There is local pressure in Virginia to electrify the rail connection between Richmond and Washington DC, and therefore to Amtrak's Northeast Corridor (NEC) serving Boston, New York and Washington. At the same time - and given plans to extend electrification to places like Charlotte and even Atlanta - it could be renamed the Atlantic Coast Corridor (ACC).

My ambitions are a little smaller. Why not extend it the few miles beyond Richmond to Richmond International Airport (RIC)?

Two railways get very close to the airport - one on the southern boundary and one on the northern boundary! It can't be difficult to connect one or the other - can it?

If done, the railway would then serve Newark Liberty International Airport, Baltimore Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport and Richmond International Airport.

IARO stands ready to help, as much as it can. For more about us, visit IARO's main web-site.

The point has sometimes been made that security on systems like the London Underground cannot be too intensive or London would stop. People say you cannot screen or search the bags of passengers going into the underground.

Yet it is done on the New Delhi metro.

When you go into the paid area of the station, you have to pass through a detector arch. If you are carrying a bag, you are usually directed to a side table for it to be searched. And because of the large Muslim population, there are separate searchers for male and female passengers.

It works, although it can cause horrendous queues at times. But people know it's going to happen and allow for it.

OK, London Underground carries nearly 3 million passengers a day, compared with 800,000 on the Delhi metro - but that has a smaller network and fewer stations.

You can have security checks at major stations!

Conventional wisdom for some years has been that, if a rail journey is less than three hours, it will attract more passengers than the parallel air service.

This is because most air journeys take at least three hours. You've got to get to the airport (say 30 minutes), check in and pass through security (an hour), wait (very few people cut it absolutely fine, so say up to 30 minutes), board, fly (at least 30 minutes), disembark and get to where you want to go (30 minutes).

If where you are coming from or where you want to go is at the airport - if you have a meeting there or are changing planes - then of course you can reduce the time: this changes the time equation and probably explains why people still fly between London and Paris or Brussels.

Equally, if the timetable doesn't match yours, you'll use the mode which suits you best - which is why there are two markets where rail carries more than air despite a 4.5 hour rail journey time.

I suspect that the 3 hour limit is growing. Why? Because rail travel time is much more useful time, much more usable time, than air travel time. Look at the calculation above - you are travelling for 3 hours but how much of that time can you actually use? Compare that with train travel time - once you are in your seat you are there, undisturbed, to do what you will. You can work (and many trains have lap-top connections): you can read, sleep, think, eat. You can use your phone (although it would be nice if you didn't share your conversation with the rest of the carriage!). You can talk to people. All of these are useful functions.

Indeed, I believe that in future calculations of generalised cost by different modes will need to account for the fact that while air travel time is a cost, with a negative value, rail travel time is a benefit, with positive value.

What do you think?

The editorial in June's International Railway Gazette commented that rail might be an old mode of transport, but it has clearly demonstrated its ability to change, adopt new technology and push out the boundaries. This is one of the reasons why the industry has a bright future - as long as it does not become complacent, because competing modes are also advancing rapidly.

The conclusion was supported by two developments - the ability of a Brazilian metre-gauge railway to haul 320-wagon trains of 44,160 tonnes, and developments of different systems of catenary-free electric light rail (very clearly written up later in the magazine).

I agree entirely. The more I travel on airport railways (and others), the more I see interesting developments which I try to bring to IARO members through our newsletter, "Air Rail Express", and the industry news page of our web-site, www.iaro.com/industrynews/

At the end of each issue of the newsletter are two good ideas. When I come across one, I put it in a file - and despite using one a month, the file just keeps growing!

IRJ's website - recently upgraded - is www.railjournal.com, and I commend it and the magazine to you!