The archive

The last couple of years have seen fairly late starts to the railtour season, which has meant lots of opportunities to plan my own visits around the country. This is both a blessing and a curse - zipping around at possibly the quietest time of the…

Over the last few years, I've found myself deliberately revisiting some of the earliest rail trips I made in the 1990s. Partly, this is because the idea of comparing my hazy recollections of first impressions with how I'd view a place now is entertaining.

It's become traditional to try to squeeze some sort of railway value out of the holiday period, but often proves tricky for a number of reasons - confusing timetable changes, later starts to service and generally unpredictable passenger loadings to…

It's been a rather odd, frustrating year for railtours. Lots of cancellations, lots of uncertainty, and a great deal of politics and rivalry entering the market. Amongst this, I've tried to do as many as possible, with an emphasis on rare or unusual track wherever possible.

I often find myself haunting the same places at the end of the year. As the official trips dry up, I seem to seek solace in a round of familiar journeys which take me back to places - sometimes significant, sometimes just familiar and interesting enough to divert my attention for the day.

My railway friends, locally at least, seem to spend a lot of time on the Southern Region. Perhaps it's because I did most of my ramblings here in the days of slam-door stock, and trains dividing and combining on route, that it sometimes feels just a little bit dull down there at times.

It's that time of year, once again, when I find myself in Glasgow for a little while. Having planned one or two musical things for later in my stay, I was content to see how this evening panned out. Faced with a choice which I'm just not used to, I…

It had been a surprising sort of day in all kinds of senses, and having set out for Bristol in the ubiquitous and mundane fashion of catching a slow, lazy sunday afternoon train but ended up completing the journey in a sports car driven by a attractive young woman, I figured anything was possible.

I'm beginning to see how this strange hobby of mine goes in cycles. Last week saw me needing to turn lost days and cancelled trips into something of a coherent journey. It didn't work hugely well, and there were times when the need to be somewhere else without purpose made me pretty miserable.