Christian Wolmar

In a recent letter to The Times (which was reprinted in Rail 659), Theresa Villiers, the rail minister argued  that the train operating companies function in a free commercial environment. Train companies are free to lease extra coaches and extend their trains, she said gaily, ignoring the harsh reality of the bureaucratic nightmare that is today’s fragmented railway. The truth is that the train operators cannot simply take on new rolling ...

Interesting contrast on two journeys recently. On East Coast, a very friendly conductor asked me for my Senior Railcard - yes folks I have one - when I showed hm my ticket. I said that he was the first conductor to ask for it in ove a year and a half and, in fact, my card had run out for some of that period and I had taken journeys without ...

Exhibition Road in South Kensington has always been a bit special. It was the first road in Britain to have a tunnel built under it for pedestrians to avoid the traffic above. The tunnel was built by the Metropolitan District Railway in the late 19th century to give people easy access to the burgeoning museums above. Originally the railway charged a penny for the use of the subway but it ...

Frank Binder, Sown with Corn, Farthings Publishing, £12 99, 412 pages Christian Wolmar We all know the story of Hitler’s rapid rise to power. The rallies, the speeches, the military marches, the demagoguery,. But he could only achieve dominance over his people by creating a reign of terror which affected every town, every village, every individual. Little is known about this process which forms the central theme of this deeply disturbing and ...