Christian Wolmar

There was something fitting, poignant even, about the fact that when Sir Roy McNulty was speaking at the press conference on his report, he kept on clicking back to the previous slide by mistake. That summed up the problem with his analysis of the ills of the rail industry. Rather than looking forward to a different way of running the railways, his recipe is really more of the same, with ...

I blogged about the McNulty report yesterday for TSSA - http://www.tssajournal.com/blogs/christian-wolmar/dream-radical-approach-railways - and will be writing about it in my next Rail column. I am also about to put the Times piece I wrote on this website which will be found in the R-Z section (which reminds me of the old London phone directories, although the blue one was S-Z wasn't it?) Just a couple of additional thoughts, though. It is ...

Here is a bold prediction about today’s report into cutting costs on the railways: whatever it finds, passengers will suffer. Sir Roy McNulty, the businessman turned quango junkie, was asked by the previous Government to find ways to curb costs on the railways, which have ballooned from £1 billion a year under British Rail to five times that level of subsidy now. His preliminary findings ...

In one of those obscure but important announcements that trickle out of government, Philip Hammond, the increasingly prominent transport secretary, has changed the way that  transport projects are to be assessed. While not surprisingly this does not make headline news, especially as the announcement was slipped out on April 27 a couple of days before a rather notable event that for some reason was attracting all the attention, this is ...

I have been on TV and radio on the story of the SWT ticket office clerk, Ian Faletto, who reportedly went on the tracks to remove a supermarket trolley at Lymington Town station and has found himself sacked for breaches of health and safety rules. Predictably, this has attracted massive publicity in the tabloids as an 'elf and safety' gone made story. It is tempting to take that line. Faletto has, ...

Memo to train companies: I have had several recent dealings to put my children on the car insurance with Direct Line. While their ads may be irritating, their customer service is unparalleled. They will, for example, put someone on for a day or a week, just charging the pro-rata annual rate, and a modest £15 admin fee.  Similarly,if you need to take someone off the insurance, they will refund the ...