It has been a three day hangover for Network Rail this New Year and passengers are fuming. Thousands of travellers and commuters have been caught up in delays in the last few days after holiday engineering works overran. The worst problems have occurred on the busy West Coast Main Line between Northampton and Rugby, where the company is three days behind schedule. But similar problems have occurred at Liverpool Street station today where thousands of City workers were trying to return to work.

Network Rail spent most of 2007 crowing about what a great job it has been doing in managing its massive budgets and cutting delays. But the infrastructure group has to be careful not to take the travelling public for granted. Passengers may be travelling in record numbers but a pincer movement of sharply increasing fares and a cavalier approach to line closures will quickly try our patience.

That Network Rail has been unable to finish two major engineering projects on time is grave cause for concern. These particular shutdowns were planned long in advance and because of their size should have had the company's best hands on the job. It's not as if the Christmas weather has made the work particularly difficult.

There are mutterings in the rail industry that John Armitt, the former chief executive of Network Rail, who left in 2007 to work on the Olympics, has been missed at the organisation. His skill was to bring train operators and the rail group's people together to sort out problems. Co-operation appears to have been lacking in recent weeks and Virgin Trains is feeling particularly battered by Network Rail's inability to give a clear answer on when it will hand back the line.

This is concerning because Network Rail is set to spend record sums over the next 10 years on signalling upgrades and station rebuilds. No one doubts the need for these improvements but without proper managment they risk damaging people's confidence in the railway and even the wider economy. Network Rail's management needs to demonstrate it still has a firm grip on the levers of this business and is not lapsing back into old habits

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