Non-Fiction 3: Band 09/Gold

Ben Lerwill has long been hooked on railways. As a boy, catching the train from Paddington down to his grandparents in Devon was always unspeakably exciting. In his 20s he travelled overland from Brighton to Bangkok by rail, and has since explored by train on all six inhabited continents, experiencing everything from third-class Baltic rattlers and South East Asian boxcars to luxury Australian sleeper trains and Trans-American express services. He wanted to write a book that captured something of rail’s global appeal.