Sunrise on the Southbound Sleeper

Unfortunately this new compilation of train stories (A Second Telegraph book of Great Railway Journeys) fell a bit flat for me. I read it pretty slowly, a chapter at a time, but seldom more, and I found it increasingly hard to go back to each time.

The contributors are mostly unknown to me (bar 6 or so well known authors) and appear to be reporters and correspondents, and it covers a lot of the globe. Some stories are paragraphs, others run to several pages. There were a few about the Trans-Siberian and/or Trans-Mongolian which I found interesting, have travelled it (TM) a number of years ago.

There should have been enough other interesting places to keep me going. Tibet, Namibia, Cuba, the Indian Pacific from Sydney to Perth. Authors such as Dervla Murphy, Gavin Bell, Nicolas Shakespeare, Sandy Toksvig, Jenny Diski, Alexander McCall Smith, James May.

It may have been that there were a number of stories left over from their first book, or it might be that they cast their net further. It may be that I was not persistent enough to keep up the momentum, or that they are more targeted at the train-travel-crowd.

There was only barely enough to keep me reading, but because I did it gets 2.5 stars. I am going to have to round it down to two though!