THOUSANDS of local government employees in Lancashire -- of the County Council and the six town halls in East Lancashire -- today find their pension fund is more than £500,000 worse off because it bought shares in collapsed Railtrack.

But they are hardly likely to write off the loss as a grim experience that is part of the rough and tumble of Stock Market speculation -- the one that comes with the familiar warning that the value of shares can go down as well as up.

For as members of the Lancashire County Pension Fund, they were, at a remove, investors in a company whose assets, backed by the Government, were regarded as good as gilt-edged. But today their shares are worthless because the self-same government has put the company, which took control of the country's rail infrastructure after privatisation, into administration.

That rail privatisation has turned out to be a mess is a self-evident fact that pains rail users daily. And if it was only the 'fat cat' bosses and speculators who got their fingers burned in the plug being pulled on a company that contributed to the mess, few would complain.

But these pension fund members are not in that category -- they are innocent victims of this collapse whose retirement years stand to be made worse off because of the way the Government has acted.

For the winding-up of Railtrack has been done with a device -- that of putting the business into administration -- that denies shareholders of the recompense they might have had if the company's shares were suspended on a commercial basis and its assets sold off.

As Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans points out, when Transport Minister Stephen Byers pulled the plug on this ill-performing business, he said it was only the fat cats who would be affected. Clearly, that isn't the case -- and the minnows in Lancashire's local authorities are owed both an explanation and at least some of their money back.