Workings

Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.

The main platforms are unusually far apart, because the two centre tracks were lifted after the East Coast Main Line was diverted in 1983 to avoid now defunct new coal workings.