Christian Wolmar's April newsletter

[Christian Wolmar]

Dear subscriber

 

I have somewhat neglected the newsletters recently as I have been racing to finish my book on the Transsiberian which I have duly delivered to the publishers and which will now hopefully be out in time for Xmas. It is a truly great tale, much more interesting than I had expected, and indeed, a much more influential railway than I had realised. The story of the Transsiberian takes in much of the 20^th century history of wars but also was hugely influential in the way that Russia developed.

 Fortunately, too, it has been a quiet time on the railways and in transport in general, and so actually it was a very good time to be finishing a book. So another shorter newsletter than usual, but actually next time there will be more additions thanks to some one off commissions, including one for the New Statesman centenary issue looking at transport in 1913 compared with now. Good fun.

 The biggest story of the past month was the decision by the Department for Transport to put the East Coast line back out to tender, even though most of the rest of the programme is being delayed until after the election. Ministers may deny it but there is no doubting this was a political decision because of their dislike of a successful public sector operation. Simon Burns has even suggested in the Daily Telegraph that it is because East Coast has grown slower than West Coast in the past decade without referring to the fact that Virgin has benefitted from a £9bn upgrade paid by the public sector and new trains leased with the help of subsidy, while East Coast has 25 year old trains and the upgrade was in the early 1990s. Sometimes politicians are just shameless.

 I wrote a piece for Labourlist, the website for Labour politicos, about it here and a column for Rail on the overall timetable which is another piece of shameful example of ideology determining decisions rather than passengers’ needs but that is not yet on the site.

 Indeed, it was such a fallow month that the only additions are my Rail columns on the crazy process of investment here and on why the EU should not determine rail policy here, as well as a piece for Surveyor on the Boris cycling plan here .

  There has been a special offer of 99p on the Kindle version of my Great Railway Revolution history of US railroads which resulted in the book at one point reaching the top 50 of Kindle sales. It is available at that price until the end of this month only, so get clicking – you can go through my website here and click through.

 The Mayoral campaign has being going from strength to strength and I have now given talks at more than a dozen Labour party meetings across the capital. I will, incidentally, soon be merging my Twitter accounts but not the websites – www.wolmarforlondon.co.uk  will remain the mayoral site. I appeared on the Daily Politics show as a result of the campaign, talking about immigration, the EU and, inevitably, trains.

 Please click on the ads on this site as it pays for the site. Interestingly, I am now pursuing Google for the VAT they should pay on the ads, given their tax avoidance strategies, and it may well be a long chase.

 I will be speaking at Oxforshire Railway Society on May 8 on and at St Mary’s Church Upper Street on May 17 both times on the history of the Underground, a popular subject in this year of the 150^th anniversary.

 My Great Railway Revolution is now out in paperback, as well as Kindle, and I have a stock of a few if anyone wants a signed copy at a slight discount. Just email me via the site for details of how to get one.

 Now for a short break in Italy.

 

Christian