25 years of change

DEPENDING on your point of view – or historical preference – Rail Express was born either in the dying days of British Rail or the brave new world of the Privatisation era. Either way, no one can deny the past 25 years have been an exciting time for our railways, and that is something we have tracked closely through our 300 issues so far.

Both points of view can claim victories over each other, as who would have thought back then that 2021 would still have so many ex-BR locos running on the main line – with examples from Classes 20, 31, 33, 37, 40, 47, 50, 52, 55, 56, 59, 60, 73, 86, 87, 90, 91 and 92 currently active – a testament to their original design. Yet even the staunchest BR fan would find it hard to argue that we would have had the same two-decade long boom in rail use without the privatised rail operators.

Looking back through our past issues recently has confirmed the old adage that ‘the only constant is change’. Rail Express takes no side in the BR vs Privatisation debate, our point of view is the same as day one: we are written by enthusiasts for enthusiasts. And on that point I have to thank our team of talented writers. I won’t name them all here, but they are listed at the bottom of this page, and most have been writing for us since day one. Even though I have been in the editor’s chair for almost eight years now, I still feel like the newbie compared to them!

More than the team, however, I have to thank you – the reader – as without you there would be no magazine. It is most definitely a two-way process; we rely on your extra eyes and ears around the network, and getting to see the fantastic selection of photos you send in every month is a real perk of the job. In return, we aim to inform and entertain with our mix of news, nostalgia, preservation and modelling – an approach that, in a world of change, is a guaranteed constant!