There’s something about the rhythm of a train that gets into your bones. I’ve been chasing that sound since I was a boy, sitting in the corner seat of a carriage somewhere between London and the Kent coast, nose pressed against the glass as the hedgerows whipped by. Now, at nearly fifty, with a lifetime’s worth of ticket stubs and half a dozen chipped railway station mugs in my kitchen, I still find myself booking journeys for the sheer pleasure of the ride.
Some trains are about speed. Others are about scenery. And then there are the ones that hold something deeper—those overnight rides where the world outside disappears into black, and the train becomes its own little country of strangers and stories.
One autumn in New Hampshire, I boarded a night train that wound its way up through the White Mountains just as the leaves were at their fiery best—scarlets, golds, and russets blazing in the last light before dusk. The scent of woodsmoke drifted through open station doors, and every time we stopped, the cool night air rushed in like a greeting. There was no dining car, no frills—just the occasional shuffle of boots in the aisle and the muted conversations of people who knew there was nowhere else they had to be. Outside, the moon rose over ridgelines painted in deep shadow, and I felt as if we were gliding through a living oil painting.
If New Hampshire was quiet, the Eastern & Oriental Express was theatre. I took it years later, a journey from Bangkok through Malaysia to Singapore, and it felt like stepping into a film set. There were polished brass fittings, teak panels, and the faint scent of something floral in the corridors. Dinner was served in starched white, the sound of the wheels mingling with the clink of silverware. Outside, the jungle pressed close to the tracks, alive with the heat and hum of the tropics. I stayed up far later than I meant to, talking with a couple from Sydney in the lounge car as the train curved through darkness, our glasses sliding slightly on the table with each turn.
The Netherlands gave me something altogether unexpected: lavender fields at dawn. I’d boarded a late service from Amsterdam heading south, expecting only the dark blur of countryside. But as the sky began to lighten, the windows filled with row upon row of lavender, their violet blooms glowing against the pale morning mist. The train slowed for a small station, and for a moment, I could smell it—the soft, earthy perfume drifting in. It was fleeting, almost like a dream, but it stayed with me long after I stepped onto the platform.
Overnight trains are strange things. You arrive in a place you don’t yet know, carrying the scent of where you’ve just been. You make fleeting friends in the dining car, or in the narrow space between sleeping compartments, only to part without even exchanging names. You learn the particular language of train travel—the nods, the sidesteps in narrow corridors, the way silence feels companionable when you’re both staring out into the dark.
The last train home is never just a way to get somewhere. It’s a moving room where time feels suspended, where the world shrinks to the length of the carriage and the night wraps itself around you. And for me, it’s still the purest way to travel—not for speed, not even for the scenery, but for the rhythm that carries you, steady and unhurried, toward the next place waiting to be found.
Signed: Allen Barrymore, Trainspotter
