BlOG

I WAS never a great fan of HS2, believing that it would have been better to sprinkle the largesse across the  existing network, bringing benefits to our ailing railways in general. If it had to be built I believed it would have been better to construct it on the trackbed of the old Great Central […]

AS the plans for the once-grand HS2 fell apart of the weekend – with the Manchester line set to be canned and the Euston terminus dumped in favour of ending up in some West London wasteland – I journeyed into a different kind of railway universe on Saturday. Aboard the 7am from Paddington, Brunel’s magnificent […]

“MAKE sure you mention me in your article,” says the ticket lady at Enfield Chase, a modest station on the suburban line from London’s Moorgate to Stevenage. “I’m Grace. ‘Amazing Grace’, they call me. And she is indeed part of an amazing army of super-knowledgable people who issue tickets on our railways. Want the cheapest […]

IT SEEMS wrong-headed in these times of climate crisis to get sentimental over a car. And yet…Today I got rid of my trusty Mini-Cooper S after 18-years of fault-free motoring. I shall not be buying another car, ending an adult lifetime of car ownership in London. I am no petrolhead, but in the past I […]

BOOKING clerks are the wise kings of the flawed realm of the railway fare system. Want a super off-peak ticket from Nuneaton to Peterborough?  Or Wigan to Rose Grove? Then the man or woman behind the glass booth is your person. They will help you navigate the byzantine ticketing system in which there are hundreds […]

FOR YEARS we have been accustomed to the idea that sleeper trains were a thing of the past. Slow, uncomfortable and uncompetitive with zippy low cost airlines. The grand days of the Orient Express and the Night Ferry were deemed to be over But all of a sudden, that is changing.  We are waking up […]

THE German government has just introduced a revolutionary new deal for public transport, enabling people to buy a monthly pass covering local and regional bus, train and tram services all over the country for just 49 euros (£43). The 49-euro Deutschland ticket is a radical plan to get motorists out of their cars and follows […]

IMAGINE a mighty express engine heading north on the West Coast main line powering its way effortlessly over the formidable Shap summit in the Westmorland fells. On this brilliant May morning the sun is glinting off the burnished Brunswick green of the boiler as a plume of steam rises high into the azure sky. The […]