Driverless car vision abandoned
So what happens when a dream turns into, well, a pipedream? I spent today to find out by attending a ...
Rail 972: Pay and productivity issues must be separated
My second favourite statistic uncovered while researching my various books is that British Railways, during its 50 year history, shed ...
Rail 971: The train wins out over big tech
Time to take a breather away from the crazy hurly burly of the day to day railway and pause a ...
Rail 970: Harper’s hard agenda
To say we live in extraordinary times qualifies as understatement of the year. Consider the bald facts that we are ...
Rail 969: Ms Trevelyan’s emollient tone
(written in October and now already out of date!) At the time of writing, Anne-Marie Trevelyan is transport secretary and ...
Rail 968: HS2 future uncertain
(This was written before the Nov 17th announcement which appears to leave much HS2 spending intact though scepticism remains about ...
Rail 967: The slow death of Great British Railways
Great British Railways looks set to be stillborn. All the indications are that the legislation to create it promised by ...
What Truss might have done
(Events rather overtook this column!) By the time you read this, there will be a new transport secretary under the ...
rail 966: The Nobody Gives a Damn Railway phenomenon is all too prevalent
I have been inundated with responses to my column in the last issue bemoaning the fact that levels service are ...
Rail 965: All hail the ‘Nobody gives a Damn’ railway
Christian Wolmar Let me introduce you to the NGAD Railway. Or you may have encountered it already if you know ...
The Queen should have gone by train
The Queen loved the royal train. The Royal yacht was a luxury that was more for show than convenience but ...
Rail 964: The terrible toll of suicide on the tracks
Lady luck has not shone on Richard Hughes-Jones. Well it did at first. As a five year old, he remembers ...
Spectator letter: Faux capitalism
Ross Clark's compelling critique (August 13) of the water companies comes to the wrong conclusion. He is right to say ...
Avanti winning the wrong competition
When the railways were privatised a quarter of a century ago, Prime Minister John Major said that it was to ...
Rail 963: Can Tories really do Net Zero?
We have to talk about Net Zero. Seriously. And what it really means in terms of transport. The dismal contest ...
The real story of British Rail
A quarter of a century on, the political party that abolished British Rail seems to be busy recreating it. Back ...
Rail 962: Ideology rules the railways
Halfway through the launch of Rail Partners, I had one of those jumping out of the bath moments which made ...
July 2022 newsletter
It is difficult not to be depressed as I write this during the heatwave. I would in fact enjoy the ...
Rail 961: Some ideas for Labour
When I first started writing this column in the mid 1990s, it had already become pretty clear that the days ...
Rail 960: Confusion over future of rail
The government’s consultation paper on the Williams Shapps report published on June 9 mistakenly put the year down as 2021 rather ...
