Where are all the female trainspotters?

Why isn't there an equal balance of genders at the end of the platform?

Why didn't I meet Heidi? Why, when I was younger, was Heidi associated with a sugary fifties film that had something to do with cowbells, yet now she's MD of a TOC?

I've always thought that this was a very clever new name for the building that most of us grew up knowing as Swan House. It tells you exactly where Newcastle is; it harks back to the Tyne's importance as a seafaring port; and it got me thinking about how we might be able to "trade" ourselves out of the recession.

While residents the length of the West Coast Main Line are enjoying their new, high frequency train service, what new services has North East England seen this December?

Haydon Bridge has an extra four trains a day.....

.... err, that's it.

Still, let's not get too downhearted... Northern Rail are doing their bit with extra Sunday trains from Alnmouth to MetroCentre. As a result, Acklington, Widdrington and Pegswood have a better Sunday service for these four weeks than they do on weekdays....

Sadly, It's a pity about Northern's publicity leaflet. Because they've forgotten that return trains call at Morpeth...

When did you last have a free train ride?

Now, I'm not suggesting for one moment that anybody who reads this blog might try to avoid paying their rail fares. In fact, I bet you've got on your train with the coins at the ready, jangling away in your pocket.

Here in the north of England, many of our trains are what used to be called 'paytrains'. Stations are unstaffed and you buy your ticket from the conductor on board the train.

Increasingly, though, overcrowding means that at busy times the poor employee is simply unable to work his way through the train between stops, before he has to scurry back to the rear cab to release the train doors.

This isn't fare evasion, or avoidance. Most people want to pay their fares. It's a revenue collection failure.

How is the UK's large and diverse transport industry going to benefit from today's tax cuts and contribute to turning around the economy?

Now that's a good question. Here in the UK, our government is pinning its hopes on a Keynesian "spend, spend, spend" approach. That's all very well, but some people consider that it was our propensity to hit the shops, fuelled by rising house prices and the availability of cheap credit, that got the Western economies into this mess in the first place.

One of the joys of the internet is that there is an ever-increasing number of free pdf industry magazines available for download, covering everything from shipping to aerospace. Here are links for four railway industry and enthusiast publications I've found both entertaining and useful:

Rail Management is a weekly industry magazine for professionals, usually published on a Monday, which does exactly what it says on the tin!

Railway Herald is another weekly, rather more aimed at enthusiasts. The publishers also produce a less frequent International issue.

Railtalk Magazine, despite its title, contains more pictures than words! Again, aimed at the enthusiast.

In future blog entries, I'll provide links to free publications in other transport sectors.

I'm not the first, and I'm sure I won't be the last observer of transport matters to be perplexed and bemused by the mysteries of UK railway ticketing.

Today, Jill and Julia are travelling home to Prudhoe from Jill's parents, just to the south of Sheffield. In the past, I've managed to get train tickets for around £30. When I went on-line to buy tickets a few weeks ago, the best price I could get was £64.50.

So instead I looked at splitting the journey into sections. Jill doesn't mind changing at Doncaster, so first I managed to get Doncaster to Newcastle tickets from National Express East Coast's own web site for just £33.35 - and their First Class ticket was just coppers more than Standard! Jill will buy on-train tickets for the Northern Rail services between Kiveton Bridge and Doncaster, and Newcastle and Prudhoe, bringing the total cost of the journey to £45.35, almost twenty quid cheaper - and with a fair chunk of First Class travel, too!

And while we're busy tightening our belts, here's a good way of saving money on refreshments for the journey. The Bite discount card gives a 20 per cent discount on purchases from selected food and drink retailers at many of the country's railway stations. You can easily save a couple of quid every time you buy a coffee and sandwich...

To Poland to mark the first birthday of the opening of the country's first deepwater container terminal at the city of Gdansk. It's an impressive facility, capable of handling deepwater container vessels and capturing a significant part of the Baltic's container traffic. Funded by an Australian bank, its modular design makes it a relatively simple task to expand as container traffic grows. DCT Gdansk realise that they need good connections to the rest of Poland, so they've already built a rail link and are campaigning to improve nearby roads so that lorries can quickly travel into the hinterland.

A: You plan for the upturn! Infrastructure investment creates short- and medium-term construction industry jobs and gives us renewed or expanded infrastructure such as port facilities, railways and roads so that the transport industry is well placed when the world economy takes a turn for the better. It's classic Keynesian economics, and a point that hasn't been overlooked by the chancellor. So, let's hope that next month's pre-budget report contains some real, new investment, and not just a "re-announcement" of spending already committed.

While parts of the North East are still drying out, I was wondering if anyone has given any thought to the export potential of this most prolific natural resource?

While we've been trying to get rid of our surplus rainwater by allowing it to run off into our rivers and the North Sea, other parts of Europe have been facing near-drought conditions. Barcelona, in particular, is having a tough time.

There's a water pipeline that connects Kielder to the Tees, via the Tyne and the Wear. The pipe was built to take the stuff to the steel and chemical industries on Teesside. It can't be that difficult to put the water into tanker ships and send it off to the parched Spanish mainland and islands.

Now you may think that desalination of seawater might be more efficient, but apparently not. There simply aren't enough hours of sunshine in Spain to power a plant of the size needed. Shipping is an affordable way to carry drinking water around, and to, the Med. So, as we've got more of the wet stuff than we can ever use, perhaps we could see it making a valuable contribution to the region's exports in the not too distant future.

It must have seemed like such a good idea at the time. East Midland Trains, under pressure to provide extra seats between Nottingham and Skegness on summer Saturdays so that Midlands holidaymakers could reach the nearby Butlins holiday centre without using cars, took the innovative step of hiring in two locomotives and five carriages from West Coast Railways, better known for running enthusiasts specials.