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  I BEGAN to feel spooked when the booking clerk was reluctant to sell me a ticket. “A day return to Goole on the direct line, please?” I ask at Leeds station, the second busiest on the network outside London. “It’s the stopping train,” I explain, trying to be helpful when his gaze goes frosty. […]

Here’s what it says: Wonderfully evocative … You cannot fail to be swept up in the romance of it all as the men and women who created, operated and travelled on theses since departed trains are brought back to life by Williams’ magical prose.’

 My article on the joys of transpottinging fro the latest edition of Steam Tube; I HAVE a confession to make. It’s shaming, embarrassing and something no grown man wants the world to know about him. In the galaxy of public scorn it might be easier to come out as a robber of charity boxes. Yet […]

A WONDERFUL canter through the Surrey Hills last night behind the Flying Scotsman, nattering over a five course dinner in the Pullman car with Steam Dreams owner Marcus Robertson. Even though I have travelled scores of times behind this locomotive, she has always had a special personal resonance for me, her journeys and perambulations running […]

“I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it,” said the travel writer Paul Theroux famously, and it seems that more of us than ever concur with him. Trains are the most agreeable, comfortable and relaxing of any form of long distance travel. Whether you are seeking spectacular scenery, […]

  “I HAVE seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it,” said the travel writer Paul Theroux famously, and it seems that more of us than ever concur with him. Trains are the most agreeable, comfortable and relaxing of any form of long distance travel. Whether you are seeking spectacular […]

HONOURED, as a mere scribe, to have been invited to give a talk tonight in the hallowed Institution of Civil Engineers at Westminster, with the shades of Stephenson, Brunel and Telford looking on. Think the audience enjoyed it – I certainly did!

DELIGHTED to have been invited today by the great, great, great niece of Edwin Horne – architect of the charming Camden Road station on the North London Railway –to the unveiling of a plaque in his honour. (I had written about him in my book On the Slow Train.) Here is Jann Burrows with Sir […]