A Book of Railway Journeys

by Ludovic Kennedy

Ludovic Kennedy

  About Christian Wolmar’s Railway Library

  An invitation from the publisher

  Sources and Acknowledgments

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Frontispiece: (Arrival of Christmas Train, drawn by Duncan) Illustrated London News; 6. Mary Evans Picture Library; 13. Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society, Inc.; 28. John Freeman Group; 37. L’Illustration. Mary Evans Picture Library; 42. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; 45. BBC Hulton Picture Library; 49. William Collins; 57. National Railway Museum, York; 65. The Illustrated London News; 68. Mary Evans Picture Library; 75. Collins Publishers; 77. Atlas Photo Agency; 82. Popperfoto; 86–87. The Illustrated London News; 92. BBC Hulton Picture Library; 98. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Mrs, H. O. Havemeyer, 1929. The H. O. Havemeyer Collection; 109. Mary Evans Picture Library; 111. The Mansell Collection; 114. Peter Newark’s Western Americana; 117. Mary Evans Picture Library; 120. The National Gallery of Art, Washington; 124, 129, 132. All from Peter Newark’s Western Americana; 133, 134, 135. All from Mary Evans Picture Library; 135. Peter Newark’s Western Americana; 143. The Mansell Collection; 147. Mary Evans Picture Library; 156–157. The Mansell Collection; 159. BBC Hulton Picture Library; 163. The Mansell Collection; 18C. ILN Picture Library; 193. Almasy; 199. John Hillelson Agency Ltd.; 207. The Illustrated London News; 213. Mary Evans Picture Library; 219. Snark International; 226, 229. Both from Keystone Press Agency Ltd.; 233. The Wiener Library; 256. John Hillelson Agency Ltd.; 259. Mary Evans Picture Library; 269. The Illustrated London News; 283. Ashe & Grant; 291. The Illustrated London News; 301. S. A. Studio Lourmel 77 Photo Routhier; 319. Mary Evans Picture Library; 325, 335. Both from National Railway Museum, York; 351. Mary Evans Picture Library; 353. Compagnie Internationale de Wagons-Lits et du Tourisme.

  TEXT

  The author and publishers are grateful to the copyright holders for their permission to reproduce extracts which appear here.

  A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait, copyright © 1972, 1973 by Jervis B. Anderson. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Daisy Ashford: The Young Visitors, published by Chatto & Windus Ltd. Acknowledgment is also due to Mrs. Margaret Steel and Mrs. Clare Rose. “Night Mail” by W. H. Auden, from W. H. Auden: Collected Poems. Copyright © 1938 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd. From Journey to a War by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, copyright © 1939 and renewed 1967 by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd. Excerpt from The Big Spenders by Lucius Beebe. Copyright © 1966 by Doubleday & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. British publisher and copyright holder Hutchinson Publishing Group Ltd. Patricia Beer: “Mr. Dombey.” Hutchinson Publishing Group Ltd. John Betjeman: “Pershore Station” or “A Liverish Journey First Class” from Collected Poems. John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. Christabel Bielenberg: The Past Is Myself, published by Chatto & Windus Ltd. Published in the U.S.A. under the title Ride Out the Dark by W. W. Norton & Co. Inc. Edmund Blunden: “Railway Note,” published by Macmillan London Ltd. Permission granted by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Alan Burgess: The Small Woman, published by Evans Bros Ltd. Anthony Carson: “Courier’s Train,” first published in Punch magazine. Paul Chavchavadze: Marie Avinov: Pilgrimage Through Hell, published by Prentice Hall, Inc. Copyright © 1968 by Paul Chavchavadze. Reprinted by permission of Mcintosh and Otis, Inc. From Bullet Park by John Cheever, copyright © 1969 by John Cheever. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. and Jonathan Cape Ltd. G. K. Chesterton: “The Fat White Woman Speaks” from The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton. Methuen & Co. Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of G. K. Chesterton and by Dodd, Mead & Co. Inc. © 1932 by Dodd, Mead & Co. Inc. © renewed 1959 by Oliver Chesterton. Francis Cornford: “To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train” from Collected Poems. Published by Cresset Press. A. J. Cronin: Extract from Hatter’s Castle. Published by Victor Gollancz Ltd. W. H. Davies: Extract from The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. Published by Jonathan Cape Ltd. Acknowledgment also due to the Executors of the W. H. Davies Estate. Walter de la Mare: “The Railway Junction.” Published by Constable & Co. Ltd. Acknowledgment due to the Literary Trustees of Walter de la Mare and the Society of Authors as their representative. John Dos Passos: The 42nd Parallel. Copyright by Elizabeth H. Dos Passos. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth H. Dos Passos. From The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Edison. Reprinted by permission of Philosophical Library, Inc. Peter Fleming: One’s Company. Published by Jonathan Cape Ltd. Acknowledgment also due to the Estate of Peter Fleming. Peter Fleming: With the Guards to Mexico. Granada Publishing Ltd. Roy Fuller: “The Nineteenth Century.” Reprinted by permission of Roy Fuller. Eric Gill: Letters of Eric Gill edited by Walter Shrewing. Jonathan Cape Ltd. and Devin-Adair Co. (publishers of first American edition, 1948). Acknowledgment also due to the Executors of the Eric Gill Estate. E. & J. Goncourt: Pages from the Goncourt Journals, published originally by Flammarion et Cie. British translation by Robert Baldick; published by Oxford University Press. Steve Goodman, “The City of New Orleans,” copyright © 1970, 1971 Buddah Music, Inc. and Turnpike Tom Music. All rights administered by United Artists Music Co., Inc. Graham Greene: Stamboul Train, published in U.K. by William Heinemann & the Bodley Head. Published in U.S. as Orient Express. Copyright 1933 by Graham Greene, © renewed 1960 by Graham Greene. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, Inc. Terry Greenwood: “Why she got off the train in the middle of nowhere,” first published in the Sunday Express. Edward Hutton: The Cities of Spain. Methuen & Co. Ltd. Aldous Huxley: “Out of the Window” from The Collected Poetry of Aldous Huxley, edited by Donald Watt. Copyright © 1971 by Laura Huxley. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. and Chatto & Windus Ltd. From Hitler’s War by David Irving. Copyright © 1977 by David Irving. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, Inc. and Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. Erich Kastner: Emit and the Detectives, translated by Eileen Hall. Jonathan Cape Ltd. U.S. and Canada, copyright 1930 by Doubleday & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publishers. Rudyard Kipling: Captains Courageous. Reprinted by permission of the National Trust and Macmillan London Ltd. Philip Larkin: “The Whitsun Weddings” from The Whitsun Weddings. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Christopher Leach: “A London Evacuee.” Copyright © 1968 by Christopher Leach from The Evacuees, edited by B. S. Johnson and published by Victor Gollancz Ltd. James Leasor: The One that Got Away. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc. Copyright © 1959 by Thomas James Leasor and Harry Kendal Burt. James Lees-Milne: Another Self. Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Louis MacNeice: “Restaurant Car.” Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. from The Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice. From The Collected Novels and Stories of Guy de Maupassant, copyright © 1924 and renewed 1952 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. and Cassell & Co. Ltd. Bryan Morgan: “Incident in August.” Reproduced by permission of Punch. From Pax Britannica, copyright © 1968 by James Morris. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Faber and Faber Ltd., and A. D. Peters & Co. Ltd. Harold Munro: “Journey” from Collected Poems, published by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Travel,” from Collected Poems, Harper and Row. Copyright 1921, 1948 by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Eric Newby: The Big Red Train Ride, St. Martin’s Press, Inc. and Weidenfeld (Publishers) Ltd. Harold Nicolson: Some People. Reproduced by permission of Nigel Nicolson, Literary Executor to Harold Nicolson. Robert Nye: “Traveling to My Second Marriage on the Day of the First Moonshot.” Carcanet New Press Ltd., 1976. Martin Page: Lost Pleasures of the Great Trains. Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd. Kenneth Patchen: “The Little Black Train,” from Collected Poems of Kenneth Patchen. Copyright © 1949 by New Directions. Reprinted by permission of New Directions, New York. Alan Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country. Jonathan Cape Ltd. U.S. and Canada: copyright © 1948 by Alan Paton. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons. J. H. Patterson: M
an-Eaters of Tsavo. Reprinted by permission of Macmillan, London & Basingstoke. Sala Pawlowicz: I Will Survive (1962). Permission granted by Sala Pawlowicz. Michael Pennington: Rossya—A Journey Through Siberia. Red Man 1977. From Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust. Copyright © 1924 and renewed 1952 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Mrs. Eileen Scott-Moncrieff and Chatto and Windus Ltd, Miles Reid: Last on the List. Frederick Warne Ltd. Kenneth Rose: Superior Person: A Portrait of Curzon and His Circle in Late Victorian England. Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd. Permission granted by author. Carl Sandburg: “Limited” from Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg, copyright © 1916 by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc.; copyright © 1944 by Carl Sandburg. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. “Troop Train” by Karl Shapiro from Collected Poems 1940–1978. Copyright © 1943 and renewed 1971 by Karl Shapiro. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. From pp. 37–40 in The Gulag Archipelago III by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Harry Willetts. Copyright © 1976 by The Russian Social Fund for Persecuted Persons and Their Families. English language translation copyright © 1978 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. “Vacation” from The Rescued Year by William Stafford. Copyright © 1960 by William E. Stafford. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Paul Tabori: “The Very Silent Traveller,” 1975, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London, Henley and Boston. Paul Theroux: The Old Patagonian Express. Copyright © 1979 by Cape Cod Scriveners Co. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co. and Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Paul Theroux: The Great Railway Bazaar. Copyright © 1975 by Paul Theroux. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co. and Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Wilfrid Thomas: Living on Air. Frederick Muller Ltd. © Wilfrid Thomas 1958. Evelyn Waugh: Scoop. Chapman & Hall Ltd. Reprinted by permission of A. D. Peters & Co. Ltd. Robert N. Webb: The Illustrated True Book of American Railroads. Copyright © by Robert N. Webb 1957. Used by permission of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. E. M. Whitaker and Anthony Hiss: All Aboard with E. M. Frimbo. Published by permission of Andre Deutsch Ltd. Copyright © 1974 by Rogers Whitaker and Anthony Hiss. Reprinted by permission of The Helen Brann Agency Inc. From pp. 212–221 in “The Railroad—Allen Cove, January 28, 1960” from Essays of E. B. White (1977). Copyright © 1960 by E. B. White. Originally appeared in The New Yorker. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. and Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Theodore White: The Making of the President. Reprinted by permission of Julian Bach Literary Agency. Copyright © 1968 Theodore White. Published in U.K. by Jonathan Cape Ltd. Selection from To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson. Copyright 1940, renewed © 1968 by Edmund Wilson. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. Pieces by the Czar Alexander, Sir Walter Scott, Dr. Arnold, Duke of Wellington, Mr. Berkeley, M.P., Matthew Arnold, W. M. Acworth, John Pendleton, Thomas Cook, William Morris, Roger Lloyd and C. F. Adams also appeared in The Railway Book, edited by S. Legg (Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd., 1952). Pieces by William Stafford, Steve Goodman, Stephen Gale, Thomas Edison, Jervis Anderson and Wallace Saunders also appeared in Railroad: Trains and Train People in American Culture, edited by James McPherson and Miller Williams (Random House). The piece by Paul Tabori also appeared in Crime on the Lines, edited by Bryan Morgan (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1975).

  We have been unable to trace the copyright holders for the following pieces:

  E. V. Knox: “The Everlasting Percy” from Poems of Impudence by T. Fisher Unwin 1926. H. Sandham: “From Marlborough to West Wales” from Gone with Regret by G. Behrend, 1964. M. C. Smith: “The Boy in the Train.” Emile Zola: The Human Beast, translated by Louis Colman. United Book Guild, New York, 1948.

  About A Book of Railway Journeys

  Take a round-the-world tour through 155 years of train travel with this anthology of the very best in railway literature. Compiled by Sir Ludovic Kennedy, the spectacular selection conjures up grand old trains and historic journeys; recalls horrific wartime adventures and spectacular crashes; and dwells on the romance of rail travel. A Book of Railway Journeys includes works by Paul Theroux, Peter Fleming, Charles Dickens, Edward Thomas, John Betjeman, Thomas Hardy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Eric Newby and many more.

  About Ludovic Kennedy

  LUDOVIC KENNEDY was born in Edinburgh in 1919 and educated at Eton and at Christchurch, Oxford. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy. Since 1955 he has been well known on British television—first as a newscaster, and then as presenter and interviewer on current affairs programmes such as This Week, Panorama, Tonight, Midweek and 24 Hours.

  He has written and narrated for television several naval war documentaries, including Bismarck, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst. As part of the BBC series ‘Great Railway Journeys of the World’, he has made a film about a trip across America on some famous old trains—the Broadway Limited, the San Francisco Zephyr and the Coast Starlight.

  Ludovic Kennedy’s previous books fall into two main categories: naval subjects, such as Nelson’s Captains, Pursuit and Menace; and miscarriages of justice, including 10 Rillington Place, A Presumption of Innocence and Wicked Beyond Belief.

  Mr Kennedy is married to the ballerina Moira Shearer. They have one son and three daughters, and live in Edinburgh and the Scottish borders.

  Wolmar’s Railway Library is a collection of the world’s finest railway books, as selected by the leading railway historian, Christian Wolmar.

  The Library tells the story of the railway – each book has been selected to enthrall and entertain, conjuring up the world’s greatest engines, the American prairie, Siberian tundra or African savannah they crossed and the stories of the heroes and rogues who built them.

  The World the Railways Made

  By Nicholas Faith

  The modern world began with the arrival of the railway. The shock was both sudden and universal: between 1825, when the first passenger service linked Stockton and Darlington, and the outbreak of World War I, railways redefined, transformed, and expanded the limits of the civilized world. With railways came the development of modern capitalism, of modern nations, and the opening-up of new regions. The “Iron Road” transformed all aspects of society. For some the railway represented the horrors of industrial development; for others the way toward a brighter future; for all it meant deep and lasting change. From the financiers who provided unprecedented amounts of capital, to the immigrant labourers who built them, Nicholas Faith explores the mechanical revolution that turned the world upside down.

  The World the Railways Made is available here.

  The Railway Navvies

  By Terry Coleman

  This is the definitive story of the men who built the railways - the unknown Victorian labourers who blasted, tunnelled, drank and brawled their way across nineteenth-century England. Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside an industrial-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals.

  The Railway Navvies is available here.

  I Tried to Run a Railway

  By G.F. Fiennes

  This is the definitive story of the men who built the railways - the unknown Victorian labourers who blasted, tunnelled, drank and brawled their way across nineteenth-century England. Preached at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside an industrial-age architecture unparalleled in grandeur and audacity since the building of the cathedrals.

  I Tried to Run a Railway is available here.

  The Lunatic Express

  By Charles Miller

  In 1895, George Whitehouse began building the Mombasa-Nairobi-Lake Victoria Railway – a 600-mile route that was largely unmapped and barely explored. Behind Mombasa lay a scorched, waterless desert. Beyond, a horizonless scrub country climbed toward a jagged volcanic region bisected by the Great Rift Valley. But what was the purpose of this
treacherous feat and whom would it benefit? In this classic railway masterwork, Charles Miller explores the building of this great railway in an earlier Africa of slave and ivory empires, of tribal monarchs and the vast lands that they ruled. Above all, it is the story of the white intruders whose combination of avarice, honour and tenacious courage made them a breed apart.

  The Lunatic Express is available here.

  A Treasury of Railroad Folklore

  By B. A. Botkin & Alvin F. Harlow

  This collection contains over a century of the greatest stories, traditions and songs of the American railroad. Here are spell-binding tales of iron horses and iron men – the boomers, brass buttons and brass collars, the hoggers, tallow pots and gandy dancers. In this volume you will meet all the most memorable characters in the history of the iron rail. You will be thrilled with dramatic accounts of runaway trains and epic robberies. You will roar with laughter at hilarious pranks and tricks, feuds and hoaxes, and gain new insight into the heart and spirit of the railroads and the men who made, ran and rode them.

  A Treasury of Railroad Folklore is available here.

  A Book of Railway Journeys

  By Ludovic Kennedy

  Take a round-the-world tour through 155 years of train travel with this anthology of the very best in railway literature. Compiled by Sir Ludovic Kennedy, the spectacular selection conjures up grand old trains and historic journeys; recalls horrific wartime adventures and spectacular crashes; and dwells on the romance of rail travel. A Book of Railway Journeys includes works by Paul Theroux, Peter Fleming, Charles Dickens, Edward Thomas, John Betjeman, Thomas Hardy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Eric Newby and many more.