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Railtrack Share Offer Prospectus

Document Summary

The prospectus for the privatisation of Railtrack, which took place just six years before its collapse in 2001.

This document was published on 1st May 1996 by SBC Warburg.

It was written by SBC Warburg.

The original document format was PDF File, and comprised 258 pages.

This document was kindly sourced from Site Contributor and is in our Prospectuses collection. It was added to the Archive on 11th September 2006.

Copyright Information

This document is © SBC Warburg.

"The Company is the holding company of the Railtrack Group. Its wholly owned subsidiary, Railtrack, owns almost all of Britain's railway infrastructure, including track, signalling, bridges, tunnels, stations and depots. Railtrack's principal business consists of the sale of access to its track and Major Stations and the leasing of other stations and depots.

Railtrack's rail network consists of around 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometres) of track extending over 10,000 route miles ( 1 6,000 route kilometres) across England, Scotland and Wales. In London and other cities, such as Birmingham, Glasgow and Cardiff, railway lines radiate from the city centre, serving large numbers of commuters. For example, London's Liverpool Street station regularly has over 1,000 trains arriving or departing in a single day. In other parts of the country, the network has fewer lines and these are less heavily used. In the north of Scotland, for instance, the route from Dingwall to Kyle of Lochalsh is served in winter by only 36 passenger trains a week.

Railtrack owns some 2,500 stations ranging from single platform unmanned stations through to large city termini such as London Victoria, which has 19 platforms, two acres of concourse and over 50 concourse stalls and retail units and provides access to a purpose-built shopping complex over part of the station. Virtually all of the stations are leased to and operated by TOCs, but Railtrack itself operates the 14 Major Stations.

Railtrack's main activities include: selling train paths to train operators, managing the allocation of train paths and producing the working timetable; operating the rail network, including signalling, and supplying electricity for traction to train operators; operating the 14 Major Stations; leasing stations and light maintenance depots to TOCs; maintaining and renewing the railway infrastructure; planning and executing major capital programmes; and managing its property portfolio.

Railtrack also has an important role in managing safety on the network. In addition to being responsible for the safety of its infrastructure, including the control of its contractors and the control of trains on its network, it oversees safety matters affecting the use of its network by train and station operators. It is responsible for the formulation of mandatory network-wide safety standards and monitors the safety performance of train and station operators having access to its network."