I COULD not help thinking, as Airport unrolled on my screen for what seemed the 100th time, that disasters had altogether more class and drama when they were conducted on the railways.
The machinery was more handsome, the surroundings more attractive, the pace more amenable and the standard of drama higher.
As all connoisseurs of the surprisingly extensive literature on the subject will know, the best Victorian railway disasters do not consist merely of an unexpected bang in the night.
They are preceded by a moment of the highest dramatic pathos and irony. The station staff discover that they have sent the Down Mail into the same section of track as the Up Express. It is too late to stop either train. They can only wait in anguish for the awful distant rumble which will signal the consummation of the now inevitable head-on collision.
I imagine similar painful sentiments are now preoccupying the person who first waved a green flag at that doom-laden chariot of our local political gods, the Through Train.
The more you look at this idea, the more unlikely it seems.