Rail Magazine
RAIL magazine is Britain’s biggest-selling modern railways magazine, giving comprehensive news coverage for the industry. Over 25,000 copies are sold every fortnight.

Rail 973: Rail’s annus horribilis
This year, to borrow a timely term from our late Queen, has been the annus horribilis for the railways. Just ...

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(written in October and now already out of date!)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 ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Rail 959: Why it’s only the state that can sort out the railways
The railways are suffering from a series of intermingled crises and as Nigel Harris argued so cogently in the last ...

Rail 958: Crossrail gives us the chance to celebrate
The time for carping is over. Let’s for once just celebrate and enjoy some good news. Yes, I know, I ...

Rail 957: How SouthEastern scandal exposed franchise failings
In writing this column every fortnight since 1995, I have always questioned the value of privatising an industry that is ...

Rail 956: Heading for trouble
There’s trouble brewing down the line. Industrial relations trouble, that is. The RMT union has launched a ballot of its ...

Rail 955: A campaign well fought
Dennis Fancett is a happy man. But he is not totally satisfied, as there are further battles ahead. He has been ...

Rail 954: One country, four rail systems
One of the most spurious justifications for rail privatisation was that it would ‘get government’ out of the railways’. The ...

Rail 953: Ukraine conflict shows rail still key in modern warfare
Never say history does not repeat itself. An aspect of the Ukranian war that has been largely neglected by the ...