The thing with the trains is there's only one track going from A to B usually, so you can't really have companies competing over customers in a free markety kind of way. Are they going to build another track next to it and say 'come on our track, it's cheaper?' And how can they do that if they just spend £40m or whatever to build the second track? Or, are they supposed to have two companies using one track and constantly getting in each other's way?

Same thing with highways. The gov't builds it, owns it, and it's paid for with taxes. So if you did the same with trains that would keep one company from having a monopoly and bilking the shit out of everyone the way they do now.