The awful year in 2018 endured by the railways might have been leavened somewhat had Crossrail opened on time. In reality, that was never going to happen. While working on my book, The Crossrail Story, over the first half of last year, I was frequently in the Crossrail offices in Canary Wharf and I could see that behind the promises that the scheme was ‘on time, on budget’, there...

Dear Keith,   I wish you lots of luck in your endeavour to sort out Britain’s railways. There will be many obstacles placed in your way, not least by government, so you will have to be courageous enough to plough your own furrow. I will try to help by setting out a few principles and thoughts learnt over the past quarter of a century on writing about railways that...