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Can there be a better image to summon up the spirit of the British landscape than a country branch line? A little tank engine chuffs along a single track, a few wisps of steam drifting across the fields, the sun glinting off its copper-capped chimney. There might be a couple of elderly carriages and perhaps […]

There are few love affairs more passionate than that of the British with their trains. On a basic level it’s obvious. We invented the railways and pride in the great heroes of the railway age – the Stephensons, Trevithick, Brunel – runs through our DNA. But like all the best love affairs it’s a more […]

Once upon a time it was synonymous with all that was great about the nation that invented the train. The mighty Victorian railway centre at Crewe was not only the most celebrated junction in the world, but the nerve centre of the “Premier Line” from Euston to Scotland and home to the engineering works where […]

There are few things more evocative of the British landscape than the country branch line. A little engine chuffs along a single track, a few wisps of steam drifting across the fields, the sun glinting off its copper-capped chimney. There might be a couple of elderly carriages and perhaps a milk tank or a cattle […]

Future historians trying to get to the heart of the early 1960s should inspect closely photographs of any major railway station in the land. Kings Cross, Euston, Crewe, York, Edinburgh, you name them. Here the platform ends were thronged by armies of adolescent boys. Adorned with enamel badges of their favourite locos, they munched on […]

“More English than England herself” was how Anthony Trollope once described Tasmania. And so it sometimes still seems. In the lace-curtained cafes of Hobart, there are buttered scones and honey for tea. Church bells ring across meadows where plump cows graze And there are towns called Brighton, Beaconsfield and Launceston. The original settlers, it is […]

Forget the Orient Express. Never mind the Trans-Siberian. The Bullet Train? Old hat, I’m afraid. Here, in as remote a location as it is possible to find on the planet, is one of the truly great train journeys of the world. In a virgin rainforest, 9,000 miles from home, the British-built steam locos of Tasmania’s […]

Glamorous, sure. But would Bond have approved? As the Danube Express, Europe’s newest luxury train, pulled majestically out of the austere platforms of Berlin’s Schönefeld airport station for its maiden journey to Budapest last week, I’m thinking of the world’s favourite secret agent, and Ian Fleming’s words in From Russia With Love. “The great trains […]