Tales of travels and trains

Jim Nicholls takes readers on a journey like no other.

Visit places as remote as the Zulu battlefields in South Africa, learn about an inventor who made the first heavier-than-air flight before the Wright brothers, and take in an Easter church service in a small Portuguese town.

All this and more are held together by tales of trains ranging from a tiny rail motor in the Queensland outback to a wild ride in Borneo.

Experience Switzerland and America from the windows of a train.Train travel opens a window on the world, allowing a visual eavesdropping and intrusion into a country's backyard that, if done in any other form, would probably result in arrest.

Trains have it all, they convert the journey into the adventure.

Real people travel on trains.Discussing with a young girl from New Zealand how one meets interesting and friendly people on such journeys, she neatly summed it up: 'Yeah, how many nice people do you ever meet on an aeroplane?'