Christian Wolmar's big January newsletter

[Christian Wolmar]

Dear subscriber,

 

To make up for the absence of last month’s newsletter, there are a record number of new posts linked in from this newsletter. It’s been an incredible time on the railways, and I have produced more pieces over the past month than in any other.

 We have seen the reports into the West Coast fiasco, rail fares rises, the publication of the industry’s £37bn investment programme for the five years from 2014, continued discussions over HS2 including the judicial review (result due out by end of month)  and the 150^th anniversary of the London Underground, along with various other minor stories. It’s been a rollicking ride. In the midst of all that I am trying to write my book on the Transsiberian, from which I returned at the end of November and did write about here --- and in the Mail on Sunday at the forthcoming weekend (not yet on the site).

 Amidst all this, there were quite a few TV and radio appearances. Occasionally, this was to give a bit of balance: it was extraordinary that when the rail fare rises were introduced, the BBC was doing vox pops outside Kings Cross with people who were moaning that nothing ever improves on the railways – standing in front of a refurbished and glorious station that had just had £500m spent on it.

 There’s been, too, lots of talks including a particularly well attended one as part of my mayoral campaign for Lliveable London’s street talks, a great event. To keep up with my mayoral campaign, subscribe to the Twitter account, @wolmarforlondon.

 Inevitably the main report on franchising, by Richard Brown, into the West Coast omnishambles has disappointed. As I wrote in the forthcoming Rail column, governments make sure they pick the right person to do these so-called ‘independent’ enquiries. It is a very thorough exposition of how to make best use of the franchise system, but, as expected, does not address the fundamental question on whether there are better alternatives.

 The rail investment programme, led by Network Rail, has got rather lost in all this and I will be writing about it in the future. It is actually very exciting but I still have fears that the fundamental economics of the railways are not as robust as we would like them to be.

 So in no particular order. My TSSA column showed that public as well as private railways have experienced just as much growth in recent years. I wrote a brief profile of the transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, in House, the magazine for parliamentarians and another for the online magazine Ethos.

 My two remaining new Rail columns cover the guilty people in the West Coast fiasco and the rather strange and unaccountable way that penalty fares are handed in the industry here . And for someething completely different my Surveyor column covered innovation and, in particular, e-bikes, an interesting invention that deserves wider use.

  In the Daily Telegraph, I set out the reasons why fares keep rising and tried to explain the underlying causes while in the Yorkshire Post I offered a set of suggestions to make the railways even better. I wrote three pieces for The Times in the past month. First, there was a news comment on the series of mishaps in the pre-xmas rush, then a Thunderer about the lack of trains on Boxing Day and finally a celebratory piece about the Tube’s 150^th anniversary. There were also a couple of pieces in the Standard about the Tube anniversary, one on the ride on the steam train (where I sat next to Michael Portillo who was definitely the star of the show), the other a bit on the history.

 By the way, I have a stock of signed copies of the new version of the Subterranean Railway that has been updated to mark the 150^th anniversary, which are available for £8 and £2 p and p – just email me or pay by Paypal.

 Anyone reading through all that lot deserves a prize. That’s all for now

 

Christian Wolmar