Michael Williams:
author & journalist

Michael is a journalist, academic and author – writing, blogging and broadcasting on railways and the media. He is also a travel writer, having covered the world for a variety of publications. Read more…

The Trains
Now Departed

Michael Williams’s most recent book The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen excursions into the lost delights of Britain’s railways is published by Arrow Books. Find out more about Michael’s other books, including ‘On the Slow Train’, ‘On the Slow Train Again’ and ‘Steaming to Victory’.

A joyous lifetime in the company of the Flying Scotsman

December 30, 2025

EARLIER this month, I had the joy of travelling behind the Flying Scotsman, the most famous steam locomotive in the world, on a memorable journey from York to Newcastle. Sixty years previously in 1965, I had rushed out as an excited schoolboy to capture an image of the engine with my Kodak Brownie camera after Flying Scotsman had been saved from the scrapyard and returned to the main line. There have been many events in my life in the intervening […]

MICHAEL'S BOOKS