Night Trains: The Rise and Fall of the Sleeper

Recommended reading for those who love passenger trains in general. The subject is European trains, so almost nothing applies to North America. The author is knowledgeable, the subject material is well rehearsed. The author's style includes digressions into many stories, histories, and anecdotes about the trains covered. It is part travel reporting and mostly just interesting reading for the train buff. If you don't like British writing styles or are looking for information on American trains, don't buy it.

I once headed a physics book review "Not for me, but may suit others" which does not seem to have been well received. Perhaps the same will apply to its reverse here. Railway books come in many forms, from those which give serious detail about the need for extra coal on the fire when approaching a certain incline, to those in which the train is simply incidental to the destinations visited. This one hits exactly the right note for me. One's given a vivid description of the experience of travelling on the train, including the atmosphere and architecture of the the endpoint stations (and, occasionally, some of the others). In addition (and this is what really appeals to me) there is a wonderful contrast with what the experience used to be like. The depressing point is that the luxury seems to have been removed: silver service dining has been replaced by microwaved meals on paper plates. Teak, mahogany and marquetry decor has been replaced by plastics. On the other hand, it seems that the lack of traveller numbers means that passengers are given the sort of individual attention from the train crew which is so badly lacking on the standard commuter routes. As well as writing entertainingly, the author provides ample references to descriptions of the same journeys in movies and books, both fiction and nonfiction, from various eras. Personally, I'm not much motivated to check any of these out, but next time I visit the UK, I plan to take one of the train experiences which aim to recapture the luxury of what rail travel used to entail.

My husband is an aficionado of all things 'trains'. This was a perfect addition to his library and he's delighted with it. I must say the book sellers, which I believe are in England, were wonderful in their communications with me - and honest about the fact they couldn't get the book to me in time for Christmas. But it arrived ahead of schedule in great condition and I can't thank Gray & Nash enough!

I had very high hopes for this book after I had seen it mentioned in a magazine article. Obviously, a wealth of knowledge has been poured into the book, but I really struggled to get one-half way through it, when I then gave up. Perhaps my lack of knowledge on the subject contributed to the frustration, but I found it to be poorly organized, with nearly unreadable composition, comprised of fits and starts of a mix of history and current events, complicated by "insider" terminology. Perhaps if I had a more European and British heritage, it would have been less of a struggle.

An enjoyable read - both charting the business side of the rise and fall of night trains and the personal side of Martin's love affair with them. the author's writing style makes this a quick, enjoyable read, an informed "getaway" if you are looking to both learn something and enjoy some light reading at the same time.

Written with detail yet quite a breezy read for the regular non rail person. Fascinating history and travel journey on various existing night trains (sleepers). My guess is that Norway and Russia will be the best remaining rides.

Wonderful history of the vanished and vanishing overnight trains of Europe, with the author's well written and often wry descriptions of his efforts to recreate them today.

Terrific book

Dass der 14 Illustrationen umfassende kleine Bildteil in der Mitte des Buches mit einer Luftaufnahme des kriegszerstörten Anhalter Bahnhofes in Berlin beginnt und in der Bildunterschrift darauf hingewiesen wird, dass der berühmte Speisewagen von Compiegne in der Nähe seinen Standort hatte, hat leider meine Erwartungshaltung gegenüber dem Text in eine bestimmte Richtung gelenkt. So habe ich die Passagen, die sich mit der Mitropa, dem deutschen Schlafwagenverkehr und deutschen Reisenden beschäftigen doch mit einem etwas kritischeren Blick gelesen. Der Text selber ist eine Mixtur aus einer knapp gefassten Geschichte des Schlafwagenverkehrs in Europa, zahlreichen Zitaten aus mehr oder weniger bekannten Werken und den persönlichen Erlebnissen des Autors bei seinen Versuchen, aus Literatur und Verkehrsgeschichte bekannte Reisen mit Nachtzügen zu wiederholen. Bei der der Schilderung seiner Reisen beschränkt Andrew Martin sich nicht auf den reinen Bahnbetrieb, dem Geschehen im Zug und auf den Bahnhöfen. Angesichts des Umfanges des Buches habe ich da nicht selten das Gefühl, dass hier Zeilen geschunden werden. Diese Mixtur, der man die journalistischen Erfahrungen des Autors anmerkt, ist zumeist gut lesbar und lässt den Leser immer wieder nachvollziehen, warum Martin das Verschwinden der Nachtzüge nachtrauert. Angesichts der mir bisweilen zu stark englisch-(französischen) Sicht des Themas, halte ich eine subjektive Abwertung dieses Titels für zulässig.

The research and detail in this most readable and engaging of books is worthy of a PhD thesis. This is, too, a romantic book (small r - though encounters with a large R oft took place), elegiac, wistful and nostalgic. As a child, I remember well the excitement, the sounds, the smells, the movement of the night train to Edinburgh. Change is usually for the best - but not in the case of the demise of the night train. There was something individualistic about them which, today, Virgin Trains East Coast - clean, sanitised, oft efficient - cannot match as they purr into Waverley station by early afternoon, having thundered up from London. Will the Caledonian survive much longer, with so many night trains having disappeared on the continent? I wonder.

This is a great sequel to Martin's 'Belles and Whistles'and railway [or railroad] enthusiasts will enjoy another witty, erudite and enthusiastic popular history of the railway era in Europe--which despite air travel is still fighting a so far successful rearguard action to stay in business. In 'Night Trains', Martin zeroes in on the sleeping car trains, the most famous and glamorous of which [for the English] was the Golden Arrow which ran from London to Paris until its death in 1974. For more expansive international travellers, the most famous and romantic sleeper train was, of course, the Orient Express which in its heyday went from Paris to Istanbul via such exotic cities as Vienna,Belgrade , Bucharest and Sofia. As Martin points out, Orient was operated by the Compagne Internationale des Wagons Lits, builder of the first luxury sleeping cars. In various forms, this train has somehow survived, though link-ups with the London end of the route have now been severed --thanks probably to the superfast four-hour London-Paris sub-English channel service now offered by the Anglo-French operators. Overnight trains offer a cornucopia of story ideas for imaginative novelists. Martin notes that Agatha Christie [Death on the Orient Express], Graham Greene [Stamboul Train] have used the dramatic backdrops of a train travelling through the black night for some outstanding fiction. One omission in Martin's round-up of still-existing sleeper trains is the Francisco de Goya night train run by RENFE from Paris to Madrid on a nightly basis--and the scene of a gruesome terrorist-linked murder in a recently-published spy novel.

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the saying goes. Well, this one you can. A steam engine thunders into the night, silhouetted against a light over the horizon – a distant town, perhaps. The coaches it hauls are defined by the yellow glow of their windows, trailing into nothingness around the book’s spine. A hazy moon keeps watch above while the underside of the engine’s smoke glows orange, reflecting the open firebox. It is an evocative image, recalling the heyday of the sleeper: the romance, the style and the power. That image captures what for Andrew Martin is clearly the essence of the night train. It is, however, a world that is long past and his book is something of a lament for its passing as the European sleeper services continue to be wound down. A recurring phrase throughout the book is ‘the service ceased operating in [whenever]’, as if marking the passing of veterans of another era, which in many ways they are. In Night Trains, Martin takes six journeys that mirror historic sleeper services and which can still just about be made on the rail network. In fact, it’s more than just sleeper services that he has a love affair with (one which doesn’t always run true); his love is with the Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits, the historic pan-European company. This is itself something of an irony because as he also makes clear, he much prefers railways in public ownership. The chapters skilfully interweave the story of his own journeys with those of the historic services he’s replicating and each is fleshed out with beautifully-observed human interest, both now and in the past. Indeed, that human interest frequently travels into the fictional zone as well as the actual one: he seems to have read virtually every novel and watched every film set in or around sleeper services. It’s an unusual technique but it works well. After all, those books and films were rooted in reality and well-researched. Agatha Christie was a regular on the Orient Express, for example. The journeys also illustrate why the sleeper is dying off. Some journeys go smoothly, others are beset by difficulties I won’t mention here to avoid spoilers but suffice to say they are hardly an advert for sleeper travel. The trains are rarely busy and his Paris-Istanbul trip is a nightmare of logistics. The reality is that for people unlike him (or me) who do it for the experience, sleepers rarely compete on any of the quartet of travel criteria: cost, convenience, comfort and speed. Is it churlish to mark Night Trains with only four stars? It is mostly an extremely good book but I felt two things prevented me from giving it the full five. Firstly, it’s a bit unbalanced. Four of his six journeys start in Paris, for example. Granted that Paris was something of a WL hub but the book isn’t explicitly about just WL sleepers and we do end up covering some of the same ground as a result. And secondly, Martin is something of an inconsistent pedant in his approach to detail, which is amusing if sometimes irritating. All in all though, it’s a good idea well executed and if it encourages more people to head off onto the rails and into the night (while they still can) then that’s great. If it doesn’t, they should still enjoy the journey in the comfort of their own armchair.

One of the worst books I've ever read.