The national rail recovery programme, instituted after the Hatfield accident last October, has still not been completed and is certain to miss the latest deadline set by Railtrack of 23 May. But at least the misery has not been confined to passengers.Next week, Railtrack will produce a horrendous set of financial results which are expected to show that it lost more than £300m last year. Since Hatfield, Railtrack's army of small investors has watched the share price fall by more than half. With a market capitalisation of £2.5bn, it is perilously close to being relegated from the big boys' club ­ the FTSE-100 Index.Why on earth, then, should Mr Robinson want to take on the worst job in Britain when he could be relaxing with his wife, Doreen, tending to his garden in Beverley and "playing golf badly"? "It's a hell of a tough job," he concedes. "My immediate reaction when I was approached was what the hell do I want to do that for. But thinking about it, this is one of the most important jobs in the country.

I wouldn't do it if I didn't think I could."There is always the pay, of course. Mr Robinson is getting twice what his predecessor earned but he insists he is not doing it for the money. "It doesn't seem a high salary to me relative to what others are paid. There are a hell of a lot of guys earning a damn sight more for doing an easier job."Ironically Mr Robinson, a chemical engineer by profession, believes that Railtrack should not exist at all in its present form.

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"I don't think anybody thinks that splitting the track from the operations of trains was sensible But we have got to make it work. It's certainly a complex way of running a railway system," he said.Mr Robinson therefore has a delicate job to perform balancing the interests of passengers against shareholders and reconciling the conflicting demands on him from regulators and train operators to cut costs on the one hand while making the rail network bigger and better on the other.Those who know him say he is very single-minded and focused when it comes to business, as RJB's former chief executive Richard Budge discovered when Mr Robinson unceremoniously ousted him two months ago.

Steve Marshall, Railtrack's "stunningly good" chief executive, need have no such fears.But Railtrack is not like any other public company and Mr Robinson is already learning the art of diplomacy. Safety will be his number one priority, he says ­ a "zero-accident" strategy, in fact. But then he quickly adds that maintaining the confidence of shareholders is equally important. So does that mean he will take up the cudgels on behalf of investors if the Rail Regulator tries to take another big bite out of Railtrack's exposed rump? "No, I don't see my job as being to defend shareholders against the Government or the regulator If you set up conflicts, then life just gets tougher. If we want a world-class railway we all have to work together.""The prime focus will be to re-establish the reputation of the company And that will come from delivering reliability and safety. The test of whether the company is successful will not be seen through looking at statistics but through what the public think." But Mr Robinson is on a three-year contract. In cricketing parlance that is not a long innings in which to put right decades of under-investment, and abuse..