Daily Mail

By Michael Williams IT WAS known as God’s Wonderful Railway – and with good reason. In its glory days, until the drab hand of nationalisation fell on it in 1948, the old Great Western Railway was the most admired railway in the world. It’s carriages were the most comfortable, its engines the most elegant and […]

IT WAS a moment of utter spine-tingling terror as the driver of the heavy freight train powering through Cambridgeshire looked back from his cab just after midnight and saw smoke and flames billowing from the leading wagon, just behind his engine. For this was no ordinary payload. The train’s 51 trucks were weighed down with

It is one of the last civilised experiences left in the modern world of travel. The soothing clink of cutlery on china, the starched tablecloths, a smartly uniformed steward at your elbow serving dinner in the restaurant car as the scenery of our green and pleasant land flashes by through the window. For more than

The ancient wooden signal clatters down and there’s a friendly wave from the guard. It’s time to climb aboard the little branch line train, pottering along an idyllic Cornish valley to a perfect seaside fishing village. Here, through the train window, England’s green and pleasant land can be viewed in all her springtime finery. The

1: The prettiest. Middlesbrough to Whitby. Meandering for 36 miles through mellow stone-built villages along the lovely Esk Valley to the salty sea air of the ancient fishing town of Whitby, this is the best of rural England in all her finery. 2: The most romantic. The “Deerstalker Express” from Euston to Fort William and

It’s got a drab brown cover stained with greasy fingermarks, and the faded gold leaf of the title is barely legible. The tiny print inside is so small you need to squint to decipher some of the text. There’s no blurb extolling the celebrity of its author, nor any snippets from rave reviews by the

Turn up the heating. Snuggle under the duvet. The thought of turning up at the station for that miserable commute back to work after the long Christmas and New Year holiday is grim at the best of times. You have to fight to get a seat in an overcrowded carriage where people are packed like

The thought of going back to the railway station for that miserable commute to work after the long Christmas and New Year ­holiday is grim at the best of times. You have to fight to get a seat in an overcrowded carriage where people are packed like sardines. The staff are rude. The information is

In the new seafront restaurant overlooking the bay in the tiny resort of Luderitz on the coast of Namibia, tourists are invited to sit out on the balcony, where they can dine on the finest South Atlantic seafood accompanied by vintage South African wines as they take in the views over neighbouring Shark Island. But

Henry Ford was feeling mighty pleased with himself as he strutted round the exhibition in New York showcasing his brand new “Model A” car, accompanied by his son Edsel and his old friend Thomas Edison. And why not?  It was 1928 and up to then half of all the cars ever produced in the world

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

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

“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