Welcome to 2024 and the first issue of Volume 38 of Backtrack. We’ll do our best to ensure another twelve months of varied railway history in the style and of the quality you’ve hopefully come to expect.
Excluding the world at large which is in its usual state of mess, 2023 was not a good year for railways. For one thing, outbreaks of longrunning industrial action have blighted train services; as these disputes seem set to continue we will let events unfold and leave examination of their causes and effects to a date to be arranged. Last month’s editorial mused upon the not-so-shocking article yet to come at some point in time, along with consideration of whether all the trouble put into whizzing people from somewhere outside central London as far as Birmingham but no further was worth it.
