IT WAS supposed to be a romantic trip back into the past, a happy journey by train to revive memories of a treasured honeymoon. But this was no brief encounter.

Richard and Dorothy Whiting were married on December 27, 1952, and nearly half a century later, they retraced their swift rail trip from York to Wiltshire. At which point the dream ended and the bumpy reality of rail travel today began, with delays, a broken locomotive, missing reservations, no hot drinks and a lost connection.

The past always looks rosy from a certain distance, but in this case, the Whitings might well wonder if progress is all it's cracked up to be.

Updated: 10:34 Thursday, January 11, 2001