Night Freight
I hadn’t been near a freight yard in years. The passenger stations get all the glamour these days. Polished floors, ticket machines that speak five[…]
Lleida Day: Fast Line, Slow Branch, and Geoff’s Quiet Power
Sue said we should treat it like a date, so I wore the decent shirt and left the railway cap at home. Barcelona to Lleida[…]
Lights That Last
In Crewe we never put “lamp cleaner” in the job description, but half the time that’s what you were. Driver comes in muttering that his[…]
Restoring a Class 47, and Hearing From Geoff (Who’s Gone Off the Rails Entirely)
Some men dream of vineyards. Others build goat pens in rural Spain and call it “freedom.” Me? I restore locomotives. This time it’s a Hornby[…]
Barcelona Sants Station: Functional, Ugly, and Brilliant
I wasn’t even planning to write about it, to be honest. But the thing about railway stations — proper ones — is they tend to[…]
Train Stations with Character: Spain’s Most Beautiful Stations
Not Just Places You Catch Trains You can learn a lot about a country by standing in its train stations. Not the ticket counters or[…]
The Lost Railways of Spain: Forgotten Tracks and Ghost Stations
Where the Tracks Trail Off into Silence They don’t really vanish, you know. These old Spanish railway lines. They don’t scream or collapse or announce[…]
The Transcantábrico: Slow Luxury Along the Northern Coast
A Different Kind of Train Journey After all the commuter runs, regional rambles, and high-speed sprints, this one was different. This was railway indulgence. The[…]
Crossing Borders: Barcelona to Paris by Rail
The Dream of International Rail There’s something uniquely satisfying about boarding a train in one country and stepping off in another. No airports. No plastic[…]
A Lighthearted Day at the Railway Museum
Vilanova i la GeltrĂş and a Promised Trip It all started with a bribe. “If we go to the beach town,” Sue said, “we are[…]