On-track competition in passenger services has traditionally been limited in European railways, with private operators offering marginal services in selected corridors in the UK, Sweden and Germany only. In recent years, a larger scale and more stable wave of open access market entry has...

This chapter is organized as follows: In section 2 the historical roots of third par-ty access regulation are characterized. This includes the Prussian railway law of 1838 and the terminal railroad case of 1912. In section 3 a normative frame-work, based on modern network economics, for the...