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TODAY rail passengers face the misery of an above-inflation fare rise of 4.6 per cent. As if this weren’t bad enough, it comes against the background of some of the worst train performance for years, with the system bedevilled by lateness, strikes and cancellations. Not to mention a byzantine fares structure that few can understand. […]

Ah, an era now passing into history. My letter in The Times this week.

SIXTY years ago this month as a schoolboy I huddled on London’s freezing Strand with my father to witness Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral cortege. No sooner than the gun carriage bearing his coffin had passed by, I rushed to Clapham Junction to see the funeral train on its way from Waterloo to the Churchill family […]

IT’S AROUND 800 metres to walk between our local terminus stations Euston and King’s Cross. Yesterday my son Edmund and I went the long way, round travelling 800 miles via Edinburgh where we had a splendid lunch. We travelled behind vintage electric locomotive No 87 002 “Royal Sovereign”, a superb British-engineered machine designed for fast […]

WHEN it comes to travelling by train over Christmas and the New Year there is a collective moan across the country as trains are cancelled, lines are closed and services are diverted. But there’s another side to this story, as some mighty engineering works are completed to modernise crumbling Victorian infrastructure. Around our way in […]

HOW nice to see the opening today of the revamped Kentish Town Tube station after being shut since summer 2023 to have escalators replaced. Restorers have done a magnificent job bringing Leslie Green’s 1907 Northern Line station back to life, with its delightful chocolate and cream tiles now sparkling and new state-of-the-art escalators. The lovely […]

AN HISTORIC moment today as the government announces the first train companies to be taken back into public ownership under its plans to re-nationalise our ailing rail network. But will operation by civil servants rather than private companies make any difference? Not if the performance of the Northern Rail – already state-run s anything to […]

TRAVEL editors in the national media have been gushing today about plans for a new luxury train called the Britannic Explorer. The Times observed it is “an experience only money can buy, and you will need a lot of it”. Journeys start at £11,000 for a three-day itinerary based on a cabin for two. The […]