At one of the numerous Labour party conference fringe meetings on transport, a junior shadow transport minister said ‘Rail renationalisation is the centrepiece of our transport policy’. Now you might think that as a longtime opponent of the way that the railways were privatised and a critic of the subsequent structure, I would be delighted at this statement. Not so. Don’t get me wrong. I remain convinced that renationalising...

Well dear reader, you deserve a break. So do I. We’ve all been inundated with Brexit,  Leavers, Remainers, Boris Johnson and Operation Yellowhammer for what seems like years and in the rail industry it has been just as frenetic, with the Williams Review, collapsing franchises, declining performance, daft ministerial statements and doubts over HS2. So it is time for something different, for one column only – no mention of...

It had to happen. The biggest infrastructure project the UK has ever seen was never going to be nodded through without a reappraisal given all the leaks about increased costs and the solid phalanx of opposition within the country’s (just) ruling party. Steering clear for the moment of consideration of whether HS2 is a railway worth building, the way the scheme was created and its subsequent development have been...

Franchising is dead. Long live franchising! That seems to be the message from the unexpected announcement of the new deal on the West Coast which came days after the abandonment of the franchise process for Southeastern. This one of those times where writing a column like this is just sheer pleasure. Trying to find out from my various sources what an earth is going on in the Department for...