It is one of the great ironies of rail privatisation that it was supposed to free up the private sector to be innovative and groundbreaking and yet the train operators have often proved to be more conservative than British Rail. This is not in fact always their fault but is a result of creating a fragmented structure that is also highly regulated and their need to satisfy the short...

One of the few (only?) good ideas from George Osborne when he was Chancellor was the concept of a Northern Powerhouse. Gone would be the inadequate connections between the various towns and cities of the north and instead of the ghastly Pacer trains and snail pace services, there would be HS3, linking Leeds and Manchester, but also possibly Liverpool, Hull, Newcastle and any other place that seemed politically expedient....