Christian Wolmar

The uncertainty over the future shape of services south-east of London underlines the need for more long-term, strategic planning on the railway, contends CHRISTIAN WOLMAR. When I bang on about integration in this column - which, poor reader, Iknow Ido-it is not just about bringing services and infrastructure under the samecontrol. That, ofcourse, is a no-brainer in terms of runninga railway but there is far more to integration than just that. ...

The roof on the main building of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was completed last month. Given that at 400 by 150 metres, this is the largest single span roof in Europe, it was a tricky operation. The six sections each weighing 2,500 tons had to be jacked up over a 10 month period. To minimised any chance of mishaps, BAA, the company which owns the airport and was privatised in 1987, ...

(This is a copy of the speech given to the Railway Studies Association on March 9 2005.) I have thought long and hard what to speak about tonight. Conscious that many of you read my columns and my books, I thought possibly I should do something different. Perhaps, I wondered, I could really surprise you and talk about the success of rail privatisation and how I was looking forward to a ...

For the political parties during the election campaign, the railway will be like the war when Fawlty Towers was entertaining German guests, predicts CHRISTIAN WOLMAR - ‘Don’t mention it!’ Here is a surefire election prediction. The railways are going to get nary a mention in the manifestos of the three main parties and will not be talked about on the hustings, except possibly in response to an odd question at a ...

The managerial upheavals at Metronet are symptomatic of much wider problems with the controversial Public Private Partnership to refurbish the Tube, created at the insistence of Labour ministers. Under the PPP, the largest such contract in Britain, private infrastructure companies carry out the maintenance and upgrading of the Tube while London Underground remains publicly owned and run by the Mayor’s Transport for London. And therein lies the fundamental flaw. Metronet ...

The railways are a 19th century invention that are finding a new lease of life in the 21st century with many countries across the world building new lines both for passengers and freight. Therefore, when the Saudi government sought to improve communications between Jeddah on the Red Sea and the capital Riyadh, rail was the obvious choice. The principal purpose of the line will be to carry freight containers ...