Christian Wolmar

Trams make a comeback

28 September 2024 9:00 am

Earlier this month, the fortunate folk of Frankfurt were entertained by the 11th annual tram-drivers competition, with entries from 26…

Don’t blame health and safety for killing the Harry Potter steam train

24 March 2024 5:10 pm

When the operators of the most popular steam train service in Britain decided to challenge the safety authorities, they were…

Why is HS2 costing so much?

27 August 2023 5:00 pm

The members of the Denham Waterski Club are among the few people in the Chilterns who are grateful for HS2.…

Tunnels of love

5 August 2023 9:00 am

With their elegant entrances and blend of Art Nouveau, Romanticism and Modernism, the white-tiled stations of the Parisian underground are works of art in themselves

The new age of sleeper trains

1 April 2023 9:00 am

It’s a fabulous combination: travelling by train and sleeping. And the good news is that the concept of sleeper trains…

The Queen's final journey should have been by train

11 September 2022 10:41 pm

The Queen loved the royal train. The Royal yacht was a luxury that was more for show than convenience but…

What the UK can learn from the demise of British Rail

10 May 2022 6:29 pm

British Railways lives again. Well sort of. The Queen’s Speech is expected to contain plans for a Transport Bill, the…

Box clever: the surprising history of signal boxes

3 October 2020 9:00 am

Petersfield signal box is in the wrong place. Or at least it is now. When it was built in the…

Nothing can beat the romance of luxury train travel between the wars

21 December 2019 9:00 am

There may never have been a murder on the real Orient Express, but otherwise Agatha Christie’s depiction of luxury train…

The Death Railway: the line built by prisoners of war in Burma at the cost of thousands of lives

Train journeys may be losing their romance — but there are other adventures still to be had

26 January 2019 9:00 am

Monisha Rajesh wrote lovingly about the Indian railways in her previous book, Around India in 80 Trains; but her new…

The great British train wreck

1 September 2018 9:00 am

A couple of weeks ago I met David Grime and Alan Noble, members of the Lakes Line Rail User Group,…

The dream of driverless cars is dying

7 July 2018 9:00 am

I was worried that going to the autonomous vehicle exhibition in Stuttgart would be tantamount to an atheist walking into…

Wemyss Bay train and ferry station on the Firth of Clyde

Going places

30 September 2017 9:00 am

Stations, according to Simon Jenkins, are the forgotten part of the railway experience. People love the trains, the journey, the…

The dining car of the London to Liverpool express — back when croutons were still served with the soup

Sexual assault, chamber-pot etiquette, and other problems of early rail travel

19 September 2015 8:00 am

Simon Bradley dates the demise of the on-board meal service to 1962, when Pullman services no longer offered croutons with…