Christian Wolmar

I know this is slightly a hardy perennial, but last night's trip to Ashford International and back was the pits in terms of the number and vacuousness of the announcements. Both trains were late, and that did not help, but on the outward one, there really were about a dozen in the first 20 minutes, and even when a measure of peace had been obtained as the station had been ...

It seems apt in this season of goodwill that for once the forces of labour and capital in the railway industry have agreed on something. It’s just a shame that this consensus had to be in the form of the train operators and the rail unions coming together to prevent anyone letting the train take the strain today. First, we have the brothers and sisters of ASLEF, who, for the third ...

Everyone knows that the fares system is a complete mess. No other product has such a complex pricing structure. Nor indeed, does any other railway in the world have such a maze of fares. The reason for the complexity is, of course, buried in history and, oddly, has been made worse by the use of new technology. British Rail had a relatively simple set of fares though it began to offer ...

Having been rapped on the knuckles in my one ever (short) conversation with Justine Greening, I take some pleasure from the fact that she has had the same treatment meted out to her by the normally supine ATOC. My verbal bashing as I have reported before, came at the press conference to launch the government's long awaited Command Paper. I had the temerity to suggest that Paper did not seem to ...

The Railway Eye blog reports that the Railway Forum has quietly been put to death, even though its website makes no mention of this. Indeed, it still has the smiley face of its director general - a grand title for an organisation with a staff of fewer than half a dozen - Paul Martin stressing that the organisation has membership across the rail industry. It was the membership that was the ...

After having spent the last three days in and out of the studios for the past three days criticising the performance of Eurostar and Eurotunnel in the face of the breakdown and then cancellation of the Eurostar trains, I now wonder if I have been too critical. After all, it was an unprecedented event with five trains breaking down simultaneously and it does seem to have been an unlucky conjunction ...