I was much impressed by the second edition of the London Railway Atlas, a work of love by Joe Brown published by Ian Allen in 2009.

It gives track diagrams of the past, present and (where known) future rail networks in the Greater London area - a mammoth task.

The only defect I could find was that Heathrow Junction, the short-lived temporary station used prior to opening of Heathrow Express, had been put on the wrong side of the line! Email correspondence with the author revealed that he found it extremely difficult to find out exactly where the station had been: he'd guessed and will correct it for next time.

But all in all, it's a stunning piece of work!

The July/August issue of Public Transport International, the magazine of the UITP (Public Transport Union), has some interesting statistics in an article by Yves Amsler on integrated air-rail ticketing.

It says that the largest region in Europe for air passengers is the Ile-de-France (around Paris): this generates 80 million air passengers a year.

By contrast the ground-based public transport modes in the same region - RATP, SNCF and OPTILE - carry 3.6 billion. This is 44 times the air passenger count.

Clearly the average air traveller goes much further than the average bus passenger - but it's an interesting comparison.