Manchester vote kills off road pricing
The strength of the vote against the congestion charge plan in Manchester effectively kills off the government’s strategy of trying to bribe local votes into accepting such schemes. This one had...
View ArticleIts a tough ask for the rail companies to sell more tickets while hiking fares
Yesterday’s meeting between the train operators and transport ministers was the first in what is set to be an elaborate game of cat and mouse played out against the backdrop of the recession. Railways...
View ArticleBlood, Iron and Gold review
As a sequel to Fire And Steam – How The Railways Transformed Britain, Christian Wolmar’s innovative history of how railways have shaped the modern world is a masterful tour de force whose appeal lies...
View ArticleEurostar breakdown conundrum
It was not the wrong sort of snow, but simply too much of it that appears to have caused the breakdown of five Eurostar and two other trains in the Channel Tunnel. Last night, Eurostar engineers were...
View ArticleHS2 opposition mounts
When the first line between London and Birmingham was being mooted in the 1830s, a Berkhamsted landowner, Sir Astley Cooper, called the idea ‘preposterous in the extreme’ and suggested that ‘if...
View ArticleMcLoughlin jumps into new bear pit
If Patrick McLoughlin thought that escaping the bear pit of the whips office to the post of Secretary of State for Transport was a passport to a peaceful life, he will swiftly have been brought back...
View ArticleThe Transsiberian from Vladivostok to Moscow
Why are you going on the Trans-Siberian railway in winter when it’s dark and cold?’ asked my friend Jon. ‘And why are you starting from Vladivostok, the wrong end?’These were good questions and there...
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My window on America: From Los Angeles to New Orleans on an epic rail adventure
There are not many places in the world where you can take a 50-hour train ride, and America does not immediately spring to mind as one of them.It is, though, still possible to travel, as I did, around...
View ArticleMcloughlin’s full plate
It’s fortunate that Patrick McLoughlin appears utterly unflappable because there has been an awful lot to flap about in the Department of Transport since he took over as Transport Secretary in the...
View ArticleScandal of museum threat
First they took the trains. Now they want to take the museum that celebrates their invention away. What a way to mark the 50th anniversary of the Beeching report which did for a third of Britain’s...
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Dutch motorail: great service – but bring your own breakfast
Think of sitting in a comfortable restaurant car with specially wide windows for good views, quaffing a pleasant Barbaresco to accompany a steak while the train gently skirts the banks of the Rhine....
View ArticleThe privatisation that never was
On the face of it, the Railways Act has been a great success. The railways are booming with record numbers of passengers, a massive investment programme and an excellent recent safety performance....
View ArticleThe failings of the 1993 Railways Act still haunt us today
On the face of it, the Railways Act has been a great success. The railways are booming with record numbers of passengers, a massive investment programme and an excellent recent safety performance....
View ArticleHow paedophiles tried to take over the Left
Looking back from 2014, it seems extraordinary that an organisation with a name like the Paedophile Information Exchange was taken so seriously for a time in the 1970s that it was able to present...
View ArticleWhat is the point of HS2?
Mohammed Salique owns aRestaurant called Diwana inDrummond Street, which runswest from the side of Euston station. Diwana,which opened in 1970, claims that itwas the first restaurant in Britain to...
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