HAVE WE SEEN ‘PEAK RELIABILITY’? ROGER FORD REFLECTS ON A YEAR THAT HAS SEEN PERFORMANCE LEVELS OVERALL FAIL TO IMPROVE FOR THE FIRST TIME

Top prize second generation EMUs: the Class 379. Here recently delivered No 379005 prepares to perform a Modern Railways Fourth Friday Club special service to Stansted Airport from Liverpool Street on 25 March 2011. TONY MILES

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel The sun also rises, a character is asked how he went bankrupt. Two ways, he says, ‘gradually and then suddenly’.