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I've spent a lifetime advocating rail travel, to colleagues, friends and family, often against their scorn, but as I write this I am sadly beginning to doubt my own lifelong faith in rail travel. My wife and I are retired, heading for a cruise from Southampton. For reasons I won't detail here...

Why should the TM have the responsibility of exercising a duty of care to children? Of course, he has to be reasonable with them, but why should he have to take notes about them too? He has more than enough to do already, taking fares from numerous people between stations only a few minutes...

"Making sure they get off"??? How should he have done that when those lads were just wanting to rebel? If they chose to stay on the train against the TM's instructions, he would have simply had to allow it.

Their petty crimes may or may not eventually catch up. But will they care even if this happens? Meanwhile, other passengers were quite dismayed to see this happening, but felt it was inappropriate to intervene, especially when these "minors" might have been very quick to allege some form of...

I wish I had an answer, but the law is heavily stacked in favour of young tearaways on this. You often hear stories of law-abiding people getting quite traumatised by overzealous staff after making genuine mistakes, dishing out harsh penalties. But these young lads looked like they were just...

I don't think he called for assistance. This was a fairly rural route with almost zero chance of any assistance at the next station, where the lads cheerfully got off. And those lads looked like they knew this.

Yesterday I witnessed two lads of around 14 years old, board a train for an intentionally free journey. The train manager approached and asked for their ticket, to which they boldly and unashamedly said "We don't have any money". They were well-spoken, reasonably well-dressed and it appeared...

My point as upthread is that the public needs to be told where the money is going, and also to be able to have confidence in any such promises. Sadly this is where our politicians fail time and again, by defaulting on their pledges. IF we had a fuel price increase AND we could be guaranteed...

I'm not convinced of your figures. But more importantly, you make it sound like £1.8bn just isn't worth bothering with. This amount would actually fund a couple of big hospitals, or several small ones, which certainly is worthwhile. Especially when the fuel cost to most people is an...

I’ve always been a great admirer of the writing around Sir Humphrey & co., which probably still stands as the cleverest and most incisive sitcom ever written. However, that isn’t the point. Fuel price rises have been associated with being a vote loser ever since, but that’s only because...

The UK Government is crying out for money at the moment, accompanied by a war of words about there being no money for defence (or the NHS, or other things) not least because so much is being spent on welfare. Why then, is there such a massive reluctance to put, say 5p on a litre of fuel, which...

Giving a loco Trump's name isn't so bad is it, given his great support for the rail industry? After all, he's brilliant at everything ... for example he's won the war with Iran 27 times already so far this year 8-)

Thanks for the reply. My thoughts on HS2 haven't really changed over the years, except in levels of increasing despair about the whole thing. I will attempt to summarise my thoughts as follows, to explain why I remain unhappy with HS2, and indeed with those who find it so hard to accept that it...

I'm not sure why you would say this. I often disagree with #Bald Rick but I still appreciate the contributions, which are generally more informative and polite than many. 1780263684 Interesting that you say this. I've had comments questioned by moderators on a few occasions, which make me think...

"Serving" a distance of "a lot more than 100 miles" is not a good claim, which is why I qualified my comment. I  could claim that HS1 serves Cornwall, because passengers from there can use it to reach Paris once they've travelled to London first. However it's not a good claim, and I wouldn't...

Sorry, but how are those claims of yours worth the cost of £100bn?

Recollections may vary, as they say. When HS2 was launched, it bore striking resemblances to the Greengauge21 "thought experiment", but with Heathrow as a connection instead of being served directly. Of course they can be presented, many years later, as having been separate projects, but how...

A bit less than Plymouth to Inverness, although that's not the point. The point is, HS2 is now being built (incredibly slowly) just to serve a distance of little over 100 miles. Forget your Toyko to Fukuoka distance, London to Manchester/Leeds was always the MINIMUM useful distance to justify...

Er ... maybe you should question the Japanese about that ...

It's an interesting point though. When HS2 was first proposed, under the banner of Greengauge21 back in 2006 or so, much of its foundation for support was to serve Heathrow. I asked the question at the Conference, about how providing a HS rail service to Heathrow would benefit an incompatible...