Last October Stephen Byers, the then Transport Secretary was hailed as a hero by Labour backbenchers for putting Railtrack into administration.

Now his successor Alastair Darling has revealed details of the deal to replace it.

He told MPs that the Government is selling Railtrack's assets to a new not-for-profit company called Network Rail for �500m pounds.

�300m of that will be provided by the government - taxpayers in other words - but the new rail company , which is made up of train operators, rail unions and passenger groups will inherit Railtrack's debts of �7bn.

We spoke to the Transport Secretary Alastair Darling and Juliett Jowitt, Transport correspondent for the Financial Times, who outlined the main points in the deal for us.

Click on the links above right to hear these interviews - and a report from our transport correspondent Tom Symonds.