Railways across Europe were being challenged by road transport rivals (cars, trucks, buses, etc.) from the early decades of the twentieth century. Such competition and associated falling traffic receipts left railways overcapitalised (effectively excessive debt), triggering policy and ideological conundrums. Shareholders had reaped strong returns from railways up until the latter decades of the nineteenth century, but the twentieth century produced a different and more unsettling landscape for these investors, where preserving their return from railways would be far more daunting, unless at the expense of rail labour, or rail users.