Slow Trains Around Britain: Notes from a 4,088-Mile Adventure on 143 Rides

by Tom Chesshyre

"Easy-going, discursive and digressive, even those to whom trains are a closed timetable will find this a charming travelogue." - Stuart Maconie

Join travel writer and self-confessed "train nut" Tom Chesshyre as he celebrates 200 years of passenger railways on a zigzagging tour around the UK - where trains (proudly) began

In a small market town in the northeast of England in 1825, something momentous ticket-bearing human beings started moving along wrought-iron tracks on a contraption with engine-powered wheels. The contraption was called a "train". What happened in Darlington, along a 26-mile line to Stockton, would kickstart the worldwide railway revolution. Today, 1.3 million miles of tracks crisscross the planet.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of this groundbreaking event, Tom Chesshyre embarks on a journey around the country that invented trains, taking in many heritage lines maintained by armies of enthusiasts. On a long, circular series of rides beginning and ending in Darlington, Chesshyre enjoys the scenery, seeks out the history, dodges delays (best he can), reports on the current (often shambolic) state of British railways, and lets the rhythm of the clattering tracks reveal what it is about trains - especially wonderful old trains - that we love so much.

Genres: Travel

335 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2025

About the author

Tom Chesshyre has been writing travel stories for UK national newspapers for over15 years. After reading politics at Bristol University and completing a journalism diploma from City University, he had stints at the Cambridge Evening News, Sporting Life and Sky Sports. During this period he won the Independent's young sports writer of the year competition and was runner-up in the Financial Times young business writer awards. His first travel piece was about England's cricket fans in Barbados for the Daily Telegraph. He freelanced for the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs, wrote a column for Conde Nast Traveller, and contributed to the Express, the Guardian, and the Independent, before working on the travel desk of the Times. He has assisted with the research on two books - W. G. by Robert Low, a biography of W. G. Grace, and Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist by Colin Smith, a biography of "Carlos the Jackal". He has written magazine pieces for Wanderlust, Geographical and Business Traveller - and contributes book reviews to the TLS. His travel writing has taken him to more than 75 countries. He lives in south-west London and was born in 1971.

His first book, How Low Can You Go: Round Europe for 1p Each Way (Plus Tax) was published by Hodder in 2007. To Hull and Back: On Holiday in Unsung Britain was published by Summersdale in July 2010, followed by Tales from the Fast Trains: Europe at 186 mph is published in July 2011.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoyed this train travelogue as he charts his travels around the rail network for the 200th anniversary of the railways

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my fav travel writers takes us on a 143 train journey, covering 4088 miles taking 120 hours

It is a wonderful ride and we are welcomed aboard in Darlington where trains ‘began’ and go up down and back again on various trains including the Caledonian Sleeper,one of the only ‘overnight sleeper’ trains left in the UK

We meet all sorts of people as Tom talks and listens and passes on to us ‘normal folk’s musings’ all who are on his train journeys, all remarkable in their own way

Loved the Scarborough trip and the stay in the Grand ( not so now ) Hotel, great memories of childhood trips there

I love the authors observations, often funny, of where he is and what he is doing and the seemingly mundane telling of restaurant meals and the like that he manages to bring alive in his writing, the whole book is fascinating, Wetherspoons and all

There is a fair bit of train knowledge but it is the opposite of boring, its a history of train travel and how it evolved, inclusive and interesting

I could read this author pretty constant tbh as he writes such good, accessible books that I really really enjoy 😊

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are no shortage of books being published this year to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the first passenger rail journey on George Stephenson’s Stockton and Darlington railway in 1825. That that date is contested by some historians who favour the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool line (also a Stephenson project, and more specifically a dedicated passenger line than the S and D) hasn’t got in the way of a good marketing opportunity. Simon Chesshyre has cornered the market in recent years in droll, somewhat downbeat but nevertheless revealing train travellers’ tales with books recounting his journeys across the globe. Now, to mark the bicentenary of the passenger train, he returns to where it all began, and where, in recent years it seems to have been going wrong. His route, starting appropriately enough in Darlington, takes him over 4,000 miles across the rail network, almost exclusively on local slow trains, covering lines from the UK’s most northerly station (Thurso) to the most southerly (Penzance) and many places in between. He finds an overstretched network, subject to too many interruptions to services, replacements bus services and underinvestment. The scrapping of the northern leg of HS2 is a hot topic everywhere he goes. The true stars of the book are the great characters he meets, from octogenarian trainspotters to foreign tourists and regular commuters, who all have tales to tell. And then there are the local heritage lines, saved from the Beeching Axe by dedicated teams of volunteers and continuing to expand their total track mileage year on year.

[Theediscerning · Rating 3 out of 5]

"You just had to live with it." A fine philosophy when dealing with the British train system. Our author tries to honour the thing being two hundred years old, and many of the places it could take him, by having an extended jolly pretty much all round England, Wales and Scotland, to see the health of it all and what pleasure it might still bring. And between the latest plasticky trains and the lovely steam machines on heritage rail lines, he falls in love, more or less, with his subject.

But then this is certainly not his first 'let the tracks and timetables dictate my journeys' book. He's done it through Europe already, at least twice, and in Iberia, so he has already acquired the taste for such trips. I don't think I would, based on this alone, but it seems he was lucky, at least until he got to the SW, where the wrong kind of moisture on the tracks kiboshed a lot of his timetabling. By then, as I say, he has an admiration – and a growing bookshelf – for the choo-choos, and he very stoically accepts the issues in front of him. I think I'd have been raging.

Still, the love letter can continue, with asides such as the one to the end of Southend Pier (the train ride over the water that avoids a walk of a mile and a third each way) and more. The whole is, like the author's previous, regarding the Lake District, a decent blend of research, actual travel notes and description, and chats with the people he deals with and bumps into. But it doesn't half seem repetitive, with multiple times for us to get the same information, and many instances of repeated words and phrases. While it may well be a chosen style, it does make you think the editor was stuck on a train when polishing this was called for.

Like I say, there are few instances of real issues with the trains, and when they come up they're shrugged off. I think this, plus the mild-mannered 'meh' about the end of HS2 (the scheme to finally bring 1960s technology to 2020s Britain) and the deeper unionisation of the service could have had so much more bite and honesty to it. That aside, the trip was well worth experiencing this way, but these pages certainly didn't make me feel the need to rush to the station any time soon. Three and a half curly sandwiches, then.

[Rob Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this from the new books display in the library, oh yes even after the conservative austerity years we have managed to keep a library.
Before picking this up I had no previous experience of reading Tom Cheshyre’s books. This looked an interesting travelogue. 200 years after the world’s first passenger trains , Stockton Darlington or Liverpool Manchester? Read it and discover!
Lots of mentions of
Rail engineers Stephenson
The rocket
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Dr Beeching - is there anyone alive with a railway connection who doesn’t despise the Beeching cuts or decimation of Uk railways. He’d probably call them like recent Tories saying decimation of public services are efficiency savings!
Tom Cheshires book is a very readable account of his mainland Uk train travel over a few weeks, starting and ending near the Stockton historic sight.
Though as he states he lives in London, how then did he travel to and from Stockton.
Adrian Chiles, Bill Bryson , Stuart Maconie- this is not BUT if you have enjoyed their writing style and commentary of events and places then you will probably enjoy this.
Oftentimes the author details an overhead train conversation with little else recorded about a train journey which must have included interesting scenes or historical sights.
The human factors maybe.
Lots of positives with informative descriptions from many interesting train lines , heart of Wales, Ffestiniog rail, Settle to Carlisle, to Thurso and Inverness to Kyle of loch Alsh , descriptions of many stations, architecture wonderful or not, his hotel experiences good and poor.

A negative I note is that he gives a disparaging comment on the pronunciation of Llandudno on a TFW train from Manchester there. Can English authors not understand that Cymraeg/ Welsh language is an official language in Cymru Wales and should be given equal respect as English on these islands? A little research into Cymraeg would have helped.

Apart from this not atypical lack of respect this is a reasonably enjoyable travel book for train nuts cod all persuasions, and I’d recommend.

[Russ Witherington · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s effectively a book written by a self confessed train nut for probably fellow train nuts, who would get a train type buzz out of it all the train stuff. It’s engaging, and as a travel book enjoyable but as someone who doesn’t particularly like trains much a lot of that bit of it leaves me cold. I’m with Beeching……

[Graeme Whitton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed with this. Subject matter interested me but it promised more than it delivered. I just thought the writing was a bit dull.

[Owen McArdle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice bit of travel writing with a few factual errors on the railway side (trust me to spot them) that are frustrating with it being bigged up as a book for Railway 200.

[Jemima Pett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wonder if they do history of the Victorian era in schools nowadays? I absorbed a great deal of it, railways, factories, industrial revolution, Queen Victoria. So, even if you don’t like trains, you may like the historical anecdotes. Or the tour of some interesting and not often heard of places in Britain, or the strange and wonderful variety that is the ‘British’ race.

Tom Chesshyre likes travelling by train. He’s done it in many interesting places. India, Peru… When he realised that the 200th anniversary of the first railway journey was upon us, he set out to celebrate the origins of arguably the most successful British export of all time.

Railway enthusiasts, aka train spotters, have something of a bad name in the UK. Not because they aren’t nice polite people, but because… they spot trains. It’s probably the only thing below bird watching. So Tom Chesshyre worried that in setting off on this epic journey, which had plenty of sidetracks on various whims, he might meet these weird people and even be mistaken for them. He discovered that they really are kind, gentle people. They guide you to the best spots, pick the better routes, and help you find coffee close to a station. And they will reveal fascinating facts that the guidebooks had left out.

I found much to be fascinated by in this book. And the author delivered it with love, panache, brilliant word-pictures and a good deal of quiet humour. It’s thoroughly English (with a bit of Welsh). Except for the Scottish bits. And that sent me off in raptures. Once upon a time I had this plan to do London – Mallaig and back over a weekend in June. I could see all the glory of the countryside in the long hours of evening daylight.

And, having thoroughly enjoyed this book, I found myself checking the timetables to see if I could do this again. It’ll take me half a day longer from the south coast, but at least I’ll be on a train for that extra. Maybe this time next year. Since the sleeper train appears to be fully booked for July.

So, like Tom Chesshyre, I am probably exactly the right type of person to be labelled a Train Nut.

Slow Trains got my accolade of Non-fic book of the year. it deserved it.