The railways have survived into the 21st century by constantly reinventing themselves. Written off all too frequently by parsimonious politicians as a 19th-century invention made redundant by the car and the aeroplane, trains have enjoyed a remarkable renaissance. Most happily, the sleeper has made a comeback, despite the fact that towards the end of the past century the mostly state-owned rail companies decided it was too much hassle to provide couchettes and compartments on trains running through the night. These trains got in the way of essential track maintenance; their use tended to be seasonal, and much of the rolling stock was well past its sell-by date. Budget airlines and high-speed rail further contributed to their demise.
However, as Monisha Rajesh has found to her delight, not only have many long–established routes survived but new players, taking advantage of rules encouraging competition, have emerged to fill a need. That need is at the heart of this book. It is not just about train travel but rather about the way we get around. In Sweden, a private operator runs a service called Snalltaget (the ‘kind train’), while a Belgian-Dutch co-operative has created the ‘Good Night Train’. Even some of the national rail companies have got in on the act, notably the Austrian railway ÖBB, which has created a whole set of services across central and northern Europe in response to the renewed interest in this traditional form of travel. Covid, which initially killed train travel, has proved to be a boost, encouraging staycations and the notion of ‘slow travel’ whereby the journey is part of the holiday.
Rajesh, a British journalist whose parents are Indian, was seemingly a train enthusiast from birth and already has three railway-trip books to her name. She uses her journeys both to relate her immediate experiences through encounters with fellow travellers and to provide the context of the lines on which she travels. It is by no means all backpackers, train-spotters and oldies taking advantage of the same Interrail tickets they enjoyed in their youth. She is excellent at drawing out the reasons why people are travelling by train and most have a story to tell. There are usually cheaper alternatives, so most of the passengers have a specific purpose, such as the woman taking her son to university the slow way in order to spend quality time with him, or the man teaching his five-year-old how to interact with strangers. There are also regular commuters, and some of these trains, such as the Dogu Express, which runs from Ankara to Kars near the Armenian border, and the Norwegian trains heading north in the summer, are so popular that seats fill up as soon as they go on sale.
Rajesh does not shy from the darker side of the industry. Part of the Norwegian rail network was built by slave labour during the second world war on the orders of the German occupiers, who were keen to extract vital minerals from the far north of the country. The Norwegian rail operator was not an innocent bystander in this process, but rather facilitated the Germans in doing so.
Rajesh also highlights a night train journey like no other when she drops in on a Holocaust survivor whose life was saved when the train he was on was hijacked by the Belgian resistance and, aged just 11, he escaped into the bush while his mother remained on board to be gassed at Auschwitz. Rajesh explains that the Germans deliberately ran these death convoys at night in order to hide them from the Belgian public.
This is not quite the world tour the subtitle suggests since there are omissions, such as Japan and Russia. But Rajesh obviously had to include India on her travels and also braves the Peruvian Andes and Amtrak, ‘bringing me into the fold of Middle America’. Despite the occasional trips down branch lines where she perhaps should not have ventured, as they provide a tad more detail than necessary, especially about the vagaries of her digestive system, her encounters with local travellers offer an insight into the lives of people we would never meet on a flight. Indeed, as she says, trains, and especially those operating on long overnight trips, are made for communication and interchange, in contrast to planes where people are largely confined to their seats.
On her favourite routes, there are dining cars, or at the very least a bar that serves local beer, and only the most introverted or taciturn will not start to chat to the people with whom they have, by chance, shared the experience of overnight travel. Rajesh teases out many intriguing stories, though like her we never find out whether the heavily pregnant woman went on to have a successful delivery or if that quiet young man finished his university course. The book is rather like the journeys themselves: a bit random and mazy, with occasional longueurs, but full of the stuff of life.
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