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Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Friday the 26th of April and I'm delighted to be on a train again.

Not in the UK, this is actually one in Italy.

I'm just rolling across the foothills of the Alps. There's snow on some of the mountains

that are in front of me. I've got beautiful picture windows. It's a great time to remember the

joy of rail travel. Of course, it's a wonderful, safe way to travel and in Italy, particularly on trains like this, racing along across the

plains, looking up at the mountains, it's also extremely good value.

Not perhaps in the UK.

And that's what I want to talk about because the Labour Party has come out with all kinds of promises about what's going to happen with the railways

were Labour to be elected. I've been reading what Louise Haig, the Shadow Transport Secretary,

has been saying, and here's my assessment of it. She says, our railways have become a symbol of national decline of a country

that no longer works and a government with no plan to fix it. I certainly agree that yes,

things have really looked so bad in terms of the shambles financially and operationally.

Every second of this podcast, the British taxpayer is pumping

£240 into keeping a pretty ramshackled rail network running. It's an absolute mess. The

fare system is terrible. There is little coordination between rail

...