VINDICATED rail campaigners will gather at Network Rail headquarters today — as Britain’s stations and tracks are taken back into full public ownership.

The firm, which owns Britain’s rail network and controls maintenance and upkeep, will be reclassified today from a “not-for-dividend” private-sector company to a “central government body in the public sector.”

The decision follows a recommendation from the Office for National Statistics that an organisation as reliant on public funding as Network Rail should be classed as a state body.

Rail union RMT acting general secretary Mick Cash said the move was a “spring-board for taking the entire rail network back into the public fold.”

He said: “If the vast sums sucked out of our railways by the private train companies was reinvested in infrastructure, capacity and staffing under a publicly controlled body, we could end the two decades of private profiteering, fragmentation and under-investment.”

Drivers' union Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “We have consistently called for Britain’s railways to be brought back into public ownership so we think it’s great that half of our railway system — the steel if not the wheels — have now been brought back into public ownership.

“And, if I can be permitted a smile, we think it’s ironic that such a big chunk of the railway has been renationalised by a Tory government.”

Earlier this month, the Financial Times revealed government insiders were moving to exempt Network Rail from Freedom of Information requests and remove its extensive debts from public record books.

Mr Cash warned that the Con-Dem government could use the reclassification as a step towards a fire-sale of rail infrastructure to private investors.

“Any attempt by the right to use this as an opportunity to argue for dragging us back to the lethal days of privatised rail infrastructure under Railtrack will be fiercely resisted,” he added.

A previous attempt to float assets on the stock exchange ended in catastrophic failure, when the privatisation-era Railtrack group was pushed into administration in 2001 following the Ladbroke Grove and Hatfield train crashes. Its assets were transferred to Network Rail the following year.