This is a copy of my PhD thesis. The five other retail petroleum papers on this site are all derived from this work, which provides more background than is in any of these five papers.A more detailed abstract is available in the overview of thesis

The notion that allowing third party access to the natural monopoly, below-rail track and signalling infrastructure might induce competitive entry in above-rail train operations has been a part of European and Australian rail policy since the early 1990s. However, competition has been slow to...