The most recommended railroad books

I read Monisha Rajesh’s earlier travel memoir, Around India in 80 Trains, while planning my own train journey in India. In this one, she circumvents the entire globe (technically more than once in terms of mileage). It’s the kind of book I wish I’d written myself because I would love to do a train journey like this! I love Rajesh’s descriptions of the places she passes through and the people she meets along the way, and of course, how it changes her to see the world through this lens.

An English novelist, a long-time resident of (and writer about) Italy, Parks is well placed to offer his hugely entertaining take on rail travel in Europe’s most gloriously maddening country. It’s neither fully a history book nor travelogue, though Parks writes divertingly and inspiringly about both history and travel. Instead, it’s partly an attempt to appreciate Italy through its railways – as he says early on, “if someone wanted to understand Italy, they might start by understanding how the train ticketing system works.” For anyone who has ever wrestled with the intransigence of an Italian rail conductor, stood forlornly waiting for an inexplicably delayed train, been crammed into a corridor with furiously smoking army conscripts, or been fed oranges by a garrulous Sicilian family, this book is a joy of recognition, despair, and delight.

This out-of-the-box book that takes you on a very Indian train trip on the lines of the iconic work of eminent Jules Verne has been my instant favourite right from the title and idea. The author, the Indian British Tourist went on a trip to the sub-continent on trains and has covered everything from commuter trains to hospital trains. I personally love this book for the various narratives and the “people stories” that reflect as the author goes on trips across the country in trains. The small stories capture the essence of India and bring out the magnitude of railways and how deeply it is connected to Indian social life. As one of my favorite rail authors Ian J. Kerr once told me in a historical context, “No railways, no India.” on how the iron web of railways brought together a nation.

This author is an auto-buy for me, and I could not put this book down as I expected. Unfortunately, I did end up having to put it down with 20 pages left because it was way too late at night, and it was SO HARD to do that, but when I picked it up again the next morning, those last 20 pages were fantastic. (I remember laughing out loud multiple times during my reading.)

The relationship between the Main and his stepdad was parenting goals. I loved that I fell in love with the Love-Interest at the same time as the Main. He was incredibly charming, and I thought it was very cool how we didn’t fully get to see that as a reader until the Main saw it.

Rydr is on her way from California to Chicago via rail, to meet a relative who will take care of her now that her grandmother no longer can. What I love most about this book—aside from the fact that it takes place on the California Zephyr, one of my very favorite train rides in the world—is that Rydr’s experience is so influenced by the strangers she meets on the train. That’s why I love train travel so much: you never know who you’re going to meet. And you almost always end up sharing a meal and a story with someone you would never have met otherwise. 

This is Paul Theroux’s travels around the coast of Britain in the 1980s.

It’s a true artist’s journey – he writes about whatever interests him, intrigues him, astonishes him, amuses him, and often what depresses him, from ugly holiday camps to grotesquely flirty hotel landladies, to train strikes. It’s not a pretty travelogue, more a close observation of decay and ruin, with the Falklands War glimpsed through news headlines, adding to the overall sense of an unstoppable cosmic engine of change and loss.

His prose is honest, graceful, and vivid, with a great ear for character and dialogue. All in all, an unexpectedly moving experience.  

I love the way there is a mystery within a mystery. A group of actors is staging a play for the benefit of the passengers on a transcontinental train trip across Canada. The protagonist, who is undercover and posing as a waiter, befriends the lead actor and takes a page out of Hamlet, using the play to pressure the villain into making a mistake and incriminating himself. Accurate details about working as a waiter lend a sense of ‘David versus Goliath’ to the storyline.

A multiple POV thriller that kept me up all night. This book awed me with its multiple POVs combined with unreliability and timeline jumps.

As the book shifted from one POV to the other and from one timeline to another, I loved how the author weaved in the backstories of the characters by showing the impact it had on the present timeline.

The writing. The style, the words used, and the way the sentences spun the story is something I still think about, years after I first read this book. It drew me in, lulled me into a false sense of security, then sprung a small nugget of what really happened. A brilliant tactic.

Back in the day, no self-respecting InterRail traveller would leave home without the iconic red Thomas Cook European timetable and while it’s still available in different formats these days, apps and websites have removed the urgency of travelling with a big book of timetables. But this sterling work, updated regularly, fills the gap between inspiration and destination – full of the nuts and bolts of European rail travel (what tickets, where, and how to buy) while featuring over fifty routes, complete with descriptions, diversions, recommendations, and discoveries. It’s brilliant for the armchair traveller, and invaluable for anyone eyeing a leisurely ride on the rails around Europe.

I can’t think of a more evocative start to a murder mystery than a steam train stuck in the snow on Christmas Eve. With no hope of getting to their destination, a group of unlikely allies gangs together to find shelter for the night.

Led by the mysterious Mr. Maltby of the Royal Physical Society, they survive a torturous trek through waist-high drifts and hole up in a stately home with the fires blazing but no one on the premises. There are bodies about the house, clues to be deciphered, and an ancient crime to uncover. I was overjoyed to discover this whodunit from 1937 that is full of quirky characters, unexpected twists, and more snow than any other Christmas mystery I’ve read.