Film buffs will know night trains as vehicles of love, lust and mystery. Consider Cary Grant top-bunking with Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest. Or Marilyn Monroe getting jiggy with a ukulele during an onboard pyjama party in Some Like It Hot. Silver screen sleepers are steamy stuff.
However, those who have taken the Great Western Railway sleeper from Paddington to Penzance will also know that a night train can be as sexy as a Travelodge on a wet Wednesday in February.
In Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train, the travel writer Monisha Rajesh eloquently and amusingly combines the fact and fiction, the cocktail hours and backed-up loos, the charming ticket inspectors and deranged fellow travellers, as she enjoys — and endures — 18 journeys spanning four continents.
Rajesh surveys a form of travel that many might have considered obsolete. However, she explains, the night train has risen from its slumbers. After the Covid lockdowns “many people were nervous to fly, booking private compartments and taking the time to explore closer to home”, she writes. “In 2022, Interrail had a record year of sales — and then I saw it, one line at a time, sleeper trains inching back out of the darkness.”
