Anything is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an intrigue, a good night's sleep, and strangers' monologues framed like Russian short stories.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.
As a young boy, I had the usual hobbies - sports, baseball cards, model airplanes and trains. But I always had a distinct fascination with trains.
I think one reason, obviously, that I spend so much time in one place is that I've been lucky enough to travel a lot, and now there are other different, invisible trains that are more interesting to me.
I've travelled around the UK a lot recently and have discovered that I really like trains. If you're in the quiet carriage, nobody can get hold of you and you can relax.
Long-distance train conversations are unlike the perfunctory exchanges one normally associates with strangers, or the truncated, cut-to-the-chase kind that sometimes take place between seatmates on a plane.
There are so many different reasons as to why I love riding trains. But I think ultimately it's the romantic feeling of it. There's something about it that just transports me into old films.
Cell phones, alas, have pretty much ruined train travel, which I used to love. I could read or even sketch notes for what I was working on.
Many Americans have a romanticized view of trains, rooted in a bygone era of elaborately adorned rail cars lit by flickering gas lamps and pulled by smoke-belching steam locomotives.
You can find dozens of books about people taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad. I knew I had to do something different to cross Siberia. To drive and to talk with people along the way, that was how I wrote my book 'Great Plains'. I drove and camped in Siberia, but did not have a real program.
Most people would rather sit on a plane for two hours than spend two days on a train, but there's nothing comparable to taking a relaxing rail journey with your family or good friends.
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