#Railnatter

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...

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? Way back in Episode 57 we analysed where any future north-south Welsh railway needed to be, and we fleshed those plan...

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! Read the plans here: https://21st-europe.com/blueprints/starline Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #Railnatter at https://patreon.com/gare...

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. Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #Railnatter at https://patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via http...

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... Friend of the show Will Deakin joins us to talk about temporal data, spatial data, big data and having fun with it in what I know will be the first of a few return episodes o...

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. Plus we might mention Glasgow Airport again since that got everyone very excited. See the piece I wrote about this: https://www.glasgowbell.co.uk/a-blueprint-for-gl...

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! See the piece I wrote about this: https://www.glasgowbell.co.uk/a-blueprint-for-glasgows-rail/ Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #Railn...

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... Whether it's the railway expansion intentions of USAID versus China in south central Africa, increasingly heated riots in Greece over the Tempi rail disaster (an episode for itself soon) or the n...

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! Read Nicole's great retort to it all: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolekob...

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! Access the documentation here: https://www.growingmid.wales/article/10136/Mid-Wales-Transportation Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #Railnatter at https://patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethd...

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. Find Alastair Temple's portfolio: https://alastairtemple.co.uk/ Enjoye...

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! Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #Ra...

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... Located in a stunning spot on the railway line from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh, Duncraig station sees only around 500 passengers a year hopping on or off trains at its diminutive halt. But it is a unique, bea...

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...

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! We look at Scotland's missing railway links that will need to be plugged for the future economy the Scottish Government keep talking about to materialise. We look...

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... Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #Railnatter at https://patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis. Merch at https://garethdennis.co.uk/merch. Join in the discussion at https...

This week, we are taking a close look at the UK government's white paper on English devolution... Back in Episode 105 with Jon Stone, we talked in detail about how the UK would simply never have better public transport without deep and meaningful devolution, including of funding powers... It's something we'd been talking about before and we've certainly been talking about it a lot since. Will thes...

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! Enjoyed this?...

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. But which, according to our patented scientific assessment system, will be the most stupid flight of all? Watch to find out! Enjoyed...

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! As the last live show of the year, we're going back to #Railnatter basics and having an open Ask Me Anything session with a twist: it will be our first on-location live episode! Will it work? Join to find out! Enjoyed this...

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! Luke's book is available here: https://amzn.eu/d/2AO6bna or you can pick up a signed copy here: https://tubemapper.com/tube-mapper...

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. We'll read through the announcement, speculate on why she has been booted and what it might mean, and talk a bit about misogyny in the rail industry. Plus a bit of...

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. We'll go through the events leading up to the disaster, and the many chances we had to avoid it happening. We'll look at the role of government, of the various building and housing regulators, of the private interests in testing and marketing the cladding prod...

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! We chart the fall of the interurbans and the rise of this not-a-gadgetbahn system as it grew across the city, and consider what's next in store for Vancouver. There's a lot for us to l...

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! Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #Railnatter at https://patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis. Merch at https://garethdennis.co.uk/me...