Virgin Trains wants to ban standing on trains, even though it’s the best part of the UK rail system
If you’ve spent much time travelling on long-distance rail services around the world, you’ll know that they vary immensely…
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John Band
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London’s Gospel Oak to Barking line might be about to lose all its trains to Birmingham
The Gospel Oak to Barking Line, known as the GOBLIN because rail nerds share interests with other sorts of…
ByThe Georgian vicar whose ideas could have saved Thameslink passengers from misery
The Reverend Thomas Bayes was born in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, in 1701. He grew up in London’s Southwark, and…
ByNo trains south of London during cold weather? Blame a pair of Herberts for choosing the wrong electrical system
As is often the case when the weather is below freezing, commuters around London are having a terrible time…
ByThere’s one English county whose county town is in a different county
It’s not unusual, when you have an area with two big towns that dominate it, to stick the capital…
ByAre the Tories planning to cut Crossrail 2? And how can they deliver HS2 without it?
At first sight, the transport section of the Conservative manifesto published yesterday looks rather bland compared to the drama…
ByA nationalised railway doesn’t have to be rubbish – but this one probably would be
As the general election nears, the major parties are starting to set out their vision for Great Britain’s railways.…
ByWorried Guildford will be destroyed by Chinese trains? Then you might not be very nice
Despite the collapse of everything else that more-or-less worked in 2008 Britain, before the Hunger Games years began, some…
ByChris Grayling isn’t privatising the railways – but his weird partisanship will hurt them all the same
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling this week announced that he was going to give UK rail infrastructure body Network Rail…
BySouthern Railway’s strike tweet highlights the new, nasty era we’re living in
It’s awful business practice to slate your staff to your customers – so why is the already-beleaguered Southern Railway…
ByThe Southern Rail mess isn’t a privatisation failure – it’s a return to the 1970s
London’s Southern Railway has been dominating the headlines all summer, due to its sheer awfulness. But the underlying dispute…
ByBritain’s rail system is working OK for once. So the Competition & Markets Authority wants to stuff it up
The current British rail system*, for the first time in about a century, works quite well. Performance figures and…
ByA fares freeze is the worst thing that could happen to London’s transport
At about 7:30pm on Wednesday 18 November, 1987, a cigarette end was discarded on a moving escalator at London’s…
ByEverything you know about British train fares is wrong
Editor’s note: This article dates from 2015. We repromote it every year because that’s how we roll. Railways are…
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