A trip to the Far North lines involved a break of trains and time at Carlisle one Friday. Also taking a break was the APT between test runs. When I was at Paddington, a coaching stock department colleague announced of the APT ‘It’s like trying to run a Rolls Royce on Austin 7 money’. Which precisely summed up the position of the railways in the overall budgeting scheme of things and not just at the time because now the private companies have to be subsidised as well, meaning the status quo continues.