Make rail travel great again

Since I took the Golden Arrow to Paris and back in 1965, I have always thought of that train journey as one of the great joys of life. I cannot remember how many pre–tunnel trips to the City of Light I made, via Dover and Calais, Folkestone and Boulogne or (best of all) Newhaven and Dieppe.

My great regret is that I never took the old Night Ferry, a special set of blue and gold sleeping cars designed to run on both French and British railways, on which you could (in theory at least) slumber your way between the two capitals – though perhaps not while it was actually being shunted on and off the boat. Its slightly seedy glamour was much increased when the shifty former transport minister Ernest Marples fled the country aboard it in 1975 to avoid a huge tax bill, cramming his possessions into the guard’s van and leaving his Belgravia home in chaos.