National Rail and Network Rail
National Rail should not be confused with Network Rail. National Rail is a title used to promote passenger railway services, and providing some harmonisation for passengers (e.g. tickets to all London Terminals), while Network Rail is the organisation owning and managing most of the fixed assets (tracks, signals etc.) of the railway network.
The two networks are generally coincident where passenger services are run. Most major Network Rail lines carry freight traffic and some lines are freight only. There are some scheduled passenger services on their own privately managed, non-Network Rail lines, for example Heathrow Express which also partly runs on Network Rail and the London Underground also overlaps with Network Rail in places.
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Famous quotes containing the words national, rail and/or network:
“The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation.”
—French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (Sept. 1791)
“Old man, it’s four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly any bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin rail and the wornout tread.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)