This is a really interesting little book. Written as a series of 8 short stories, it begins when a man stops at an obscure junction station in the Midlands in the middle of a dark stormy night. The junction has 7 lines that leave it, heading in different directions. The idea is fairly simple, there is a story about what happenes down each of the lines. It doesn't quite work out like that, in that only one of the stories actually takes place on a voyage down one of these lines. The stories become journeys into the human psyche rather than through English geography. Written by Dickens and 4 different writers, the stories are a bit patchy, if I'm honest. That doesn't mean it's not without interest though. The story of the Signalman is a very quite scary ghost story - not at all in the usual line of Dickens. In all of them the railway runs as a theme, the characters all work on, in and with the railways. That makes the things hang together, but I did feel it would have benefitted from a final rounding story to match the initial opener.As with any short story collection, there are peaks and troughs, but this went very well with a day spent travelling by train.
