Rail 402: Dithering SRA could delegate franchise decisions to judges
By failing to lay down proper ground rules for the refranchising process, CHRISTIAN WOLMAR believes that the overhasty Strategic Rail ...
Rail 401: HSE ignores the interlocking causes of Ladbroke Grove
The Health & Safety Executive’s report on the Ladbroke Grove inquiry was supposed to be a factual document setting out ...
Rail 400: Recovery not on the cards without a national railcard
When the railway launches its great marketing effort to win back lost passengers after the crisis, CHRISTIAN WOLMAR suggests train ...
Rail 399: This crisis won’t be calmed simply by soothing words
Railway pundits are split into two antagonistic camps - optimists who believe the crisis will all blow over and things ...
Rail 398: No one – and everyone – to blame for rail’s ‘Troubles’
All the major players in the railway - the Government, operators, Railtrack, SRA and HSE - have emerged with little ...
Rail 397: Gerald jumped before he was pushed back into the abyss
The reasons given by Gerald Corbett for his departure from Railtrack were accurate - but they weren’t the only ones ...
Rail 395: It would be madness to set this flawed system in stone
There was a depressing sense of deja-vu about the scenes at Hatfield in the wake of the latest rail tragedy ...
Rail 394: Cool heads should outweigh emotions in the ATP debate
Never in the history of the railway has its future depended so critically on the views of two outsiders, Lord ...
Forgotten Children – the background to the children’s homes scandals
In the 1970s and 1980s, an epidemic of abuse swept through Britain's children's homes. More than 100 care workers have ...
Rail 393: Will the fuel furore backfire on rail investment plans?
The Great Millennium Fuel Crisis was hailed by the media as a bonanza for rail. There certainly was an increase ...
Rail 392: Industry, Whitehall and courts must act to vanquish vandals
With three incidents involving vandal damage to trains every day, a catastrophe is in the making on the railway. CHRISTIAN ...
Rail 391: Two-nil to the incumbents, but the game has just started
The new Midland Mainline and Chiltern franchise deals are replete with welcome promises of badlyneeded investment that will have sent ...
Rail 390: Rail must offer all-inclusive package for a new century
The early railways were vehicles for helping cement the different strata of society into a cohesive whole. But today it’s ...
Rail 389: A fabulous pot of gold at the end of the railway’s rainbow
The cash bonanza announced for the railway last month provides a unique opportunity to create a network fit for the ...
Rail 388: SRA must have a destination before starting the journey
Despite the pitfalls of making predictions about the railway industry, the Strategic Rail Authority should not be renewing franchises without ...
Rail 387: SRA finally exerts muscle for the good of Britain’s railfreight
The railfreight industry has, for too long, been overshadowed by the cash cow express passenger business, which calls the agenda ...
Rail 386: Heads, the private operators win; tails, the taxpayer loses
Privatisation was supposed to switch the risks of rail operation to the private sector. While the profits have been transferred, ...
Rail 385: The summit of pointlessness predictability and poor timing
The Government’s latest rail summit received scant coverage in the non-specialist media - and that was no surprise. What was ...
Rail 383: The railway should hang on to its land of hope for the future
When the rump of British Rail quietly restarted land and property sales last autumn, it provoked uproar from the rail ...
The transport row: who is to blame?
Christian Wolmar goes behind the scenes of the Blair-Prescott split and argues that, if cars are to be curbed, drivers ...
