It’s 10 o’clock on a Friday evening in early December. My crowded northbound train departed King’s Cross two hours late and has lost two more between Newark and Retford. Overhead line trouble, we’re told; engineers on the line. I’ve read this week’s Spectator from cover to cover. I’ve exchanged emails with friends in Los Angeles, whom I picture in sunshine with pre-lunch glasses of crisp white wine. And in boredom I’ve re-read all my own Christmas columns for the past decade in search of inspiration for this one.

Some years, I see, I did short stories from the boardroom; sometimes tongue-in-cheek awards for City headline-makers or real accolades for best restaurants and books; or tributes to the recent dead. And this year? A full-length rant about the state of the UK rail network – its fractured franchise system, hellbent unions and total absence of leadership or internal co-operation – would hardly be festive. Despite all, I still like trains; so, I gather, do many of you.

And, as this one finally moves off again, a ghostly voice comes through the frozen fog outside. It’s I.K. Gricer, my predecessor Christopher Fildes’s long-retired railway correspondent. Write about great train journeys, he whispers, and what they taught you about the world. So here goes.

Partying in Mongolia

A more convivial late-night halt happened to me at Erenhot, the border-point of China and Outer Mongolia, on a train from Beijing that would reach Moscow five days later. The extended stop was for the wheel bogies to be changed to the wider gauge of Mongolian and Russian tracks – a precaution against invasion which let’s hope never becomes redundant, because no one wants Russia and China to be military friends.

In the lively station bar, I found myself going drink-for-drink with Earl Jellicoe, the former Tory minister who was en route to Ulan Bator as a salesman for British power-station turbines. Our Chinese deluxe-class carriage – amiably overseen by attendant Chang and interpreter-cum-secret-policeman Zhang – spoke of the privilege of elites in communist states, while dollar-based commerce in the dining car spoke of endemic corruption. Crossing Russia (this was the Gorbachev era), we saw the unrelenting grimness of Siberia and sensed rising depression, suspicion and vodka dependency on every platform as we travelled west; reform might come, but this was never going to be a happy country.

Partying to Venice

The Venice-Simplon Orient Express, by contrast, felt like a happy country all to itself, a pre-war cocktail party in a sealed tube, every detail of furnishing, food and service exquisite. Created by the shipping tycoon James Sherwood (who died in 2020) from old rolling stock found all over Europe and meticulously restored, it was and is a triumph of patient entrepreneurship – the same perfectionism I encounter, in very different fields, among so many entrants for our Economic Innovator of the Year Awards.

If you’ve never thought of booking, those low days between Christmas and New Year would be the perfect time to cash in your Isas and go for it. The last approach to Venice at sunset across the lagoon causeway is a lifetime moment of beauty.

Mainline misery

If space permitted, I’d wax lyrical about bullet trains from Tokyo to Osaka, night rides from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok and Chiang Mai; Amtrak’s Acela express from New York to Washington; and of course French TGVs. All – in my memory, at least – courteous, comfortable, on time and uplifting for the spirits.

Or I could regale you with almost 3,000 journeys, over 34 years, on our very own East Coast mainline. Was nationalised British Rail better than the privateers that followed? No it wasn’t: the rolling stock was tired, the staff surly, the stations shabby. The first franchisee, GNER (with James Sherwood behind it), offered superior service but could not make profits; two successors failed and the current state-run service, LNER, has no character at all. Its best effort was a near-empty train on a recent Aslef strike day whose freedom-loving driver would have broken the speed record if he hadn’t been gratuitously held by signals outside York.

Generally friendlier, and preferred by discerning northern travellers, is the German-state-owned ‘open access’ competitor Grand Central. But that, unfortunately, is the one I’m on as I write…

Who’s in charge here?

It’s after midnight and we’ve all been turfed off at York, presumably because union rules forbid the crew from completing the scheduled run to Sunderland via stops in between – including mine, Thirsk, less than 20 minutes up the line. There’s a huge taxi queue and upwards of 200 people shivering in wait for promised ‘replacement bus services’. Here are empty, locked coaches but no one knows which might go where; and no visible station staff, literally no one in charge. Except, miraculously, a slight young man in a red-and-white bobble hat like a Christmas elf, who says: ‘I’m just a bus driver but I’ll see what I can sort out.’

A few minutes later he’s darting among us, organising destination groups and despatching buses. The stragglers for Thirsk are allotted an ill-tempered chauffeur who claims the main road is too foggy so takes a winding route through villages none of us recognise, shouting: ‘Ah’m followin’ mi’satnav.’ But at last we’re there, the car unfreezes in the station car park, the roads are clear of snow and I’m home at 2.30 a.m.: possibly my worst train journey ever.

Before bed I raise a large glass of red wine to the only person with managerial nous in the entire rail network tonight, the one they should make minister of transport, York station’s Christmas elf.