My dad died, in January. Which sucks. Since then, I've found finding myself cataloguing the various things I got from him, from my love of Only Fools & Horses and the work of Douglas Adams, to being slightly too fond of a drink. It's strange, in its way, the things we get from our parents that we take for granted – so much so that we stop thinking about where they came from at all.

Anyway – one of the things I did get from Dad, I think, is my interest in infrastructure and how places physically work. He was a water engineer, rather than a train nerd, but nonetheless, I think it was his own infrastructure geekiness that led my father to add the Buzzfeed (previously) and Guardian (soon) journalist Jim Waterson on Facebook, just so that he could occasionally argue with him about major works projects somewhere.

I've got a column about my dad in this week's issue of New Statesman. So I thought this was a good time to invite Jim back to the podcast, to talk, briefly, about my Dad, and at rather greater length about trains, as Jim walks me through his top 10 British railway journeys.

Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.