Ticket to Ride
Around the World on 49 Unusual Train Journeys
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Tom Chesshyre has made it his mission to experience the world through train travel - on both epic and everyday rail routes, aboard every type of train, from colonial steam locomotives to high-tech bullet trains. Join him on the rails and off the beaten track as he takes us on a whistle-stop tour of some of the most exhilarating journeys around the globe, from Sri Lanka to Tehran and beyond. With his trademark wit and humour, Tom takes us on fascinating adventures through diverse landscapes and cultures and introduces us to an ever-changing cast of memorable characters, all of whom share a passion for train travel. Whether you're an armchair traveller, a daily commuter or a seasoned train adventurer, this platform-hopping odyssey will open your eyes to the joys of life on two rails.
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This book starts out with the author hanging out with and discussing trainspotters. I persisted just long enough for him to move on and away from that topic and onto his journeys. Chesshyre explains that he sets out to understand why people love trains so much - I suppose it needed to cover trainspotters to achieve this goal, but it was a bit too much at first, and then became just scattered observation of them.
Ostensibly Chesshyre took 49 train journeys - it says so on the cover, although it's more like nine actual journeys, some of which are made up of multiple legs, sometimes running together, sometimes with other travel or flights between. There are another couple of chapters which are mashups of multiple journeys, which I guess then adds up to his 49. The also visits 22 countries although I only found 21.
Chesshyre writes well enough in capturing his journey. The narrative is a mix up of his actual experiences on the train (and getting to it etc); conversations with his fellow travellers (sometimes amusing, often dull or tedious); history about the country/area being passed through; history pertaining to trains in the country/area being passed through; details about the train. The details about the train are technical specifications, numbers, where it was manufactured etc - loads of things most people have no interest in - trainspotter stuff again).
Some chapters I found more interesting that others. Most likely this is the travel reader in me - a biased interest in places I have either been or want to go... so the Indian Pacific in Australia, the Trans-Siberian Thru Russian and on through China, India, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Iran were all good in places. I found the USA and Europe sections less interesting.
Overall I am not sure there is a specific target audience for this. For train enthusiasts, probably not enough train detail; for travel readers - probably too much peripheral information. It was an easy enough read, but filled with lots of trivial information about encounters with random people.
Lightly amusing enough that I read it all I suppose!
3 stars
