A couple of days ago I came across, on the Net, mention (quite brief) of a book and author hitherto un-heard-of by me. Namely, Single Track Obsession -- A book of extraordinary railway journeys , by Rob Sissons, published 2009. Obtainable via various on-line book suppliers. The very little further information given, suggests that it could be of some interest to me; but one hesitates a little to spend a more-than-trifling sum on a work which might be anything between excellent, and highly disappointing. Is anyone acquainted with this book, and willing to give an opinion on it?
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Book recently learned of -- known to anyone?
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Mcr Warrior
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hexagon789
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You can preview part of the book on Google books, often in find its worthwhile seeing if one can preview a few pages of a book to see if it is quite what one expected/was looking for, don't know if that's of any help to you Calthrop?
Single Track Obsession
Books about railways usually fall into one of two categories. Some are so full of technical and historical information that they are very dull to the layman, whereas others go to the opposite extreme, describing the journey but giving no information on the train or the history of the railway. I...
books.google.co.uk
swanhill41
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Looks to me as a self published book...It seems to be written by someone who has a fair handle on the facts...It is not a history of the railways lines,but as far as I can see a number of stories at various times about his wanderings...A fiver plus postage would be my maximum.
You can preview part of the book on Google books, often in find its worthwhile seeing if one can preview a few pages of a book to see if it is quite what one expected/was looking for, don't know if that's of any help to you Calthrop?
Single Track Obsession
Books about railways usually fall into one of two categories. Some are so full of technical and historical information that they are very dull to the layman, whereas others go to the opposite extreme, describing the journey but giving no information on the train or the history of the railway. I...books.google.co.uk
Many thanks for this link. Looking through the chapter headings: the author seems to have been to many fascinating places railways-wise -- including doing a fair bit on French minor lines, for which I'm a total sucker; but chapter headings and sub-headings suggest rather, that his writing is liable to be somewhat arch / mincing / twee, in a way that would grate on me. Hard to decide...
I have just read the first five chapters of the French section on Google.
I found it quite captivating, well written in a narrative fashion and have just purchased it.
I usually prefer more detailed documents a la Wild Swan, OPC style, but this will make a pleasant diversionary read.
I found it quite captivating, well written in a narrative fashion and have just purchased it.
I usually prefer more detailed documents a la Wild Swan, OPC style, but this will make a pleasant diversionary read.
hexagon789
Veteran Member
To be honest I was kind of curious after finding the preview on Google books, so I read part of it!
I did the same and what I read I quite enjoyed, some interesting journeys there
I read it too. Obviously by the regular name checks a disciple of Bryan Morgan, who wrote in the 1950s-60s, and actually seems to be trying to emulate his writing style. Interesting chapter on the line to Grasse on the Cote d'Azur, all newly electrified, which I know well and still has a feel of an old French branch line about it - complete with a grand rebuilt terminus, quite inconvenient for the town!
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I have a very great love of Bryan Morgan and The End of the Line : relevance there, as per link and other references, is inclining me toward acquiring Sissons's book. His envisaged emulating of Morgan's writing style: it has seemed to me that the late W.J.K. Davies also tried to do that, in his works on French and Belgian light railways -- for me, though, he didn't succeed in that endeavour; and I suspect that Sissons also, will fail to manage the feat. In my opinion, Morgan was a total one-off. On the "debit" side: the "British Journeys" chapter-headings section in particular, suggests that Sissons's tone might well be, for me, off-puttingly facetious / twee / "whimsy" -- if we're talking homages to authors' styles, then sort of bargain-basement Coward / Wodehouse. "A Pass, a Petition, a Blonde in Blaenau and a Diesel around the Deviation", and "The Little Train That Takes Me Home Past Many A Garden Gnome" -- bleeaauuurghhh !! I suspect that for me, this factor might outweigh the interest of the subject-matter.
The closest classic writer to Morgan on French (and other) obscure railways for me is Hamilton Ellis; he wrote nicely several extended articles in Trains Illustrated in the 1950s describing journeys in France, including comments in passing on the personnel, the food, the weather, Monet's railway paintings, etc, interwoven with competent and knowledgeable detail on the rail side.
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From what I can ascertain, all possibilities for ordering the book via Internet involve sums in double figures; I'm inclined to feel on this, as you do: and thus, rather disinclined to get it. Risking that amount of money on a book which one might love; or might hate in equal or greater measure -- the message quite strongly coming across to me now, is "best not".
Interestingly, in The End of the Line Morgan makes a passing allusion to Ellis, at the start of his treating of the short metre-gauge line to the Chiemsee in Bavaria: doesn't mention him by name, but if one is familiar with the relevant Ellis book (The Beauty of Old Trains, I THINK -- it's decades since I read it, but I very clearly recall the reference) -- it's unmistakeable who is meant. A bit unfairly, Morgan writes here of [obviously Ellis] 's "turning rare eyes abroad" -- while I think one can fairly say that Ellis's interest was principally in railways in the British Isles; he was -- as per your words above -- engaged to quite some extent with things continental: less of a chauvinist than the majority of his British railway-writing contemporaries. I recall reading one of the articles by him which you mention; telling of his progress by rail on a 1950s holiday, to a spot on the Channel coast of Brittany -- with reminiscences of his having previously been that way twenty-odd years previously, and having experienced first-hand, the metre-gauge system of the Chemin de Fer des Cotes du Nord, in its then full glory -- lucky man. I've always found Ellis very readable -- his prose sometimes a bit purple, but I can take that as part of the general fun !
Thanks to all, for views, thoughts, and assorted "gen".
I believe Hamilton Ellis had more than "some extent" knowledge of things Continental - he was MI6's man (no joke) in Europe on railways at the start of WW2, because when they contacted Modern Transport, the old periodical, about who knew European railways the best, H E, one of their writers at the time, was the one pointed at. Decent Chap: Westminster School, Oxford, well travelled in Europe, spent time in Germany, knows trains inside-out, apparently quite imperturbable - ticked all the boxes. So he was actually sent over, principally to Switzerland, to work out what to destroy to thwart things railway-wise. I got the feeling he was pretty OK speaking French as well.
As of this thread until now, I'd forgotten about Ellis's wartime doings in Switzerland -- something of an adventure-farce episode, I'm given to understand: he didn't manage to get together with his intended contacts there, and in the end got back to Britain by the skin of his teeth, in the chaos of the German forces' overrunning France in 1940. My perception had been that essentially, he was very big on the railways of our islands -- not meaning to belittle his considerable interests and knowledge further afield; I maybe phrased things not very well.
It would seem a bit odd of Morgan to apparently see Ellis -- of all the fellow-authors he could have picked -- as having an attitude only a little better than "railways stop at Dover". It was if anything, Morgan who in his day was the oddity -- with his implied admission of himself being, railway-wise, rather a "traitor to the motherland" (my words, not his): finding foreign railways more interesting than British ones -- or at least, feeling that British railways had received in print saturation coverage ad taedium , and that in this respect, other parts of the world deserved more of a look-in.
It would seem a bit odd of Morgan to apparently see Ellis -- of all the fellow-authors he could have picked -- as having an attitude only a little better than "railways stop at Dover". It was if anything, Morgan who in his day was the oddity -- with his implied admission of himself being, railway-wise, rather a "traitor to the motherland" (my words, not his): finding foreign railways more interesting than British ones -- or at least, feeling that British railways had received in print saturation coverage ad taedium , and that in this respect, other parts of the world deserved more of a look-in.
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