Two Michaels - a passion in common for trains
23 January 2011
Enjoying Michael Portillo's current TV series of train journeys. Michael P's travel's are seen through the prism of the Bradshaw timetable; Michael Williams's, in my book On the Slow Train, through the perspective of the Beeching closures of 1963. It's almost the 50th anniversary of Richard Beeching's notorious axe - and luckily, many of the loveliest lines escaped it. My own favourites, which I travelled on over the past few months for my new book - 'On the Slow Train Again: twelve more great British train journeys' - include the Morecambe to Leeds line and the Esk Valley line in North Yorkshire. It is to be published by Preface Publishing on April 7. I know Michael through covering his political career when he was a senior Tory politician and I was the head of news at The Sunday Times. Both of us have ended at the same destination – a passion in common for Britain's railways!
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