Christian Wolmar

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 ...

I have been meaning to write a substantial piece linking the banking collapse with rail privatisation for some time and will certainly do so in the next couple of weeks. But meanwhile, enjoy this titbit: that ever so very clever fool, Sir Steve Robson, who at the Treasury designed the structure for both rail privatisation and the Public Private Partnership on the Underground, can now count the collapse of the ...

This new history of Britain¹s railways comes from the prolific pen of the nation¹s most passionate and well-known advocate of rail transport and travel. Christian Wolmar is an award-winning journalist who has made his name investigating the sad state of our urban and intercity railways with critical and incisive accounts such as Down the Tube (the London Underground) and ...

On the Wrong Line Review They had a dream. They watched in a haze of nostalgia as old ladies cycle home from evensong. They could hear the sound of willow on leather. And they could see the words Great Western printed on the side of steam engines thundering into elderly stations. They saw a golden era of the railways ...

The privatisation of Britain’s rail network by the last Conservative government was, and still is, a highly controversial issue. But whatever you think you know about the principles and processes, this book will increase your knowledge. Its sub-title, ‘How ideology and incompetence wrecked Britain’s railways’, hints at a tabloid journalese approach to the subject, but this is misleading. ...