As somebody who loved model trains as a kid, and who took a year off school when he was 20 to work as a lineman for the Canadian National Railway, I got on the GNER train at King’s Cross for a trip to the Scottish Borders with a warm sense of familiarity and expectation. The carriages are like old Pullmans, which had a foot of concrete lining their bases to steady the ride and kept the cars upright in case of a derailment. The GNER cars have the smooth, fast ride of an old, comfy Cadillac. The trip to the Borders, an area with one of the world’s great set of vistas — following a holiday with my four children in France — was without real distraction save lots of newspapers. Sven! Kimberly! Conrad! Barbara! Cherie! Todd! Todd? Todd — he’s a friend who married Nicky Hilton in an early morning ceremony in Las Vegas.
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