Rail transport in fiction

Notable examples of railways in fiction include:

Films

Television

Literature
  • 4.50 from Paddington (book; film and TV adaptations) – a Miss Marple story. A passenger on one train is witness to a murder being committed on another train.
  • The Adventure of the Lost Locomotive – a Solar Pons story about a disappearing train on the Great Northern Railway.
  • Anna Karenina (book) – by Leo Tolstoy. Train travel is arguably the most prominent motif of the story.
  • Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – features the train the Taggart Comet.
  • The Boundless – a novel by Kenneth Oppel set in a train called the Boundless.
  • "The Celestial Railroad" – short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
  • Choo Choo: The Story of a Little Engine Who Ran Away (book, episode adaptation in Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories) – a children's book by Virginia Lee Burton. The adventures of a beautiful little locomotive who decided to run away from her humdrum duties.
  • Commonwealth Saga – a novel series featuring huge, nuclear-powered trains for interstellar travel (through artificial wormholes).
  • The Dark Tower (book series) by Stephen King – the main character Roland of Gilead travels through a series of caves which were once part of an underground railroad system. The characters also ride on a monorail with artificial intelligence.
  • The Devil's Horse, The Poison Tree and The Abyss in Cynthia Harrod-Eagles' The Morland Dynasty series feature the development of steam power and the first railways in Britain.
  • Dreadnought – the third novel in Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century series, where the main character rides on a Union war locomotive called the Dreadnought. It is used by the Union to terrorize Confederate rail traffic. It is a warship on rails, with a heavily armored engine, plenty of automated guns, and a complement of troops on board.
  • The Engine Woman’s Light by Laurel Anne Hill – a spirits-meet-steampunk novel about the heroic journey of a young Latina in an alternate 19th-century California, where trains are used to transport undesirables to a dreaded asylum.
  • Freedom Express – the seventh novel in the Wingman series by Mack Maloney features a ten-mile-long super-train that is heavily armored, heavily armed and carries members of the heroic Post-Apocalyptic Badass Army that protects what remains of America.
  • Galaxy Express 999 – from the manga and anime of the same name by Leiji Matsumoto; this train travels the galaxy from planet to planet.
  • Iron Council (book) by China Miéville – a fantasy novel about the building of a cross-continental railway line.
  • Jim Stringer: Steam Detective – series of mystery novels by Andrew Martin set on various British railway lines.
  • La Bête humaine – (novel) by Émile Zola, filmed five times, e.g. as Cruel Train
  • Greatwinter Trilogy – book series featuring trains powered by wind turbines and trains powered by pedaling done by passengers. Passengers are ranked according to how much they pedal, and those who pedal most get credits towards their fare and priority use of the railside facilities.
  • Grim Tuesday – the second book in The Keys to the Kingdom series features a train with spikes on it.
  • The Half-Made World – novel featuring The 38 Engines of the Line which are sentient trains. Nobody knows their exact origin.
  • Inverted World – a novel about a large city run on rails.
  • The Little Engine That Could – children's book. Also adapted as an animated film in 1991 (see The Little Engine That Could (film)).
  • The Locomotive – dynamic poem for children by Julian Tuwim, filmed by Zbigniew Rybczyński.
  • The Lost Special – short story by Arthur Conan Doyle about the investigation of a special train mysteriously disappearing.
  • Making Tracks (23 Classic Railroad Stories) (2013), ed. by Jon Schlenker and Charles G. Waugh.
  • The Moosepath Saga by Van Reid – all six books in this series feature travel by rail, entailing adventure, comedy, mystery, and romance in late 19th-century Maine.
  • Moscow-Petushki by Venedikt Yerofeyev – a postmodernist prose poem by Russian writer and satirist Venedikt Yerofeyev.
  • The Motion Demon – 1919 (book) horror stories by Stefan Grabiński: "Engine Driver Grot", "The Wandering Train", "The Motion Demon", "The Sloven", "The Perpetual Passenger", "In the Compartment", "Signals", "The Siding", "Ultima Thule".
  • Murder on the Orient Express (book by Agatha Christie, 1934; film) – describes a train journey from Istanbul to Paris aboard the Orient Express during which a murder takes place. Hercule Poirot, riding on the train, solves the mystery and justice is served.
  • The Mystery of the Blue Train (book, TV adaptation) – earlier Poirot story in which a murder takes place on a train.
  • The Network (book) – by Laurence Staig. An ancient prophecy is realised one Christmas Eve in the London Underground, a dramatic race against time as three people are thrown together to prevent a terrifying catastrophe.
  • Night on the Galactic Railroad (novel, film) – two boys travel on a magical train across the night sky – but there is a deeper meaning to the journey.
  • Nightside (book series) – a book series featuring subway trains that don't require drivers; they travel through other dimensions as shortcuts and heal themselves when damaged.
  • Quadrail series – a novel series featuring an interplanetary metro system, with light-years-long tunnels that snake around the galaxy and connect many interplanetary systems together.
  • Railsea (book) by China Miéville – a fantasy novel that features railway tracks that represent oceans and sea called Railsea and features giant moles ("moldywarpes") that represent whales and boat-like trains. It parodies Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.
  • The Railway Series – British stories about a fictional railway by Rev. W. Awdry, which would later be adapted into the children's show Thomas and Friends.
  • Raising Steam – the 40th Discworld novel features the first steam locomotive on Discworld called Iron Girder.
  • Red Mars – the first book in the Mars Trilogy features a train that goes around the circumference of the moon and travels fast enough to generate rotational gravity, relieving the difficulties of living in microgravity and allowing colonists to acclimate before moving down to the Martian surface colonies.
  • Silver on the Tree, the last book in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising cycle – approaching the climax of the story, the main characters travel on a mystical train to the final battle between the Light and the Dark.
  • Starcross (novel) – the second novel in the Larklight series features a space railway in the Asteroid Belt made by the same company that built the Crystal Palace.
  • Strangers on a Train (novel, film) – tells the story of how two strangers meet on a train and decide to exchange murders so they can't be tied to each other.
  • The Thirty-Nine Steps – (book by John Buchan, films, one by Alfred Hitchcock) features a sequence where the character Richard Hannay escapes from the police by jumping from a train on the Forth Bridge in Scotland.
  • The Trackman (book) – by Karl Davis – a police procedural crime novel set in Hull, London, Newcastle and the home counties. The main character (Det. Sgt Joe Tenby) hunts a deranged serial killer who is targeting people connected to the railway network.
  • Via Bodenbach, an experimental novel about a train journey to Berlin by Hungarian novelist Ferenc Körmendi, published in 1932 and widely translated.
  • Wheelworld – the second novel in the To the Stars (trilogy) set in an agricultural colony on a planet with very extreme seasons, causing the entire colony to escape the brutal summers twice per year by turning into a mobile colony. This is accomplished by jacking up the colony's main buildings on wheels, forming them up behind the colony's nuclear power plants (which are now transformed into an enormous locomotive) into a train-like vehicle that run on roads rather than tracks. This makes the 12,000 mile trek to the other side of the planet.
  • The Wind in the Willows – an episode in the novel involves the flight of Mr. Toad by rail and a chase scene with another train full of policemen.
  • The Yellow Arrow – an allegorical story by Victor Pelevin written in 1993.

Comics and graphic novels
  • Assassin's Creed: The Fall – a comic book mini-series featuring Alexander III's Imperial Train.
  • Batman – the character had a subterranean jet-propelled train car called the Batsubway Rocket.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Volume II – a comic book featuring a secret black government train. Its engine number is .007.
  • Paranatural – a webcomic featuring a living spirit that represents a flying ghost train called Ghost Train.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent – A Finnish-Swedish webcomic featuring an armored railcar called Dalahästen that destroys anything that gets on the tracks. It also has a giant buzzsaws mounted on the top.
  • Le Transperceneige – a French graphic novel about a luxury train in a post-apocalyptic ice age later inspired the 2013 film Snowpiercer.

Plays and musicals

Games
  • Alice Madness Returns – the Infernal Train appears as the main source of destruction in Wonderland, controlled by the Dollmaker. It can be seen throughout numerous parts in the game, and it is used as a final chapter.
  • Grand Theft Auto – most of this series of games contains a form of railroad (train, tram, etc.).
  • Half-Life (series) – several of the games start or end on trams and trains, and feature themes of rail transportation in-game as usable trams or as obstacles and scenery.
  • Mario Kart 8 – one race takes place in a subway station called Golden Bell.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks – features the controllable Spirit Train and the Demon Train as an antagonist.

Other
  • Astrotrain – a Decepticon triple-changer from the Transformers toy line, who transforms into a steam locomotive and a shuttle.
  • Coors Light – one of its advertisements features a refrigerated train filled with chilled Coors Light beer. Every time it passes, its surroundings are covered in frost.
  • "Rock Island Line" – American folk song.
  • "Tons of Steel" – a Grateful Dead song about a man and the train he operates.

See also

References
  1. "The Burning Train (1980)". imdb.com. 20 March 1980. Retrieved 3 November 2017.
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