We apologise for the late arrival of this edition of Skylines. It’s unlikely to be the last time, I’m afraid: some stuff happening in the non-work bit of my life has disrupted my schedule somewhat, but I still hope to get the next episode out by the end of next week.

Anyway, enough about that: this week my guest is journalist and author Matthew Engel. In 2009, he published Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain – his history of the British railway system which, running pretty late myself, I didn’t read until last year.

Matthew gives me a quick tour of railway history, from the Victorians to Dr Beeching. He also explains why privatisation was a total disaster – but why he fears nationalisation won’t help.

The episode itself is below. You can subscribe to the podcast on AcastiTunes, or RSS. Enjoy.

Jonn Elledge is the editor of CityMetric. He is on Twitter as @jonnelledge and also has a Facebook page now for some reason. 

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