Telegrammed by Our Man at 222 Marylebone Road
Britain's self styled greatest living transport expert, quoting from the Grauniad's Peter Preston, says in his latest blogpost:
Peter Preston, a normally utterly impenetrable Guardian columnist, for once makes a good point in today's paper. Writing about the £8bn worth of rolling stock investment promised by the government last week - forget whether the actual figures add up - he asked the DfT how many of the new 2,100 carriages would be first or second class.
Those who can divide £8billion by 2,100 will know that the numbers definitely don't add up.
Perhaps the prolific Wolmar, surely the O.S. Nock de nos jours, should have consulted the soi disant 'veteran observer' whose expertise is currently being 'rested' by the FT?
UPDATE: This from a Mr Robert Wright...
I was intrigued by the idea of Wolmar as an 'OS Nock de nos jours' and checked the great man's Wikipedia entry for parallels.
Sadly, it summarises his career thus:
"Nock authored more than 140 books and 1000 magazine articles, which are often considered to be less than authoritative because of his voluminous output. He tended to re-use data, text and anecdotes in different books, including paragraphs culled in their entirety."
Perhaps Wolmar should get himself a canal boat and make a pitch to be the modern era's LTC Rolt instead.
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