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Could there be anything less ghostly than the scene at London’s Paddington station on this bright December morning? The sun is sparkling through the glass of the newly restored canopy of Brunel’s magnificent terminus as commuters and shoppers scurry across the concourse, cheered by the prospect of Christmas. Yet waiting for me on Platform 14, […]

“Mounce, the Pictures Editor, was busy putting the fear of God into his staff. He had plenty of the fear of God to hand, but just at present only one member of his staff to put it into, a small meek photographer called Lovebold. Mounce was looking at a sheaf of prints which Lovebold had […]

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Pity the poor passengers on the train line from hell. For decades commuters on the Brighton-Bedford “Thameslink” railway through central London, have endured travelling conditions that would be illegal for the transport of animals. With its packed, ageing carriages and appalling delays, plans for modernisation are running 15 years late. Now the prospect of getting […]

It was an astonishing admission from one of Rupert Murdoch’s most faithful executives. We’d gone to lunch to reminisce about our years together working at Wapping on Murdoch’s broadsheet papers. This was a man who was once so “on the Murdoch message” that he dismissed an investigation that I had produced into child labour sweatshops […]

IT may seem odd that someone who makes a living writing about slow travel should be so passionate about the need to build the new high speed line to the north of England. Let me explain. I’ve spent the past two years travelling round the branch lines and byways of the rail system to write […]

A low moan ripples along the line of commuters packed at the platform edge as my train pulls in – a sound that the condemned souls from mythology must have uttered as they headed across the Styx into Hades. The realisation dawns that it’s standing room only yet again aboard the “Train from Hell” – […]

Like the much-quoted demise of Mark Twain, the death of the dining car on the national rail network turns out to have been somewhat exaggerated. When East Coast ran its last dining car last month, there was an outpouring of sentiment, especially from the national media. I played my own part in this, lamenting it […]