On a recent summer Saturday morning I boarded Amtrak's Silverstar train from New York's Penn Station bound for Miami, Florida. As I was boarding the train the person who would be my attendant said, "there she is," with my paperwork already in her hand. This welcoming greeting made for a pleasant journey from the start. She showed me my compartment or roomette, gave me bottled water and said that there was a cafe car where hot meals would be available for purchase, and that I should ask if I needed anything else. I was impressed with the two, comfortably-cushioned chairs facing each other near the window in my roomette. The attendant told me that she would turn down my bed that night, but I asked her to show me how since I hadn’t planned on turning in early. I watched her turn down the bed in the roomette across the corridor from me and I was confident that I would convert the two cushioned chairs into a bed. In the meantime I settled in for the ride, gaping through the windows.

I had a few book titles loaded on my smartphone and tablet, but didn't get around to reading much. When approaching station stops I saw commercial buildings and traffic. After the train left a station and rolled along through the vast, verdant landscape, I also wanted to hear the train whistle, and I did many times throughout the trip as it neared stations and rail crossings. Another thing I remember was that as the train approached some station stops it would reverse to get to the station. I was captivated by how many trees there are across the country, especially in Virginia where the landscape went on forever.

During my train trip, I never got around to reading the print paperback I had with me, Unformed Landscape, by Peter Stamm. It is a work of fiction woven around travel, mostly by ship but also by train in and around Norway.

"An aimless joy is a pure joy,” is a Yeats quote that Paul Theroux uses in his nonfiction book, Ghost Train. It is an apt description of travel, especially for the way Theroux traveled through Central Asia and India. When his train travel had to be broken up, he took whatever was available, ferries, buses and cars before boarding the next train. And he did not necessarily get on the next available train. Sometimes, he would lay over for a number of days.This would mean meeting all kinds of people, and oftentimes he depended on their kindnesses. This observation resonates with me as I think, generally, about my own travels and the various kindnesses and incivilities I have encountered. Theroux is known for a wide body of fiction and nonfiction works, and is also a travel writer. His own friendliness and that of others combined with his observation and candor when making notes, and writing about those experiences, make for an engaging read. In this book he retraced the trip he made thirty years earlier. My interest in more of Theroux’s books on railroad travel has been piqued by this one.

Here are three more of Paul Theroux's nonfiction books on railroad travel that are on my reading list:

For a history of railroads in the United States and around the world, read Train by Tom Zoellner. He gives us some details about his railroad travel in each of the countries he visits. Additionally, he weaves each country’s history and politics together and shows how it influenced the development of its railway system.

See the library's catalog for a more extensive list of Paul Theroux's fiction and non-fiction works.

If you have any suggestions for books on railroad travel, please leave them in the comments section.