London’s 598 railways stations have made the capital what it is

I began this book waiting for a diesel train to Derby, under the windy, boxy, flat-roofed bit which one of Sir Norman Foster’s team added to the back end of St Pancras station. At around 7 p.m. on a weekday only a dozen or so people were travelling. In the arcade below — built by the proud Midland Railway, as Christian Wolmar reminds us, to the dimensions of the Burton beer barrels the space was designed to store — shops are being boarded up. No one buys a new wheelie case or jewellery before catching a Eurostar to Paris anymore.

Among the many entertaining facts he has assembled, Wolmar calculates that London has 598 railway stations. There are mornings now when it feels as though that is greater than the number of peak-hour passengers across the city. These are bad days for our railways, and the shock is all the greater because they come after some of the best.