On the Slow Train Again: Twelve More Great British Railway Journeys

by Michael Williams

Michael Williams has spent the past year traveling along the fascinating rail byways of Britain for this new collection of journeys. Here is the "train to the end of the world" running for more than four splendid hours through lake, loch, and moorland from Inverness to Wick, the most northerly town in Britain. He discovers a perfect country branch line in London’s commuterland, and travels on one of the slowest services in the land along the shores of the lovely Dovey estuary to the far west of Wales. He takes the stopping train across the Pennines on a line with so few services that its glorious scenery is a secret known only to the regulars. Here, too, is the Bittern Line in Norfolk and the Tarka Line in North Devon as well as the little branch line to the fishing port of Looe in Cornwall, rescued from closure in the 1960's and now celebrating its 150th anniversary taking families on holiday to the seaside. From the most luxurious and historic—aboard the Orient Express—to the most futuristic—on the driverless trains of London’s Docklands Light Railway—here is a unique travel companion celebrating the treasures of our railway heritage from one of Britain’s most knowledgeable railway writers.

Genres: Travel, Audiobook, Trains, Railways

224 pages, Hardcover

Published May 9, 2011

About the author

Michael Williams writes widely on railways for many publications, including the Daily Mail, The Independent, the Independent on Sunday, the New Statesman, The Oldie and the railway specialist press. He is a veteran Fleet Street journalist, having held many senior positions, including Deputy Editor of the Independent on Sunday, Executive Editor of the Independent and Head of News at The Sunday Times. He is currently Senior Lecturer in the School of Journalism, Media and Communication at the University of Central Lancashire. He commutes regularly by train on the 440-mile return journey between his home in London's Camden Town and his office at Preston in Lancashire.

Reviews

[Joe O'Donnell]

As an ardent fan of travelling writing and something of a train nerd, I was expecting to love this book. Unfortunately, "On the Slow Train Again" is a crushing disappointment.
Williams neither has the comic flair or the socio-cultural insights to make his excursions worth persisting with. A travel book that seems to be perpetually stuck in a siding.

[Laurence]

Interesting in itself, but probably more for subject matter than quality of writing. Would perhaps be better with a couple less journeys to leave room for more stories. Informative and generally interesting nonetheless

[Lee Osborne]

Picked this up in a charity shop, and was keen to give it a read as I'm looking at writing a railway-related travelogue myself. It's been bit of a theme in my reading of late.

The author has picked a decent variety of interesting train journeys around Britain here, and has described them in an accessible, readable and generally quite decent style, but I did have a few annoyances. The ones that really jumped out were lazy demonisation of Dr. Beeching, and related to that, a constant harping on about a "golden age" of railways I'm not convinced ever really existed. It felt like there were a few too many lazy generalisations on these fronts. I don't think anyone has ever really written about Beeching in a fair and unbiased way, and this book occasionally falls into the tedious trope of portraying him as an evil man gleefully shutting lines for the fun of it. That's always been a very long way from the truth. There's too much nostalgia in the book too, and I find that annoying. But...to balance that, there's lots of interesting information on places to go and things to see, and it's a generally uplifting and varied read.

It was written in 2010, and it feels like the world has completely changed since then - some of it feels quite out of date, especially as railway nationalisation is now well advanced, and certain types of train described here are now either very rare or extinct. The railway has changed surprisingly quickly in that time. I wouldn't bother going out of your way to secure a copy, but it's worth a read if you find one.

[James Tidd]

Michael Williams' second book On the Slow Train Again, is the follow-up to On the Slow Train. Michael takes his readers on the following twelve journeys.

1 Norwich to Sheringham
2 Inverness to Wick and Thurso
3 Liskeard to Looe
4 Morecambe to Leeds
5 Bedford St. John's to Bletchley
6 Wolverhampton to Aberystwyth and Pwllheli
7 Brockenhurst to Lymington Town and Pier
8 London Victoria to Bath and Bristol
9 Blackpool to Colne
10 London Waterloo to Barnstaple
11 Darlington to Whitby
12 Bank and Tower Gateway to Greenwich

In this sequel, here is a journey known as the 'train to the end of the world' which is four hours long from Inverness to Wick. He discovers a perfect country branch line in London. Plus he has a meander on one of the slowest journeys in the UK, to the far west of Wales. His journey in the Pennines is on a line with so few services that the scenery is known only to the regulars. He travels on the Bittern Line in Norfolk, the Tarka Line, named after the Otter, in Devon as well as the small branch line to Looe in Cornwall. One of the journeys is on the old fashioned Orient Express, the last is on the very modern, driverless Docklands Light Railway.

[John]

I'm really bummed out that for some reason the second part is available as an audiobook, but not the first? I had a rough idea of where in Britain the routes were located, but having a map available would be helpful for potential readers. Not a book that can be read straight through, say a route at a time over a longer period.

[Peter Jordan]

There are some interesting itineraries that I'd like to explore, but I got bored with the frequent references to Beeching and the "good old steam days" and the descriptions and interactions are a bit superficial.

UPDATE
So unmemorable was this book that I'd forgotten I'd read it 18 months ago. The journeys are interesting, but the descriptions are twee and repetitive.

[Ipswichblade]

Another excellent selection of railway journeys

[Andy]

Another delightful set of journeys around the almost forgotten branch lines of Britain.