Christian Wolmar

After analysing the reasons for the collapse of Railtrack in RAIL 420, CHRISTIAN WOLMAR urges the industry to put the recriminations behind it and seize the opportunity of the next few months to make historic decisions about the future structure of the railway. It is no exaggeration to say that the next few months represent the most important period for the rail industry since the row over privatisation in the early ...

The British government has dismayed private investors by seizing control of the company set up in 1996 to own Britain’s railway tracks and property. Can the proposed hybrid model of a non-profit making private company open up a genuine ‘third way’ beyond state control and the market? Something is changing. Not only is America waking up to the need for government (as Bob Borosage reports in this issue) Britain’s New Labour ...

The revolutionaries have triumphed over the evolutionists in the battle over the future structure of the railway industry. CHRISTIAN WOLMAR, firmly in the revolutionary camp, analyses the reasons for the Government’s momentous decision to put Railtrack under administration. In RAIL 421 he will examine the prospects for the proposed new non-profit making structure. Wow! On the weekend that Railtrack collapsed, we watched history unfold. Had it not been for the coincidence ...

The publication of the Government’s Transport White Paper and its tenyear plan seemed set to usher in a new railway Golden Age. But the moment was not seized, and it has now passed irretrievably. CHRISTIAN WOLMAR warns that visionary schemes will now have to take second place to smaller-scale thinking as the railway is forced to readjust its ambitions. Given the momentous events across the globe, the spotlight has remained off ...