After all [Time Out Columnist]

THE FIRST MONTH of 2015 is the perfect time to sum up some of the last year???s ???After All??? reader challenges. 2014 was a good year for this column, which will mark its 8th birthday next June: it not only won a prestigious TABPI award in the USA, but also registered an absolute record in the number of reader responses. By far the most popular reader challenge was the ???Trains??? Names??? in issue 10, where I asked you to send me peculiar names of trains you have travelled on or spotted. I also invited humorous suggestions of what trains could be called. The response was overwhelming, and here are the best entries (in no particular order, as they say on ???X Factor???): The real (existing and no-longer-existing) train names: The Loreley, which used to go ??? rather mysteriously ??? from Liverpool to Harwich and ???was formed of a pair of CI156s??? (Nick Samuel); The Ghan, ???after Afghan camel drivers who provided transport in the Australian deserts before the advent of trains??? (George Wardle and Stuart McDiarmid); The Indian Pacific from Perth to Sydney (Mark Paulton, who also attached a train names map of Australia, with such self-explanatory monikers as Spirit of the Outback and The Inlander); and, last but not least, The Romance Express, which runs a narrow-gauge track from near Mito City to the ???sacred site of Nikko??? in central Hoshu, Japan (Ken Dent). I don???t need to explain why that last train reminded me of the infamous Red Arrow overnighter from Moscow to Leningrad, also known as the Train of Love.