Travelling in the 30's By Rail

[pitdiver]

I'm a bit of a romantic regarding rail travel. Can anybody recommend a book about travelling around Europe by rail in the 1930's.

 

[Eyersey468]

Were you thinking of a novel or a factual book?

 

[pitdiver]

Sorry a factual book. Something like the "Great Railway Bazaar" by Paul Theroux

 

[Eyersey468]

It's ok you don't need to say sorry. I'll have a think.

 

[Calthrop]

The following is a bit of a boring truism: but 80 / 90 years ago, very few people were in a position, practically or financially, to be able to travel extensively abroad -- I'm not aware of having heard of anyone of those few, who did so by rail in Europe pre-World War II, and wrote about their experiences and had same published. (Inklings of slight possibilities along that line, re US citizens and their country?) pitdiver, would wide-ranging rail travel in western Europe basically in the early 1950s, be of any interest to you? Re that, I could make a suggestion.

 

[krus_aragon]

Bradshaws published a Continental Railway Guide until 1939 (except for during the great war), but most modern reprints are of the 1853 and 1913 editions. If you have a good (university?) library nearby they might have a 1930s copy.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I haven't read it, but Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Rebecca West) keeps coming up as an interesting record of travelling through the Balkans in the 1930s.
Arthur Ransome of Swallows and Amazons fame also travelled widely to and from his job as Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, and produced some travelogues in the 1920s.
Some of the journalists covering the Spanish Civil War also describe their travels. George Orwell and Laurie Lee are two such.

 

[Calthrop]

I haven't read it, but Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Rebecca West) keeps coming up as an interesting record of travelling through the Balkans in the 1930s.

This work -- which I have read; found it fascinating -- had occurred to me re the OP's enquiry. Dealing with the long spells spent by the author in the late 1930s, all over what was then Yugoslavia, it goes in depth into "all things Yugoslav", rather than being a travelogue as such; though much of the author's extensive travelling was by train, and interesting train-and-railway-related details often surface incidentally.

And a contemporary, Patrick Leigh Fermor: his trilogy about -- roughly the same time as Black Lamb... -- his leisurely journey, as a young man, "from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul": A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water, and The Broken Road. Again, rail material is "incidental", because the author was essentially travelling on foot; but interesting odd "side-lights" involving the then European railway scene, show up now and again.

 

[Calthrop]

"Further to...": my impression is 1920s (in some instances, earlier), rather than '30s; but, the "Two Vagabonds..." travel books by Jan and Cora Gordon.

https://www.duncanjdsmith.com/uploads/documents/Forgotten/gordonbio4.pdf

The authors visited various parts of Europe -- the Balkans among others -- travelling a good deal by rail: interesting and descriptive items re same often cropping up, I gather, in their books. The only thing by this pair which I have actually read, goes under various titles including Two Vagabonds in Serbia and Montenegro: telling of their adventures as part of a medical aid mission to those places in the early part of World War I. This book certainly recounts much, about travelling by rail in the area concerned -- of course, in extremely messed-up wartime circumstances.