However, many railway historians including Christian Wolmar, Henshaw and others now regard it as a costly failure and a missed opportunity. An attempt was made to simply update the railways as they already stood rather than reacting to changes in the way goods and people were travelling in the post-war years. Massive investments were made in marshalling yards at a time when the small wagonload traffic which they dealt with was in steep decline and being lost rapidly to the roads. Others have taken a different view. In her book "British Rail: The Nation's Railway", Tanya Jackson argues that the Modernisation Plan laid the foundations of the highly successful Inter-City operation as well as planting the seeds of modern industrial design in the railway organisation. This was to lead to British Rail producing its benchmark Corporate Identity Manual in the sixties. Above all, the Modernisation Plan endorsed the adoption and implementation of the 25,000v AC electrification system which has since been universally recognised as the modern standard.