However, we must also be sure that the industry has a robust National Track Recovery Plan to which Railtrack and the train operators are committed and which can be used to give passengers the best possible information about future disruption. The industry expects that it will take until next Wednesday to inspect all the sites where there is known to be surface cracking. This will be the biggest ever inspection programme. We agreed to meet again next Thursday to review progress with establishing the national track recovery plan. Passengers' patience has been stretched to the limit this week.
Some inconvenience is inevitable for such a major task.
But the industry must work together to have a well managed plan for finding faults and repairing them, which gives advance notice to passengers and minimises disruption.