The sooty, bellowing, clattering steam trains of another era gave every journey an atmosphere of excitement and expectancy. The whole course of a traveller's life might depend on whether he caught the nine fifty or the ten ten; his fate might be decided by his choice of compartments. In each of these short stories a train journey provides the backdrop for a momentous encounter or life-changing experience, but each story has a different twist. There is comedy as well as tragedy, romance as well as mystery and fellow travellers include figures from history, guardian angels and ghosts!

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