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Writing the Rails by Edward Goodman Train adventures by World's best loved write
Writing the Rails by Edward C Goodman
Train adventures by the World's best loved writers
Hard Cover w/ dust jacket
368 pages
Copyright 2001
CONTENTS
Fanny Kemble-A Trip on Stephenson'c Rocket, August, 183010
Nathaniel Hawthorne-The Celestial Railroad12
Charles Dickens-from Dombey and Son14
John Ruskin-from The Seven Lamps of Architecture18
Henry David Thoreau-"What's the Railroad to Me?"19
Emily Dickinson-"I Like to See It Lap the Miles"20
Walt Whitman-"To A Locomotive in Winter"22
Charles Dickens-"Dickens in Danger" 24
Stephen Ambrose-from Nothing Like It in the World26
Archibald MacLeish-"Burying Ground by the Ties"38
Mark Twain-from The Innocents Abroad40
John Ruskin-"Fors Clavigera"46
Lewis Carroll-from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There 48
Thomas Cook-from The Daily Mail52
Robert Louis Stevenson-"From a Railway Carriage"54
Thomas Chambers-from A Manual of Diet in Health and Disease56
W. H. Davies-Hobo's Train58
George Curzon-The Gloom and Grandeur of Central Asia62
Czar Alexander III-"To Unite the Great Siberian Provinces ... "64
Thomas Hardy-"Faintheart in the Railway Train"66
Clifton Hood-from 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York68
Robert Louis Stevenson-Emigrant Train80
David Graves George-"Wreck of the Old 97"88
Rudyard Kipling-"Romance"90
Alan B. Govenar and Jay E Brakefield-The Railroads Create Deep Ellum92
Hilaire Belloc-Belloc Breaks a Vow98
Edith Wharton-A Journey100
E. M. Forster-from Where Angels Fear to Tread108
E. M. Forster-from Howard's End112
Rupert Brooke-"Dawn"114
G. K. Chesterton-The Prehistoric Railway Station116
Sherwood Anderson-"Evening Song" 118
Siegfried Sassoon-"Morning Express"120
Siegfried Sassoon-"A Local Train of Thought"122
Mary McCarthy-The Cicerone124
Katherine Mansfield-Father and the Girls130
Katherine Mansfield-The Little Governess132
Carl Sandburg-"Work Gangs"138
E Scott Fitzgerald-from The Great Gatsby140
Langston Hughes-"Homesick Blues"142
Langston Hughes-"Pennsylvania Station"144
John Dos Passos-Bedbug Express146
Stephen Spender-"The Express"150
Peter Fleming-A Crash on the Trans-Siberian Railway152
Rebecca West-Deliverance154
George (Henry Sandham) Behrend-Chapter 12: No Train Tonight162
Dale Wasserman-Flipping the Meat Train170
E. Scott Fitzgerald-from Tender is the Night180
Edna St. Vincent Millay-"From a Train Window"182
Box-Car Bertha-from Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Box Car Bertha 184
W. H. Auden-"Gare du Midi"190
Simone de Beauvoir-from L'Amerique au jour le jour (America Day by Day)192
H. V. Morton-from In Search of South Africa196
Roger Lloyd-Watching the Trains Go By200
Alfred Maund-from The Big Boxcar206
W. A. Tuplin-The Old Great Western212
Russell Baker-Spartan's Odyssey216
V. S. Naipaul-In the Middle of the Journey220
Paul Theroux-The Kalka Mail for Simla226
Michael Wood-Zambezi Express236
Kirsti Simonsuuri-Kaamos, The Darkest Time of the Year246
Henry Kisor-from Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America248
Francois Barcelo-from The Man Who Stopped Trains252
Scyld Berry-Adelaide to Alice Springs 258
Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton-Of Time and the Train262
Stuart Stevens-from Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China's Ancient Silk Road266
Eric Zorn-Rolling Home for Christmas: Riding Amtrak in the 1980s270
Lisa St. Aubin de Teran-Love Letters from the Train278
Marda Burton- Whistlin'Through Dixie282
Terry Pindell-Passages: The Lake Shore Limited286
Maureen Hurley-Night Train to Moscow: Waging Peace300
Mary Morris-from Wall-to-Wall: From Beijing to Berlin By Rail304
George E Scheer III-Aboard the Crescent310
Michael Palin-Pretoria, Johannesburg, Soweto, a Gold Mine, and the Blue Train to Cape Town318
Damian Sharp-When a Monkey Speaks322
Michael M. Lewis-Amtrak Diarist: Train People326
William Poole-Down to the Pacific Shore330
Paul Theroux-The "Virgin de Guadalupe" Express to Barcelona and Beyond334
Donald G. McNeil Jr.-Out of Pretoria, by Luxury Train338
Ian Frazier-Take the F344
Terry Pindell-Excerpt of the Man With Fire348
Bill Bryson-from In a Sunburned Country352
Paul Theroux-Gravy Train: A Private Railway Car356
Permissions Acknowledgments363
Index366
INTRODUCTION
The stories, essays, poetry and other pieces that make up this anthology have been carefully selected to reflect the multifarious glories of travel by rail, from the Orient Express to the New York City subway.
Train travel is a world apart, and its lure has beckoned since the first steam locomotives were invented in the nineteenth century. Taking a train on vacation to Canada, the Rockies, the Riviera and the Alps at one time was an exciting adventure, and the mystique of the Pullman cars in the United States and the wagon-lits in Europe has inspired writers to set short stories and entire novels on the railway.
The authors in this anthology have all discarded the safe cocoon of home and embarked on their own journeys, either fictional or nonfictional, into the world of train travel. I hope you will enjoy reading the selections within and perhaps be inspired to travel by train soon, to try to recapture some of the glamour and mystery of the rails.
I am indebted to everyone at Black Dog & Leventhal. Their dedication to this project was much appreciated and their guiding comments and criticisms shaped the book. I would also like to thank J. P. Leventhal, publisher, for his enthusiasm and encouragement through every stage.
I want to thank my parents, Harry K. and Shirley E. Goodman and my sister Helen J. Goodman for their continued support in my writing. This book is dedicated to my maternal grandparents Chester M. and Helen S. Eisaman, who used to take me to the train tracks to wave at the caboose and who set my heart dreaming of train travel.
Ted Goodman New York, May 2001
DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION
This collection of rich and inviting train travel stories by renowned writers from around the world and throughout history is a feast for the armchair vagabond. The essays, historic accounts, fiction, poetry, songs and other pieces that comprise this anthology have been carefully selected from the widest range of sources to reflect the glories of travel by rail, from a jaunt on the Orient Express to an express ride on a New York City subway.
So many of the world's great writers have celebrated train travel: Mary McCarthy on Italian railways; Paul Theroux on the old Patagonia Express; Lewis Carroll from Through the Looking Glass; and E Scott Fitzgerald from Tender Is the Night, among many others, describe memorable journeys of fact and fiction. Selections by such poets as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Thomas Hardy and Langston Hughes celebrate the romance and adventure of traveling by train. Each piece is introduced by a brief biographical sketch of the author, adding context and meaning to each selection and enlightening the casual reader on some of the great voices in literature.
From Europe, the Far East, South America and the great plains of America, the stories collected here encompass all manner of traveling by rail. Included are tales from all social classes and eras: Dale Wasserman writes of "flipping" freight trains as a teenage hobo in the 1930s; Stuart Stevens imparts a sense of the exotic in his description of his journey by train along China's ancient Silk Road; Eric Zorn describes riding the rails on an Amtrak train as a modern-day traveler headed home for Christmas. Each piece commemorates the lyrical romance of train travel and delivers readers straight into the heart of a great adventure. There are wistful depictions of standing by the side of the tracks watching trains rumble by; odes to the great chain gangs of a bygone era; and poems about the changing view from the window of a train in motion. Illustrated throughout with enchanting line drawings depicting Pullman sleeping cars, old-fashioned luxury dining cars, railway stations and more, the book's visual appeal complements and enhances the exotic and eclectic collection of stories within.
Whether your true love is travel, great literature or trains, you'll get lost in this wonderfully diverse compilation that extends to all corners of the globe and deep into the imaginations of our finest writers.
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