Night Trains: The Rise and Fall of the Sleeper Paperback – May 15, 2018

“… the Night Ferry offered the novelty of being seasick on a train. There was a porcelain seasickness bowl in every compartment, and luggage was secured in a net. This blurring of travel categories was part of its fascination. There was a lifebelt in every compartment …” ‒ from NIGHT TRAINS, referring to the pre-Channel Tunnel London to Paris overnight sleeperHaving experienced overnight sleeper trains in the United States ‒ beginning in 1961 on a Los Angeles to Grand Canyon run and most recently on Amtrak’s Los Angeles to Albuquerque service, I was attracted to Andrew Martin’s NIGHT TRAINS: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLEEPER thinking it might be relevant to my American journeys. I discovered I was misled, though not by any malicious intent on the part of the author.Martin’s NIGHT TRAINS is a nostalgic look at the sleepers of EUROPE, and should appeal to readers whose attachment to those rail services derives from either actually travelling on them or vicarious exposure via twentieth century films and literature. However, my only experience with such was a 1984 sleeper from Moscow to Leningrad, an encounter so lacking charm and substance that I can’t recall the details of the departure and arrival stations or the transit between!The author’s standard for excellence is apparently the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (Wagon-Lits, WL or W-L) during its heydays of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. This company most famously operated the rolling stock of the “Orient” sleeper expresses.Here, in an attempt to relive (albeit perhaps unsatisfactorily) the classic experience, Martin travels on six overnight sleepers that were currently still operating at the time of his research for the book (but not necessarily at publication). These included the “Blue Train”, the “Nordland Railway”, the “Sud Express”, the “Berlin Night Express”, and the “Orient Express.” For one such as myself not acquainted or enamored of European sleeper services, this part of Andrew’s narrative provided some minimal entertainment value. Otherwise, too much of NIGHT TRAINS is an unexciting recitation of facts, such as (regarding the Sud Express):“The opening, in 1895, of the line running west from (Medina del Campo) to Fuentes de Onoro on the Portuguese border gave the option of cutting out Madrid, which the Sud Express had previously passed through. The option wasn’t always taken, and the train would divide at Campo for either Lisbon or Madrid.”Well, ok. Whatever.NIGHT TRAINS is likely a must read for a niche audience. Conceding that, I’ll award a generous but noncommittal three stars and leave the rave reviews to the readers who care more about the topic than I.I should note in conclusion that another travel narrative,  Walk the Lines: The London Underground, Overground  by Mark Mason, was also written for a niche audience. In that case, since I inordinately love London and its Underground, I was able to relate and give a positive review. I get it.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 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.

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.

Really good read - i tried to read one of his railway novels once and it didn't really work for me but I really liked this book - so five stars. He's done his research but he wears it lightly. He also writes about his own experiences honestly so that while it's a bit sad that quite a few of the trains he writes about are no longer running - at least we better understand why it's happened. It occurred to me several times while reading Night Trains that Martin is that rare beast - the sort of guy you might actually want to talk to if you met him on a train.

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.

Sad to hear that night trains going because I have travelled on a lot of them but notice Andrew Martin has not been non the ~Radstadt Express that goes to Graz one half of the train divides, one half goes to Hungary then other to Graz which is the capital of Styria, and have been on them to Vienna and also to Milan and Rome what do folk now do have to sit in a carriage overnight the Wagonslit were lovely and one made such friends on the Couchette Service. But relax we still have the overnight sleeper to Penzance and the Royal Caledonian Sleeper to Scotland is being upgraded to make it more like a 'hotel'. My husband and I have lots of memories of the sleeper services in Europe as I am terrified of planes having once been in a near aircraft crash.

I did enjoy this book, especially the awesome cover. That said, it’s made me realise that I am nowhere near as much of a train geek as I thought I was… It was a little tricky to keep up with all of the historical references.Best part is Andrew’s travelogue from the few remaining European sleepers. I would have loved to have been around during the heyday of sleepers, but the impression I got from this book was that this mode of travel is largely extinct now.All in all, a decent read!