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Aboard Lawrence of Arabia’s railway, through Syria and a meeting with the last Jewish family
I had somebody to find in the warren of streets and alleyways in the old walled city of Damascus. There is no mention of him in the guidebooks, but I’d heard the rumours more than once. Would he still be there? There were many twists and turns. Through the soukh, skirting the Great Mosque, along […]
Read More The New Age of the Train
We are on the cusp of one of the most exciting developments in the history of Britain’s railways since George Stephenson drove Locomotionon one of the first passenger trains in the world on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. On November 14, a 20-coach Eurostar train will snake out of St Pancras station on […]
Read More Forget the car! Our idyllic, organic, low-carbon holiday to the West Country
“Are there smoked salmon in the lake, Daddy?” Shhhh! This is my five-year old son giving away our secret – that we are just another bunch of townies on a trip to the countryside. But we’ve a special reason not to seem like greenhorns on this first day of our “green holiday”. This isn’t one […]
Read More On board for thrills as London-Brussels Eurostar breaks record
Railway historians will have to rewrite the record books after a train from Brussels to St Pancras International yesterday achieved the fastest rail journey ever between a European capital and London, knocking more than 30 minutes off the current timing. The 20 coach train – the first from Brussels to run throughout on the new […]
Read More Kangaroo ckass across the desert aboard Australia’s greatest train
“It depends on whether you are going to do a big one or a tiddler,” says Jade, hooting with laughter. We’re in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the Australian outback, inspecting the Heath Robinson flushing mechanism of a train toilet. The foldaway stainless steel loo, which also doubles as a sink, is […]
Read More Thrilling Tasmania – ‘like outer space on earth’
They rolled in off the Roaring Forties, spouting and with their flanks glistening like fountains on basalt. Who knows where they had come from. There is nothing much in the 10,000 wind-tossed miles of the great Southern Ocean between here and Patagonia. Was there trouble with the sonar? Were they sick? Why did these […]
Read More St Pancras – surely, the world’s greatest station
“St Pancras was a 14-year-old Christian boy, who was martyred in Rome in by the Emperor Diocletian. In England he is better known as a railway station.” With these immortal words, Sir John Betjeman set in motion the most astonishing transformation of fortunes of any British building in modern times. Who would have thought, when […]
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