Christian Wolmar

In the run up to the opening of High Speed One, there was a flurry of interest about Deutsche Bahn planning to run a service from Berlin to London via the Channel Tunnel. The idea first appeared in The Times on November 1st and was picked up on various radio and TV stations. Unfortunately, there was little substance to the story. I talked to Deutsche Bahn that day and they were ...

The consultation paper on Heathrow which is due to be published later today is predictably pro expansion. Already, Ruth Kelly has made clear that she thinks there should be no attempt to limit flying and that the whole focus should be on carbon offsetting, something which the cannier airlines accept as inevitable but the more bullish ones are resisting strongly. Aviation exposes the deep flaws in our transport policy – or ...

I have just received a big press release from Ken Livingstone on hydrogen fuel buses which are going to save the day. Apparently, London will be getting the biggest fleet in the world - just 10 by the way - of these buses helping reduce the carbon footprint of the bus fleet. Ken is then quoted as saying: "Hydrogen is a fuel of the future as it improves air quality and ...

Off to Marseille, a fascinating city which seems little changed from the scenes in the 1971 classic The French Connection apart from the fact that it now boasts two metro lines and a three hour connection by TGV from Paris, which, of course, is how I got there. I was invited to speak at a conference organised by a group seeking to extend the high speed line beyond its current terminus ...

The opening of Britain’s first new main line railway for over a century is a momentous event - and a belated recognition that the most important invention of the 19th century has a major role to play in the 21st. What's more, the refurbishment of St Pancras brings back to life an architectural masterpiece which will act as the centrepiece for the regeneration of a whole swathe of North London. This ...

Angela Inglis, Railway Lands, Catching St Pancras & King’s Cross (Troubador Publishing, £30) When St Pancras was first built in the 1860s, over 6,000 people were made homeless and no thought given to their fate. Even the dead were not spared as thousands of bodies were removed in a task which traumatised the young Thomas Hardy. These days such callousness would be unthinkable but nevertheless the current redevelopment of the area ...