbett offered his resignation. It was the right and proper thing to do, for not only had he presided over an organisation on whose faulty infrastructure four people had just died, but his organisation had known about the potential fault for the previous nine months.

And then it emerged that, under Mr Corbett's stewardship, the maintenance of the entire rail network was such that 81 stretches had to have immediate speed restrictions applied because the line was so potentially dangerous.

However, Mr Corbett's resignation was not accepted. The Government was apparently happy with his performance and even some of the survivors of the Paddington disaster agreed that he was probably the best man for making the railways safe.

Four weeks later, he has gone, saying that putting together an emergency rescue plan means he has done his job. To the passenger, as Britain's railways continue to crawl along with little improvement expected before Christmas, it doesn't feel as if Mr Corbett has even begun his job, and he lands his successor, Steven Marshall, with an even bigger mess to sort out. The rail-using public, already dismayed by the failings of Railtrack, will not understand why it was wrong for Mr Corbett to step down a month ago but it is right for him to go now.

That, though, is just another of a long list of questions to ponder while you are sitting on a station waiting for a train that probably doesn't exist.