#railnatter by Gareth Dennis

We've reached the end of 2025! It's been an extremely difficult year across the board, with some points of light dotted around for nourishment, but I wanted to end with some hope. Also with a bridge collapsing on my head.

Merry Christmas! Raise a glass to all the folk out there this holiday season prodding, building and generally messing about with railways in the freezing cold.

They did it! Or rather, they did... something! The "new" identity of Great British Railways was released yesterday to noises resembling moisture purped through polyester. Alas, it wasn't the wondrous fanfare this ailing government were expecting, but it also isn't a total disaster.

York is broken - traffic is knackered and the city, with its wonderful medieval core and rivers, barely reaches a fraction of its potential as a result.

Chris Brownbill (https://railmaps.com.au/) has taken over! With Melbourne's Metro Tunnel - their Crossrail - opening this weekend, it is as good a time as any to get to know Melbourne's public transport that bit better...

It's time for the PWI (the Permanent Way Institution) - my beloved professional institution, the best of the lot, and one I'm immensely proud of - to change its name. And you can make it happen.

We need a laugh (?) so this week we are going through a report written by Professor John Hibbs for the IEA (the bad one) nearly twenty years ago, and twenty years after Britain's buses were deregulated outside of London and proceeded to be completely decimated, where they weren't engaging in outright urban combat.

Yesterday, the UK Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander deposited the Railways Bill in the House of Commons. Does this actually mean anything? Not yet, not least as quite a lot of important stuff about the future of Britain's railways isn't in this document at all, but it does help clarify the direction of travel, if not the destination.

Back in June the Stewart Review suggested a series of reasons why Britain's embryonic domestic high speed railway line was tripping over its shoelaces. Today, we dig into that report, with the usual useful context on its author and its subject matter.

You've been asking for this one for a long time - YES, the airports episode is finally here! Which of the UK's 32 mainland airports (including on the island of Ireland) deserve to survive into the 2040s, and which must CLOSE? Tune in to find out!

A city I love and have travelled to many times for a decade now - Belgrade is a melting pot of culture, art and architecture, food and fun. And yet it is being poisoned by corruption, greed and car dominance. The result is a dying city - and a warning to the UK, given our cities are taking exactly the same trajectory.

Following a wee hiatus from host knackeredness syndrome, we're back! And we're returning to our roots by talking all about British Rail's Advanced Passenger Train, and the corporate nonsense that took APT's tilting technology via about a dozen legal entities to slap it straight into the replacement Acela fleet this year! We also answer the question: was the Pendolino just the APT sold back to us?

In the second of our episodes focusing on disabled travel, we look at NCAT's latest report on the overall picture for accessible transport in the UK. It's not a rosy picture.

With ScotRail announcing that their new fleet procurement will include level "access" as well as a key report being published on progress with transport accessibility, it's the right time to revisit Episode 31 and see what progress has been made - and it is actually good news!

We're back! And we're doing some classic network analysis, this time for Devon and Cornwall. I knew this one would be hard, but making this network make sense is extremely tricky! In any case, we'll list off 10 railway projects the region needs, think about why and what they might look like in more detail.

We're joined by Daisy from newly-formed ProCab Simulators as she tells us the tale of taking a bunch of bits, wires and programmes and turning them from a fire hazard into a working - and ACCESSIBLE - train cab that works with off-the-shelf train simulator games. It's a story of knowledge, networks, determination, ADHD and the rail industry stepping up!

My visit to the New Hall at Locomotion in Shildon is FINALLY WITH YOU. See why I think this is the best bit of the whole railway museum, including York...

It's the second half of our chat with the wonderful Chris Brownbill, and this time we are looking to the future. Urban and high speed rail plans feature!

One of the most severely and regularly gridlocked regional bottlenecks in Scotland sits slap bang on the top of Fort William, and in doing so it is throttling the life out of the town and surrounding communities. Plans to fix this are now in development, so in readiness for looking at those, we consider what options are available, and work out how to save the Highlands' biggest town in the process.

The Department for Transport has published the list of projects that it is progressing, and those it is putting on ice... We take a look at the 50 projects that made it.

Transport for Wales recently released their plan for a public transport network for North Wales, and it is actually very good. We'll take a look, and pick out why Westminster is incapable of delivering this sort of strategic thinking.

A couple of major things to cover this week that will set the direction of the UK economy for... a bit. Until this government changes their mind again. Those are: the new Industrial Strategy, and the Comprehensive Spending Review from earlier this month. Both talking about where money will - or indeed will not - be spent to make the country work better. And we are taking a closer look.

Readers of The Book will know that, pre-hot war (we'll get there), Russia's railways were ranked the best in the world by modal share. But how? And what does this look like?

Chris Brownbill (https://railmaps.com.au/) joins us this week to take us on a quick jaunt through the history of Australia's railways - in the process busting a few myths, talking about a major tragedy and helping explain how the Aussie railways nearly beat Japan on the Top Twenty national railway list...

This week we are looking at the proposals of the Liverpool-Manchester Railway Board, the collective of combined and local authorities across the north west of England wanting to finish off the Manchester bits of HS2 as well as the western end of whatever the trans-Pennine high speed line is called today.

The role of open access operations - you know: Hull Trains, Grand Central, Lumo, Go-Op - is one I've been dancing around in #Railnatter for a long while, but I'm hoping tonight to take a reasonably exhaustive look at the cases for and against...

The wonderful, erudite and incisive Victoria Scott - that's right, my  @wtyppod  nemesis - is joining us this week for what will I already know will be one of our all-time greats. Why are driverless cars still being pushed onto an unwilling public, three-quarters of a century after the first trials? What's the real reason for adding a near-literal tonne of sensors and high technology to the simple automobile? Why will driverless cars never functionally exist?

We're looking at the proposals for a new line connecting the North Wales Main Line and the Cambrian Coast Line between Bangor and Afon Wen... Are the plans any good? Should they go ahead even if the correct route for a north-south Welsh mainline is at the other side of the country?

In the first of another two-parter, we look at some rather meaningless and silly plans for a high speed rail network that I can't quite categorise between "absolutely nothing" or "actively damaging". Join me LIVE to see if we can work it out together!

It's a news episode! And as ever we've got loads to catch up on, not least Labour and the Prime Minister's supine desperation in using precisely the same language as the Conservatives by virtue signalling to car drivers as a distinct class of their own. It's grim to see.

Ever wondered how you develop and deploy a new timetable? Or how to map flows of humans across regions, countries and continents? Well this is the primer on all of that, and crucially why we do it and what the pitfalls are...

It's the second half of the two-parter you all wanted in one go last week! Yes - this time we get to the good stuff. Maps. And using them to see what a realistic but bold modern metro system for Scotland's largest city could look like.

I've been promising this one for a while - what should Glasgow be doing about its urban mobility? What about the Glasgow Subway? Crossing the Clyde? What about the airport? Well, the way to solve all of this is with MAPS and that's what we will be doing!

Whilst there's plenty of local news for us to pick through, I wanted to focus this week's episode on how railways are becoming sharply relevant in the rise and fall of national and international powers...

At the World Government Summit in early 2025, Dubai's city leaders revealed the latest nonsense they were putting their mobility hopes and dreams into... And it is a real hotch-potch of junk ranging from obviously stupid to mostly pointless to outright fascist. So let's get the #NotAMetro sorter out and sift through them!

Given it's our fifth anniversary, how better to celebrate than to look at and think about rural Welsh transport and what to do about it? Cue the music!

Back in Episode 240 we looked in detail at the corruption, callousness and incompetence that led to the deaths of seventy people in the fire in Grenfell Tower in 2017. Tonight, we are joined by fire engineer and researcher Alastair Temple to look at what the inquiry into the disaster recommends to avoid it ever happening again.

Cities are extremely important, despite only one of them getting much meaningful attention in the UK. Network Rail and WPI Economics have pulled together a report looking at cities and the trends that are defining their futures right now, including post-COVID behavioural changes, and it piqued my interest. Let's take a look together in the usual way!

To celebrate our reaching 250 episodes, I thought I'd tell the tale of the little railway station that rebelled against Westminster's swinging axe and survived for us all to enjoy today...

Well, they did it. Where the Conservatives blocked it from being built, Labour have in fact waved it through, in a move that will set back both the UK's environmental and economic targets by decades. We'll talk a bit about this decision, why it is really bad, and of course dig into a few months of other news as well. And we have the delight of being joined by Rob from Podcasting Is Praxis, helping halve/double the despair...

Way back in Episode 65 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2v846_jqwc), we took a network development look at the Scottish railway map, but we didn't really take a material look at what the missing bits really were... Tonight, we fix that!

In the first of a couple of Scotland episodes, we're thinking about ISLANDS and how the hell to get to them in a way that's sustainable by all definitions of the term...

This week, we are taking a close look at the UK government's white paper on English devolution...

2024 was dismal, for me and for lots of other people too... But 2025 brings us a wealth of opportunities for shaping our railways and the wider world for good. Whether it's rail reform, devolution, level boarding, #Rail200, or the enormous sustained demand for more rail services in the UK, it might just be a really exciting year. At least we can start out thinking that way at least!

In the first of what I hope will be a format we can exploit long into the future, Tom Pain (host of @tenthousandlossespodcast4026) joins us to talk about US flights that don't need to exist because they should - or indeed already do - have better rail alternatives.

For various BUSY WEEK reasons, we're slotting into a different spot this week so that we can all have a nice chat about the utterly bonkers year that was 2024... Tuesday at 7pm!

I'm delighted that Luke Agbaimoni (a.k.a. @tubemapper) is joining us once again to talk through a few images from his latest, stunning, book themed around contrast on the TfL system... It really is a treat, and we get stuck in as we've done for his previous two books!

Before being unceremoniously ousted for no reason whatsoever, Louise Haigh's last act as Secretary of State for Transport was to announce her integrated national transport strategy, or at least that it would land in about a year's time.

In what I expect to be a sobering but incredibly important episode, we will be picking up the Phase 2 Report of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

I'm delighted to say we're joined this week by genuine Vancouverite Cariad Heather Keigher, who takes us on a tour of the SkyTrain and the messy history that created it. Don't worry though - it's actually very good!

Okay, so if by Crossrail we mean high capacity suburban rail - yes. And in this episode we'll look at exactly what that might look like for Sheffield and the wider South Yorkshire area. There will be maps!

We've an awful lot of news to get through, not least the horrible budget from last week and the dismal election results in the US announced today.

In October 2024, the supposedly left-leaning Resolution Foundation released a report into the role of electric cars and public transport in reducing UK greenhouse gas emissions to zero.

In the third of our three-part miniseries on Ireland, we are joined by Iain (anoniaino on Twitter!) to talk about the what Ireland's railways are facing in the future! We've thought about the past and about what the issues are today, now we think about what is planned for the future, and if it is good enough!

I'm delighted that Jack Fifield (formerly of the Bolton News) is joining us to talk about his story on Northern's ridiculous and damaging revenue protection policies, but also the wider mess that Britain's railway ticketing system is in, and ultimately how difficult a lack of investment in ticketing outside of London is making people's lives.

We've been decrying the fact that the UK has crippled its own economy by imposing its own made up and entirely useless fiscal rules - in other words the rules on what it can and cannot borrow, and for what - for a long time. But the Office of Budget Responsibility (itself also pointless) has published a report suggesting these should change.

Every now and then, we abandon trains and talk about something different, then by the end of the episode everyone gets to see how much the episode has actually been about trains the whole time. This is one of those times.

I'm hosting @RailEngineers 2024 tonight, so it's a quick news catch up pre-record... and the emerging theme is FARES. Plenty of other things to look over though.

They did it! Greens4HS2 finally swung the Green Party of England and Wales into having a viable stance on high speed rail, crucially meaning that the party can (a) hold Labour's feet to the fire properly on its rail investment plans or lack thereof and (b) it can actually comment on any transport or other investment policy at all without looking ridiculous.

Well this one's going to be a bit grim. We'll cover off some news before I open for questions on the Hendygate situation.

In the second of what will definitely now be a three-part miniseries on Ireland, we are joined by Iain (anoniaino on Twitter!) to talk about the what Ireland's railways look like today... lining us up nicely for the next and final episode on what's next!

Before the election, the UK Labour Party commissioned Juergen Maier to head a review into railways and urban transport strategy... And it was published literally today. So the hell with the original schedule, let's take a look and see if it proposes anything useful - and more importantly consider if it will be ignored by Rachel Reeves.

In the first of (I think!) a two-part miniseries on Ireland, we are joined by Iain (anoniaino on Twitter!) to talk about the history of Ireland's railways and how we got to the system we have today.

I DID IT. I WROTE A BOOK. And as an exclusive for all you lovely viewers, you can Q&A me about it and anything else you can think of in this week's #Railnatter... Plus we'll cover a bit of news off.

Post election, it's worth taking a look at the National Audit Office's latest report into High Speed 2 and the mess the previous government made of it.

Back in Episode 49, we looked at the broad plans for mass transit across West Yorkshire, centred on Leeds. Now, mayor Tracy Brabin has launched the consultation for the first two proposed routes, between Leeds and Bradford and from central Leeds southwards.

Okay, so I've been teasing this for a while now, and at last it is here... We are going to spend this week's episode talking about what a FINISHED high speed rail network for the UK and Ireland would look like. Not shared lines, but dedicated high speed lines built from new.

Everyone voted! The Conservative Party are toast! Labour got fewer votes than in 2019 and the era of two party politics in the UK is over...

Well, with only a week left to go before the UK 2024 general election, which of the relevant* parties' manifestos is best for transport? We'll get them up side by side and have a close look at what is promised, how it compares to previous years and what it all might mean for the future.

It's a short one, and I'm off on wanderings for the first time in a while... I'm sharing some thoughts on early railways and the need to push back on the oversimplified narratives associated with the Stockton and Darlington Railway and 1825 as a false date of the "start" of railways.

With the election approaching, we do a page-turn of the Public Accounts Committee's report into rail reform in Britain, as published back in May.

Okay, a cheeky local one this week, amongst some news... Haxby station is looking increasingly likely to appear in the next few years, so let's talk about if it is in the right place, what the wider railway network around York ought to look like, some of the timetable challenges of achieving that, and why it is being designed to look so awful again when the HUB station designs are now formally part of Network Rail's design guidelines.

We're jumping back in time to October 2022, and flicking through Network Rail's strategic advice for the West Midlands and the urban area around Birmingham. Lots to learn from this one - there will be diagrams and pictures and thoughts galore!

It's a proper techy one this week, and we're talking all things CANT or SUPERELEVATION. What is it? Why do we need it? Why don't we need it? All your questions, answered. Oh, and dust off your GCSE mechanics because we will be doing some MATHS with EQUATIONS.

This one has been in the pipeline a while... Should we reopen the full Waverley Route from Tweedbank south to Carlisle? No! We shouldn't!

Well, our original plans are out the window as Labour decided to publish their plans for Britain's railways. We have no choice but to go through them. And it might not take us a full episode.

It's a Wales episode! AND it's a bus episode! When I talk about Wales being way out ahead of the rest of the UK when it comes to integrating its transport system, hopefully this report will make the case... We're doing a classic page turn of the Welsh Government's Roadmap to Bus Reform report, covering network, timetable, and ticket integration.

I often rant and rail about SUVs - you know, the cars designed to maximise the harm they cause to other road users - but what is the data behind the proliferation of these hugely damaging vehicles. Why are so many being sold? What are some of the consequences?

As ever, quite a lot has happened since we last caught up with the news... Not least that vapourware VTOL grifters Joby Aviation have convinced the British government that flying taxis are the future at the expense of anything else. It's another news episode!

This week we've the pleasure of welcoming back Bessie Matthews, train driver, author, illustrator, columnist and all-round railway industry treasure.

After our first pause in four years, 200+ episodes, 280 hours and countless guests, we're back again (we only skipped three weeks!)... And I'm very pleased to welcome Robin Davis onto the show to talk all things Designing New Trains.

The UK government have finally published their plans for Great British Railways, or rather, the hollow shell of the original proposals, now called the Integrated Rail Body. If it's anything like the Integrated Rail Plan, we are in for trouble.

CalTrain are pressing ahead with their completely bizarre obsession with hydrogen as a means of powering commuter and intercity trains. It is completely baffling. And it isn't the only nonsense that's been going down over the last few weeks!

A much requested topic - we are going to dive into the waters of when British Rail ran boats (ships) in the form of British Rail Shipping and International Services, then Sealink UK, then Sealink British Ferries, then Stena Sealink Line, then Stena Line, then... Well, you get the picture. We'll try to demystify things.

It's @Youngrailpro Rail Week! In the fourth (we missed one last year) of our YRP Rail Week specials, we are joined by the most guests we've ever squeezed into the format. Five mid-career panelists (most of whom are also former apprentices) are quizzed about building a career in the railway by an audience of current apprentices - because YES, it is also National Apprenticeship Week. And the questions are BRILLIANT.

Why is the railway network in the North so abysmal? Well, a lot of it comes down to a rather dismal series of bad policy decisions made through the 1990s and 2000s inflicted by - you guessed it - the over-centralised UK government. Constant cancellations of previous projects has led us to the point where the current "TRU" is only going to finish delivering its outputs in the 2030s, over 50 years after the project was originally mooted.

There's plenty of news to catch up on, but the big question we'll be answering this episode is "are track defects a particular problem on the Great Western?" - and we'll answer this by looking at data freely available on the @office-of-rail-and-road's online data portal, accessible here: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/

This has been much requested given the number of viewers from Ireland - to warm us up in advance of the release of the All Ireland Strategic Rail Review at some point in Spring, I thought we'd flick through the consultation paper (which is really good!) as well as getting our heads around the geography of the island of Ireland.

It's our official 200th episode! How have we got here?!

Now I've been going at Hyperloop's jugular for years now, and suffice to say it remains total and utter nonsense unworthy of any technological debate and only marginally worth one at all. We all know it is guff intended to both delay real railway solutions and to allow car and plane people a seat at governmental and regulatory "mass transit" tables.

Now this one really is festive - and it will be live, so you are very much encouraged to bring along your favourite festive tipple... We're asking the big Christmas questions: should the railway shut down around Christmas, and should we concentrate the vast majority of our engineering works over a period when so many people make the sorts of trips the railway is perfectly placed to cater for, and at a time when weather and blood-alcohol levels are at their most dangerous?

Gather round the hearth for the first of our (still live!) festive episodes... This time we are exploring the story of the Torksey Viaduct, a tale which navigates the intertwining histories of railway companies, engineers, bridge design, competency, Megawatt Valley and more besides.

The UK government's "Plan For Drivers" didn't end up being as popular as they thought it might be... For a festive treat, this week's episode is doing a traditional page turn of what we at Natter Towers are sure is a well thought-through piece of long-term transport policy* - join us at the usual time to take a look for yourselves!

Lots of people have been asking for this one! You may notice I use a lot of maps and diagrams on here, on Twitter, and elsewhere too... People act surprised when I tell them I do them all in PowerPoint, because it is the best tool for the job in most cases!

The Department for Transport have stopped up the datafeed that gives us the UK's full rail passenger ridership, so instead we're going to take a whizz through the ORR's latest passenger rail usage report to give us a feel for what's going on, how demand is looking across rail operators, and what this means when we think about the future.

This week, friend of the show Zach joins us to talk about the tramways and railways of Jersey, what they looked like at their zenith and what became of them... We'll even have a stab at reckoning if there's a good case for bringing them back!

Two years ago, two Class 158 trains crashed into each other at Salisbury Tunnel Junction following an extreme storm.

On the 3rd October 1983, the UK's first modern high speed line was fully opened between Doncaster and York...

On the 5th November 1993 (remember, remember, etc) the Railways Act 1993 received royal assent, and the wheels were truly set in motion for the atomisation of British Rail... An event that would lead us right into the mess we have today.

It's been ages since we've properly caught up with the news, so here's a massive run through of everything that has caught my eye since before I disappeared off on parental leave...