Last week’s well-publicised troubles for Network Rail have resulted in the electrification being “paused” – for which read abandoned – on the tracks between London and Sheffield and Manchester and Leeds.

Alas, they don’t appear to have put a brake on the absurd vanity project that is HS2, but the planned start on work is still some way off and sense might be seen before then.

One big project definitely spared the axe is the electrification of the route from Paddington to Bristol, which will also mean overhead wires to Newbury and Oxford. Work on this has been obvious to travellers for some time and is intended to be completed by next year.

Work on a much smaller rail project has also been evident around Oxford for what has seemed to me to be an unconscionably long time.

And not just to me.

A mate of mine, who works on the railways, says he and his colleagues have been puzzled about the length of the job too.

Can this, I wonder, have anything to do with the management issues for which Network Rail stands accused?

I refer to the project to reinstate the disused freight line running north from Oxford towards and beyond Wolvercote Bridge.

It was as long ago as the beginning of 2013 that work began. Still no tracks have been laid, except for a short stretch with a set of points at the north end which was put down during the Christmas break in that first year.

A sign says “stop” as this line peters out into ballast – an instruction which the workmen appear to have taken literally.

Network Rail said the new line was a “key part of our plans to improve freight capacity on the railway”.

If it’s so key, then one can’t help wondering why the engineers don’t get a move on.