Christian Wolmar

It’s been a glorious August for the railways as terrorism fears have made airline travel a nightmare. But why, asks CHRISTIAN WOLMAR, hasn’t the industry shouted its successes from the rooftops? IT may have been a lousy August for aviation but it was a great one for the railways. Thousands of people discovered that Britain has a pretty good rail network and they flocked to use it. Extra trains were provided ...

One thing is sure as we approach the big Bank Holiday weekend. Today, tomorrow and especially during the weekend, thousands of people will be stuck in traffic jams caused by accidents. “There must have been a crash” we always say as the cars ahead come to a complete standstill. Why, we ask ourselves, does this happen again and again? While we are all used to the occasional hold-up, there have been ...

It is, as Rail magazine put it wittily, the end of a GNera. The widely expected demise of the GNER franchise marks the end of a brief attempt by the Department for Transport to use the franchise process to maximise revenue from the rail companies at the expense of a reduced standard of service for passengers and sharp increases in fares. GNER’s troubles also suggest there is no coherent answer to ...

In his annual summer-term report on the pupils of Railway School, headmaster CHRISTIAN WOLMAR praises improved performance but finds there are still too many trips to the taxpayers’ tuck shop. How time flies when you’re having fun. It’s time once again for the usual headmaster’s annual report on how the boys and girls (of whom, pleasingly, there are an increasing number at the top level) in the Railway School have fared ...

Speed kills. It is as simple as that. For every 1 mph increase in speed, the number of accidents rise by 5 per cent. Therefore it is perfectly sensible for the Department for Transport to review speed limits and reduce the risks on our roads. The death toll on our roads has been going down, but there are still over 3,200 people killed annually. That’s nine per day, or a major ...

There’s a delicious irony about a Labour government defending a privatised rail system which the Tories admit they got wrong. CHRISTIAN WOLMAR explains how David Cameron’s resurgent Conservatives have outflanked embattled ministers. In the run-up to the 1997 general election, this column regularly used to cover Labour’s policies on rail even though the party was in opposition. For most of the past nine years since Blair’s election victory, however, there has been ...