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.

Maybe it was the Golden Arrow that fixed in my mind the idea that the train to Paris was always an adventure and an occasion for delight. When I took it, it was the last departing trace of pre-1939 railway luxury. Every mile of the journey, the Calais customs shed, the ludicrously shrill whistles of the vast and muscular French steam locomotives, all the delicious meals served at our Pullman seats, remain in my memory. It was also the place where I discovered what coffee actually was, having grown up in a nation which thought coffee meant Nescafé and that unspeakable fluid that came out of bottles.

So why is travelling by Eurostar to Paris so grey and dreary? Isn’t it odd that this potentially marvellous service has never really become the commercial success it ought to be? Yet it also somehow manages to be as crowded and hard to book as it would be if it were a success.