Christian Wolmar

On January 10, 1863 the first section of the London Underground opened, between Farringdon and Paddington - the first subterranean railway in the world. It was an instant success, copied widely across the globe and giving its name to an entire system. And despite some under-funded and unloved years, it is now enjoying a renaissance. My first memory of the London ...

Watching Bob Crow in action is an instant history lesson. His way of conducting industrial disputes has more in common with the Everybody Out style of Miriam Karlin in the 1960s sitcom The Rag Trade than with modern-day trade unionism. His latest efforts to stop London moving may, however, prove to be one strike call too many for Britain’s last diehard militant trade union leader. Crow is an unapologetic political ...

  This column was going to be an analysis of the new government’s likely position on rail policy and the prospects for the next few years. Fat chance. The voters having delivered the verdict which Mystic Wolmar predicted, the politicians at the time of writing are still in smoke-free rooms from which very little is emerging. Mystic is convinced, however, that the Libdems will hold their noses and throw their lot ...

I am not usually a conspiracy theorist, but the decision of the National Audit Office to publish its long-awaited report on the Underground PPP and the collapse of Metronet tomorrow does suggest that it has been lent on from on high. The report is expected to be critical of all sides - government, TfL and the private companies involved - but much of the blame for the whole debacle, as outlined ...

Tim O'Toole was by no means an obvious choice for the job of running London Underground but he proved to be an inspired one. His experience as an American freight railman, at one point running the huge Conrail which ran most of the freight operations in the lucrative north east of the United States, seemed to suggest he would know about trains but not the people who used them. That proved ...

There’s no shortage of things happening on the railways. If it is not snow on the tracks, it’s high fares, plans for high speed trains or franchises getting into trouble. Today I did interviews on two different subjects for separate channels at ITN, the government’s insistence that the train operators have to stick to the RPI plus one formula of fares rises, even if there is deflation, and the departure ...