Not really true. National Rail, which owns the tracks is a quango, not a private company. The actual train operators are truly privately owned but it is important to understand that they are not privately making any major strategic decisions about the network, just maintaining the rolling stock and providing staff; their routes, times, prices, and profits are mostly set by the state (with some narrow room for discretion) and not by the private sector.
Much better answer than mine. Also worth mentioning they don't even own the rolling stock - that's the ROSCOs and tbh that's probably where the profit is to be made.
At the start the railway infrastructure was also privately owned (Railtrack), but that collapsed after less than 10 years and became National Rail. This was a sign of the failure to come.
There are a mountain of restrictions on the franchisees because having an interconnected system of railways with the management of different parts delegated to separate private companies makes no logical sense.
The only way it makes sense is as a vehicle to extract wealth from the state and the people (ticket prices); and transfer it to the private owners of the franchises, and the private professional services companies via all the consultancy fees and red-tape the system generates.
Owning rolling stock is where it is at now for wealth extraction. As far as I know this is not something that is going to change with the current plans to expire franchises and bring the management back into public ownership.
