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TWO studies into the spread of COVID-19 on railways have found that the chance of contracting the disease by travelling on a train is extremely low, according to a report in Rail magazine The RSSB (formerly the Rail Safety and Standards Board) estimates that the risk of infection per passenger journey is only 1-in-11,000 journeys.

  TODAY is the dawn of a new age of the railway as Boris Johnson gives the go-ahead for HS2 as well as new tracks across the Pennines. At last we have a vision in the spirit of Stephenson and Brunel, shedding our image as a nation that can’t get it together with  big infrastructure

CAN there be a time warp like this anywhere on the British railway system? Elderly Tube trains dating from 1938 trundle between Ryde and Shanklin in the Isle of Wight as they have done for the past 30 years. It is quite surreal to see carriages that once did service for squashed London commuters in

‘Northern Fail’, ‘Network Fail’ – and everyone else seems to be failing in this latest debacle on the railways where the new May timetables have led to thousands of cancellations across the country, mostly on Northern Rail and Govia Thameslink. As the poor bloody commuters suffer, those in charge play the blame game. Transport Secretary

WONDERFUL to see steam on  timetabled services on the Settle and Carlisle line this week. For the first time in half a century it’s been possible to buy a ticket on National Rail and travel behind a steam locomotive on a normal scheduled train service. Of course, the S&C line – England’s most scenic –

  JUST returned from a trip sampling some of the finest heritage steam in Yorkshire – aboard the magical trains of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway and the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. It’s half-term and the services are packed – yet most of those riding the trains will have hardly any memory of the

THE Yorkshire Post have run a nice piece on my chapter on ‘ghost trains’ in my new book The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen Journeys into The Lost Delights of Britain’s Railways – to be published on May 7. The picture shows the ‘ghost train’ from Knottingley at Goole station. Link to article is here: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/features/the-ghost-trains-haunting-britain-s-rail-network-1-7231906

WITH my new book, The Trains Now Departed out in less than three weeks, it’s good to see that my two best-selling original books celebrating the joy of railway travel – On the Slow Train and On the Slow Train Again – are still in the Amazon Top 25 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Slow-Train-Again-Michael-Williams/dp/009955285X

I’ve been invited to Singapore and Hong Kong next month to give some talks in both cities about ‘The Best of British Rail Travel’ to coincide with the publication on my new book ‘The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen Excursions into the Lost Delights of Britain’s Railways’. I’m drawing up a list of my faves. Here’s

I’ve been invited by the tourist authorities in Hong Kong and Singapore next month to give some talks about the’ Best of British and World Railway Travel’. So what is the ultimate railway journey of dreams in the UK. Not just of today but in history?  I defined it in my new book ‘The Trains

My day with Winston Churchill – 50 years on. The National Railway Museum in York have put me and my schoolboy memories in a new exhibition about Churchill’s final journey, opening this Friday, January 30.  Here’s one of the images of me at the time, along with my Box Brownie pictures of the day (not

Amid the row over inaccuracies in the TV series Broadchurch, the movies don’t do it much better. I’ve just seen Testament of Youth, the autobiographical account of a group of friends in the run-up to and during World War One. How come then, that in 1914 the star Alicia Vikander is seen on a train

I’m off next week to help the National Railway Museum set up their new exhibition on Winston Churchill’s last journey. I’m contributing some memories from my book ‘ Steaming to Victory: How Britain’s railways won the war’

Do join me at the University of Central Lancashire School of Tourism for my talk on how the railways shaped our modern concept of time. And how the philosophy of time and the railways are inextricably entwined. Wednesday December 3 at 12.30pm in Room 350, Greenbank. Pictured below is Brunel’s great clock at Paddington Station

I took this picture of ‘Royal Scot’ class locomotive No. 46115 ‘Scots Guardsman speeding through Kentish Town station in north London on a special train from St Pancras this Remembrance Sunday. How appropriate to see this wonderfully restored locomotive with its military associations on such a significant day. In the Blitz of 1941, this area

‘The Trains Now Departed’. Thrilled with title of my latest book to be published by @PenguinRandomUK on May 7 2015

I’m just back from writing the latest chapter for my new book on the cherished icons of our railways and why they run so deep in the British psyche. It’s to be published by Penguin Random House in Spring 2015. Yesterday I was on the legendary Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, closed in the 1930s, but

 Here’s an extract from my article in today’s Tablet magazine: It could hardly be more be surreal. Here I am discussing the significance of the Lord’s Prayer, that most emblematic totem of the Christian liturgy, with the most powerful woman in British Judaism in the magnificent Victorian-Byzantine setting of the West London Synagogue at Marble

A lovely review of the new edition of Steaming to Victory on Suzi Feay’s Book Bag. It’s one of the top online websites. Here’s what it says: ‘Soon after the end of the First World War, the British railways entered what is generally regarded as their golden age, with the heyday of the ‘Big Four’

A super review of the new updated edition paperback edition of ‘Steaming to Victory’ in today’s Daily Express, which describes it as ‘Chuffing marvellous’. The reviewer says: ‘This highly readable book covers the essential but often overlooked role trains played in the success of the Home Front in the Second World War. Tales of child

Just returned from a Eurostar trip from London to Paris. I’m putting the train through its paces for a chapter in my next book following on from ‘Steaming to Victory’. Although the decor is a bit tired, the train performed faultlessly, delivering me to the City of Light on the loveliest sunny day of the

In the new edition of Steaming to Victory, out on March 27, I had to make some cuts to accommodate new facts that had come to light since it was first published last year. It was tough to know what to trim, and sadly I had to lose the following tribute to the British Library

Here’s me, asking the question of Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary Lilian Greenwood at the Derbyshire Rail Forum on the terrace of the House of Commons last night

The terrible weather has cut the old Great Western line to Cornwall at the Dawlish sea wall. So vulnerable always! What a tragedy that Beeching axed the old Southern Railway route  round Dartmoor to the north. I argued this in the Independent newspaper recently and it will be a centrepiece of a chapter in my

I love this clip about who reads the newspapers from the BBC comedy ‘Yes, Prime Minister. Despite the advent of tablet computers and smart phones it’s as true today as when it was first made… http://viewrz.com/video/who-reads-the-newspapers