Traveling by rail has always seemed dangerously romantic to me. In my head I’m on some coal-black steam train cutting through the American West, reading a tattered book as the wind catches my perfectly tousled hair just so. Maybe I’m wearing a blue linen dress like Dolores in Westworld. Okay, maybe I’m just Dolores from Westworld.
The train is an intriguing set piece for a lot of my favorite types of stories. You’ve got your old-timey damsels tied to tracks by moustache-twirling villains and your runaway carnies skipping town to join the big show. It’s where a young Indiana Jones’ acquired a fear of snakes and I learned to never open an ominous-looking chest courtesy of that one scene in The Mummy Returns. Everyone knows the best brawls happen on train-car roofs.
The reality of traveling by train is a little different.