Kidlington vicar imagines murder on the night train

What a difference if you are on an overnight sleeper train – a private sleeping compartment, a smart restaurant, a smooth journey to a far-flung destination and isolation from the outside world.

You pay a price, of course, but you can travel from London to Scotland or Scotland to London in luxury without the hassle of airport queues, motorway traffic and train changes.

Sleeper trains are often described as ‘boutiques on rails’ or ‘hotels on wheels’, but they have also served another purpose.

Author David Meara from Kidlington (Image: Rosemary Meara)

As David Meara, of Kidlington, describes in his latest book, they have been an inspiration to numerous authors, who have seen them as an ideal setting for committing a crime and unravelling a mystery.

The book, Murder on the Night Sleeper, takes the reader on a journey through the fictional world of sleeper train travel, examining many of the stories that have been woven around the trains.

As W H Auden wrote: “The overnight sleeper train affords the most promising setting for murder and mayhem to unfold.”

Mr Meara’s first experience of railways came in 1950 when his grandfather took him and his brother to Wolvercote bridge to see expresses heading from Oxford to Banbury and Birmingham.

He recalls: “I remember the smoke from the steam engines billowing up and over the bridge and enveloping us as we hid inside our grandfather’s overcoat.

“When we travelled to Scotland for family holidays from 1959, we always used the overnight sleeper train from Euston to Inverness, known as the Royal Highlander.

“There is something about an overnight train that is both romantic and slightly unnerving – the feeling that on such a long and complex journey things could easily go wrong during the hours of darkness.”

Certainly, over the years, authors have exploited that theory and have produced multiple stories of death, suspense, romance and mystery, many of which the book examines without giving too much away.

Not all stories were fiction. One writer included details of The Race to the North, reflecting the intense rivalry between railway companies in the late 19th century.

Two companies set out to prove that their service from London to Aberdeen – on the West Coast route via Carlisle (540 miles) and the East Coast line via Newcastle (523 miles) – was the best and fastest.

The competition continued until 1895 when an inspector, horrified that the speed limits over the recently-opened Forth and Tay bridges were being ignored, called a halt to the races.

The 1920s became known as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction when lesser-known writers as well as the big names featured railways prominently in their work.

As the age of steam ended in the 1960s, some of the glamour slipped away from the railways and this was reflected in the decline of novels set on trains.

But Mr Meara, a former Archdeacon of London and now a member of the clergy at St Mary’s Church, Kidlington, believes that “the link between murder/mystery fiction and the railways will remain a strong and fruitful one in the years to come”.

Murder on the Night Sleeper, which also describes sleeper services in the United States and Europe, is published by Amberley Books, price £15.99.