Saturday 9 May 2009

Please can somone buy Railnews a combi?

What has happened to the industry's in-house magazine Railnews?

Standards are slipping!

This image from an article on WSMR on the Railnews website:

Mind you, if they can't tell the difference between a 57 and a 67 then a seat in The Commons surely awaits.

UPDATE: A pedant writes...

57/67 confusion aside, the Railnews piece uses the wrong conjugation of the verb "go" in its intro:

"WREXHAM and Shropshire has said it fears for its survival if Arriva Trains Wales proposals for a direct Aberystwyth to London service goes ahead."


Proposals... goes: what kind of English do these people speak?

Huskisson - a politician for our times

More from 'Eleven Minutes Late', Matthew Engel's new book on the history of the railways.

With a bowler tip to Roger Cox in The Scotsman:


Huskisson's fate, argues Engel, is symptomatic of the disastrous relationship that has always existed in this country between railways and politicians.

"Confronted by the need to take a decision involving transport," writes Engel, "Huskisson suffered precisely the same mental block that was to afflict just about every British politician from that day to this. He dithered, he panicked, he got it spectacularly wrong."

Aye, that about sums it up - amateurs the lot of 'em.

And it might be almost forgivable if they weren't so damned fond of troughing at our expense.