Forget who is to blame, get on with fixing our railways

‘This is where we are but it is definitely not where anybody wants to be, says the chair of Shadow GBR. It’s a sentiment shared by Simon Calder and the majority of rail passengers

- Simon Cader

“In my previous life, I ran an organisation, at Transport for London, where everything that went wrong was my fault.”

That was the rail minister, Lord Hendy, addressing the transport select committee this week. Since he spoke to MPs, an awful lot has gone wrong with the railways in the UK.

On Friday, Storm Eowyn meant no trains ran in Scotland, Northern Ireland or northern England. By yesterday morning, we imagined things could only get better. Passengers on platform 5 at Newcastle boarded the first train since Thursday to go north. It left on time at 8.41am, as the Scotland-bound passengers settled in for what was scheduled to be an 85-minute sprint to the Scottish capital. The train eventually arrived exactly five hours behind schedule, having averaged just 14mph.