Though it's unlikely you're going to meet Eva Marie Saint on your next train trip (as Cary Grant does in Hitchcock's North by Northwest), train travel still offers experiences, even pleasures, you can't get with any other mode of travel.
Nobody knows that better than Mark Smith, a career railman, who began the website The Man in Seat 61 in 2001 to help would-be train travelers find the detailed info they need to ride the rails in countries around the world. It's the best guide to rail travel on the web.
Hitchcock would surely have liked the title The Man in Seat 61, but what does it mean? Some reference to a glamorous double agent or womanizing jewel thief? Nope. Smith loves the romance of a train journey, but he's got a practical mind, too: Seat 61, he says, is "one of a pair of individual seats with table that actually lines up with the window."
written on Thursday Jan 10, 2008
down the tracks.
