Pamela Mulloy

I’m writing this on the train, with the sun throwing light on the forest and snow out my window and there is nothing for me to do but sit here and think about these questions, and to figure out what it is that I want to say. This is why I like train travel. It’s a gift to writers.

What sparked the idea behind Off the Tracks and your exploration of train travel and the stories associated with trains?

I have been thinking about writing a book on trains for a long time, over two decades, in fact. I read Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s A Train Journey about twenty years ago, and the way in which he talks about the impact of train travel on space and time really intrigued me. However, I didn’t know whether to approach the subject through fiction or nonfiction. When things started to shut down in March 2020, and I started cancelling all the trips I had planned that year, I decided to revisit some of the train trips I’d taken in the past as a way to think about what train travel means to me, and to explore the social history of trains. It became the best kind of pandemic project—to travel without leaving home.

Why do you think there has been a renaissance around the world for train travel in our contemporary time?

If you look at the history of train travel through the Eurail tickets, there was a steady increase in passes sold from its inception in the 1950s through to the early ’90s. That’s when the European Union deregulated the airplane industry and suddenly planes were cheap and there were lots more routes, so trains fell out of fashion. In 2018, when a group of journalists started writing about flight shame, people started to switch back to trains again. The number of Eurail tickets doubled from 2019 to 2022. This increased demand has meant that European governments and investors are expanding routes to satisfy all these new travellers. The same is true for Amtrak in the United States who have committed to a major investment in trains, stations, and infrastructure to meet the demand. In Canada there have been fleet upgrades and the promise of new tracks between the Toronto-Quebec City corridor.

Climate change is one issue, but I think the pandemic also gave us some pause for thought about the way we want to travel, with trains falling under the umbrella of the slow travel movement. I also think that there is a kind of magical and glamourous side to trains that people crave. I always talk about train travel as a form of retreat for me. I can read, write, or just let my mind wander. It is a highly creative environment for me, and people seem to respond in the same way when I talk about travelling by train.

How did you manage to strike a balance between personal experience and historical research in Off the Tracks? How do you go about choosing what information to include to enrich your personal narrative and what to leave on the cutting-room floor?

Writing about my personal experience was more the challenge. I’m quite a private person so the idea of a travel memoir never really occurred to me. But revisiting those journeys was an interesting way to revisit myself at that time, and I knew that I had to be as open and reflective as possible for this to work. Once I started to tell my own story, my curiosity took over, and I went into many different directions with my research, just letting my interests be my guide. I generally do a lot of research with my writing so in this case I loved that I could allow myself to roam a bit, to see what sorts of stories I could uncover once I had started to unearth my own train journey. There is so much more research I could have included, but I didn’t want this to be that kind of book. Schivelbusch’s book, as well as The Railways: Nation, Network and People by Simon Bradley, were both invaluable in helping me think about the history of trains and train travel. Perhaps because it was written in the pandemic I wanted the space to reflect on all of it. I wanted to explore my relationship to the journeys and to all the information I uncovered.

In addition to being an author, you’re the editor of a literary magazine and the director of a literary festival. How does your work as an author influence these roles, and vice versa? What do you find most fulfilling about each of these positions?

I know for certain that reading, editing, and listening to the works of other authors has made me a better writer. There’s no question that exposure to the writing of others sparks my creativity, makes me want to develop my own craft, and also allows me to recognize the importance of community in doing so.  As a writer, my editorial experience has meant that I understand the process and business of getting published, and how much work it takes. Discovering the work of the writers is definitely the most fulfilling part of being an editor. I’m spoiled by reading high-quality work all the time.

As a writer, the quiet time to think and solve the problem I’m working on when writing is the most satisfying aspect. I’m writing this on the train, with the sun throwing light on the forest and snow out my window and there is nothing for me to do but sit here and think about these questions, and to figure out what it is that I want to say. This is why I like train travel. It’s a gift to writers.

Do you have a trip or train that you have yet to travel on but want to someday?

I have travelled on the Ocean trip down to the Maritimes about twenty times, and I’d really like to do the Canadian train out west. Aside from that I’d like to go on the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul—the opportunity to experience the old-world glamour of this iconic trip would be the best kind of slow travel, I think.