Published by Reaktion Books, 2019, 256 pages

There is something magical about sitting on a train, eating well while staring out of the window at a constantly changing vista. So when I came across this book that combines two of my favorite things—trains and food—I couldn’t resist it.

This collection of essays focuses on nine iconic railways: The Flying Scotsman, the Orient Express, the Trans-Siberian Railway, Canada’s Trans-Pacific Railway, the Santa Fe Super Chief in the USA, Japan’s Bullet Train, Darjeeling’s Toy Train in India, Australia’s Ghan, and South Africa’s Blue Train.

Sharon Hudgins calls herself a “daughter of the railroads”: her father was a fireman on the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad, shoveling coal on one of the last steam engines on the line and her grandfather was a train conductor. The other authors here include a journalist, writer, academics, and an expert on the food culture of Scotland, all with special connections to trains and food.

Each chapter focuses on one of the trains, taking us back in time to when it first started to run. Many of them started in the mid or late 1800s (such as the Flying Scotsman, Orient Express, and the Canadian and Indian Railways). Railways brought remote places within reach of the ordinary person. For example, the construction of the Canadian railways resulted in the first of the country’s National Parks being established, the Banff Springs in the Rockies: “Since we can’t export the scenery, we shall have to import the tourists”, said the company’s president in 1886. 

The early trains did not have dining cars but relied on passengers bringing their own food or buying food and drink from the stations. Eventually, the train companies realized that being able to serve meals and snacks on the train would make much more sense.

Once the dining cars were established, the food on the train was often of a high standard, and eating in the train’s dining car became a highlight of the trip. The Orient Express, which ran from London to Istanbul, prided itself on the fact that its meals would reflect the country it was going through. The breakfast menu in 1936 on the Santa Fe Super Chief, which ran between Chicago and Los Angeles, included “eight choices of steak and chops…, three kinds of potato dishes, ham and bacon, eggs cooked six different ways”, not to mention fruit, cereal, bread, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, and malted milk.

But not all the railways had dining cars. The Bullet Train in Japan, for example, generated its own food culture. Ekiben, boxes containing “labor-intensive and high-quality foods”, usually local specialties, were—and still are—sold at the stations along the line. The boxes are now “portable destinations in themselves, public cultural icons”, and ekiben festivals are held in department stores all over the country.

Darjeeling’s Toy Train also relied on passengers being able to buy food at the railway stations on the way, although you could order breakfast the night before (I remember the delicious omelets and hot tea on Indian trains). But now the Toy Train has a dining car that seats 12 and serves a four-course dinner for those who can afford it.

It was not just the mouth-watering accounts of the food that made me dream, but the descriptions of the trips themselves: the changing landscapes you can see from the Ghan that links Darwin to Adelaide, and on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok; the glamour of traveling on the Orient Express; and the trip from Pretoria to Johannesburg on the Blue Train that goes past the Kimberley diamond mines. 

Some of these trains do not run anymore or operate as a tourist attraction rather than a regular train. But thanks to this book, you can still travel on them virtually. It is not just the illustrations peppered through the book that takes you on the voyage: you can replicate some of the dishes from the trains’ menus with the recipes provided. This is a wonderful way to discover the world.

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.