One idea would be to do something along the lines we have here, having all the rail and stations owned by the state but the train operators private (though the biggest operator is state owned).

The problem here though is that the ticket administration should really be centralized in the interest of customer service.

Another problem is that operators can't build their own new lines, only the state can do that, and the the private operators become free riders. That is a problem even if you have it all state owned.

As an example, I have some financial interests in this old iron mine which is reopening north of the city. We want to ship our ore from the mine to the port on the old mining railway. But we really don't want to invest like 10 million euros in repairing this crappy old rail which hasn't had any maintenance in 15 years.

So instead we lobby local politicians to lobby the state rail authority to repair the rails for us, and until that's done we'll have to use huge numbers of trucks instead, even though it's apparent that it is in the interests of everyone to get the old rail working ASAP.

That is, if we ever get this mine working. Because of the stupid fucking corrupt Wall Street assholes it's kinda hard getting financing...

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.