Slow Trains Around Britain

Notes from a 4,088-Mile Adventure on 143 Rides

Tom Chesshyre

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Hardback

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English

Summersdale Publishers
08 May 2025

Trains & railways: general interest; Travel & holiday guides; Travel writing; Gift books

""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 happened: 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.

By: Tom Chesshyre
Imprint: Summersdale Publishers
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 222mm, Width: 144mm,
ISBN: 9781837995271
ISBN 10: 1837995273
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 08 May 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Tom Chesshyre is the author of thirteen travel books. He has travelled more than 40,000 miles around the world for his train books, which have included Slow Trains Around Spain: A 3,000-Mile Adventure on 52 Rides and Ticket to Ride: Around the World on 49 Unusual Train Journeys. His book writing has also taken him across North Africa after the Arab Spring, round the ""dark side"" of the Maldives on cargo ships, along the length of the River Thames, around the Lake District on a long hike, and on a journey through ""unsung Britain"" (for To Hull and Back). He worked on the travel desk of The Times for 21 years and is now freelance, contributing to the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The New European magazines. He lives in London.

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

Easy going, discursive and digressive, even those to whom trains are a closed timetable will find this a charming travelogue. * Stuart Maconie * Tom Chesshyre has a gift for transforming the seemingly mundane world of trains into a thrilling ride. Slow Trains Around Britain left me itching to grab a ticket and set off on my own cross-country rail adventure. * George Mahood * A splendid reminder that all (rail) roads lead to Darlington and that, as with food, so with trains: speed can be greatly overrated. Two hundred years on from the dawn of the railway, Tom Chesshyre brilliantly captures the enduring appeal of George Stephenson's world-changing creation. A must-read bicentennial tribute from a self-confessed railway 'nut' who is, mercifully, neither nerd not trainspotter. * Robert Hardman, author of Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story. *