Slow Trains Around Britain by Tom Chesshyre aimed to celebrate 200 years since the first steam engine ran from Stockton to Darlington. That was on 7th May, but I didn’t see the book till June. Getting it reviewed for July was the best I could do. I’ve always loved trains, steam is great to look at, but the current ones are generally more comfortable. I have no idea how my mother coped with taking four children to the south coast on a compartment train. No corridor like the Harry Potter train. But back to the book…
Slow Trains Around Britain: Notes from a 4,008-mile Adventure on 143 Rides
by Tom Chesshyre
Join travel writer and self-confessed “train nut” Tom Chesshyre as he celebrates 200 years of passenger railways on a zigzagging tour around the UK – where trains (proudly) began
In a small market town in the northeast of England in 1825, something momentous ticket-bearing human beings started moving along wrought-iron tracks on a contraption with engine-powered wheels. The contraption was called a “train”. What happened in Darlington, along a 26-mile line to Stockton, would kickstart the worldwide railway revolution. Today, 1.3 million miles of tracks crisscross the planet.
To celebrate the 200th anniversary of this groundbreaking event, Tom Chesshyre embarks on a journey around the country that invented trains, taking in many heritage lines maintained by armies of enthusiasts. On a long, circular series of rides beginning and ending in Darlington, Chesshyre enjoys the scenery, seeks out the history, dodges delays (best he can), reports on the current (often shambolic) state of British railways, and lets the rhythm of the clattering tracks reveal what it is about trains – especially wonderful old trains – that we love so much.
My Review
I wonder if they do history of the Victorian era in schools nowadays? I absorbed a great deal of it, railways, factories, industrial revolution, Queen Victoria. So, even if you don’t like trains, you may like the historical anecdotes. Or the tour of some interesting and not often heard of places in Britain, or the strange and wonderful variety that is the ‘British’ race. Which is a whole load of mixtures since before history was written down…
Tom Chesshyre likes travelling by train. He’s done it in many interesting places. India, Peru… When he realised that the 200th anniversary of the first railway journey was upon us, he set out to celebrate the origins of arguably the most successful British export of all time.
Railway enthusiasts, aka train spotters, have something of a bad name in the UK. Not because they aren’t nice polite people, but because… they spot trains. It’s probably the only thing below bird watching. So Tom Chesshyre worried that in setting off on this epic journey, which had plenty of sidetracks on various whims, he might meet these weird people and even be mistaken for them. He discovered that they really are kind, gentle people. They guide you to the best spots, pick the better routes, and help you find coffee close to a station. And they will reveal fascinating facts that the guidebooks had left out.
Fascinating
I found much to be fascinated by in this book. And the author delivered it with love, panache, brilliant word-pictures and a good deal of quiet humour. It’s thoroughly English. Except for the Scottish bits. And that sent me off in raptures. Once upon a time I had this plan to do London – Mallaig and back over a weekend in June. I could see all the glory of the countryside in the long hours of evening daylight.
And, having thoroughly enjoyed this book, I found myself checking the timetables to see if I could do this from Southampton. I knew I could do it from London, and from Norwich, but when I first came here, I couldn’t do it from Southampton. Thank the powers that be, the Caledonian Sleeper is back. It’ll take me half a day longer, but at least I’ll be on a train for that extra. Maybe this time next year. Since the train appears to be fully booked for weeks, at any rate.
So, like Tom Chesshyre, I am probably exactly the right type of person to be labelled a Train Nut.*
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* Other examples of train nut include taking rides on every Heritage Railway one comes across. Or volunteering to take a guinea pig to be rehomed in Scotland because it meant a day’s ride on one of my favourite lines…
I think I’d like that book! I kind of am a train nut, too, particularly for the historic rail lines we have in a few places–riding the steam train from Durango to Silverton (Colorado) was supposedly for the kids, but really for me 😀
My dad was a ‘train nut’ and even took me on one of his railway trips, to Belgium. I also grew up near a Heritage steam railway in Sussex, the Bluebell Line, and we could hear the whistle from our house. Decades later, my first ife and I lived in Norwich, and her mother lived near another Heritage steam line, the narrow gauge Bure Valley Railway. Great memories of both trains and lines.