Editing National Rail (section)

==National Rail and Network Rail==
[[File:British rail ticket Wellington Shrewsbury.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Young person's railcard rail ticket from [[Wellington railway station (Shropshire)|Wellington]] to [[Shrewsbury railway station|Shrewsbury]]]]
[[File:EK to Central Ticket.jpg|right|thumb|Child return ticket from [[East Kilbride railway station|East Kilbride]] to [[Glasgow]]]]{{Additional citations for verification|date=February 2025}}
''National'' Rail should not be confused with [[Network Rail|''Network'' Rail]]. 
[[File:National Rail Ticket New Layout.png|right|thumb|250px|Outward portion of a return ticket between [[Colchester railway station|Colchester]] and [[Colchester Town railway station|Colchester Town]] printed in the [[2014 National Rail ticket features|post-2014 layout]]]]

National Rail is a brand used to promote passenger railway services, and providing some harmonisation for passengers in ticketing, while Network Rail is the organisation which owns and manages most of the fixed assets of the railway network, including tracks, stations and signals.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Who Are We? Network Rail |url=https://www.networkrail.co.uk/who-we-are/ |access-date=19 July 2024 |website=Network Rail }}</ref>
However, the national rail website domain is managed by The Rail Delivery Group on behalf of UK based train operating companies. According to their own website, they are a 'membership organisation that works on behalf of the rail industry to create a simpler, better railway for everyone in Britain.' <ref>{{Cite web |title=What We Do? The Rail Delivery Group |url=https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/our-services.html |access-date=19 July 2024 |website=raildeliverygroup.com }}</ref>

The two generally coincide where passenger services are run. Most major Network Rail lines also carry freight traffic{{citation needed|date=September 2024}} and some lines are freight only. There are some scheduled passenger services on privately managed, non-Network Rail lines, for example [[Chiltern Railways]] which runs on both Network Rail track and tracks owned by [[London Underground]]. Although the [[London Underground]] uses its own tracks in the majority of its network, it also runs on Network Rail tracks and shares tracks with National Rail services, both on its own tracks and on Network Rail tracks.{{Citation needed|date=February 2025}}