Review by Liz Dexter
Having had the great fortune to have travelled on many exciting railways to many exiting places elsewhere in the world, from the wide-open plains of America to the tea plantations of India, the ancient cities of Iran, the Australian Outback and the badlands of North Korea (and written about them too), I was about to set forth by means of the mode of transport that rattled down the end of my very own street in south-west London. From my home, a first-floor maisonette, I could hear these trains – ordinary British trains – rumble by at night. Sometimes, when freight wagons passed, my building even shook lightly, making me worry that roof tiles might (eventually, one day) come loose. British trains were not exotic trains like Peruvian trains or Japanese trains or trains in Cambodia or Sri Lanka. They were just regular British trains: ones that clattered by30 metres of so from my front door, transporting me and squadrons of commuters to workplaces in the city. Sometimes late. Often overcrowded. Regular British trains, in other words.
Yet I still wanted to take quite a few of these regular, ordinary British trains – as well as some quite irregular ones too – on quite a long journey along quite a few regular, ordinary British railways.
Tom Chesshyre is a well-known journalist and travel and adventure writer with twelve books under his belt before this one covering the world, often but not always by train. Here he decided to take a grip around the UK to celebrate the 200 years of passenger railways since the first Darlington to Stockton passenger journey in 1825. He describes a long, wobbly circle from Shildon, where it all started, back to Shildon, taking in all points of the compass from Penzance to Caernarfon to Thurso to Dungeness. He tries to visit as many heritage railways as he can during that journey, and shares affectionate and fun vignettes of trains, landscapes, towns, fellow travellers, fellow train enthusiasts and railway workers, paid and volunteer, as he goes.
Chesshyre’s aim is to celebrate British railways and the achievements that the British invention has made around the world. But he’s not the jingoistic patriot this makes him sound like – he’s interested in the invention and the people involved, and the jostling for a gauge for the lines, and who did well and who didn’t, and then he’s very interested in the heritage lines and the people, as well as the trains. He’s quite self-effacing and definitely positions himself as an interested amateur when he speaks to what he calls “train enthusiasts” rather than spotters, which gives a nice, friendly feel to the book.
An important point about this book, which he raises early and reiterates throughout it, is that it can only be a presentation of snapshots along the way, of stations, trains and hotels, and that he can only gather impressions, not the full story. He simply doesn’t have the time to do that. So he’s fairly matter-of-fact, though appreciating scenery and pretty stations and nice steam trains alike, and he always makes sure to find out what people like about their job or volunteer role, or their favourite type of train, so it doesn’t feel rushed or sketched in. He also develops more of an abiding interest in railways than perhaps he’d developed before on his international travels (this was the first book of his I’d read, though it won’t be the last), gathering a collection of books from various station bookshops that he has to keep posting home and gradually understanding the talk of the other enthusiasts.
Chesshyre works in interesting facts about British railways, for example details of the Bronte sisters and Queen Victoria’s interaction with trains. I was particularly pleased to see quite a lot of information about areas I know – Penzance in Cornwall and the Kentish coast (and he mentions my hyper-local, soon to be opened, Camp Hill Line!), but the whole book gives a lovely sense of place and people. I found him very good on the effect the coming of the railways had on places, from seaside towns to places that quickly became industrialised or full of commuters. He talks a little about the modern politics of train lines and drivers’ conditions at the end, after having encountered Beeching’s Axe all the way through; his points are clearly made and sensible, and he doesn’t go on too long, finishing off with an appreciation of his new vision of the geography of Britain based on our trains.
There’s a set of colour plates, with individual pictures that are quite small to be all fitted in, a list of trains taken and a comprehensive index. An ideal book to buy for your train or travel loving friend or for yourself, and I’m glad to find I have many more books of his to explore.
Liz Dexter hopes to at least see the first train on the newly opened Camp Hill Line in April. She blogs about reading, running and working from home at https://www.librofulltime.wordpress.com.
Tom Chesshyre, Slow Trains Around Britain: Notes from a 4,088-Mile Adventure on 143 Rides (Summersdale, 2025) 978-1837995271, 335pp., col. ill. hardback.
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