【B1】 【B9】

I love traveling by train. Fast  expresses, slow local trains which stops at every station, suburban trains taking business men to their offices and home again; I enjoy them ail. It must be the element of romance that appeals to me. There is no romance in a car on a motorway—a box of metal and rubber on a strip of  concrete — or in flying through the air in a pressurized tube from one  identical plastic and glass airport to another. But trains are different. You can walk around, look at the  scenery, observe your fellow  passengers. In a plane, all you can see axe the clouds and the backs of other people’s heads.
Yes, traveling by train is still an  adventure, even in England. You try to interpret the timetable, persuade the booking-office clerk to sell you a ticket and  understand the incomprehensible messages coming over the loudspeaker systems. Then there’s that delightful uncertainty as  you wonder whether you are on the right train, or their right part of the train.
Abroad, of course, it’s even more exciting, particularly in those countries which forget to put names on their railway stations. Not only are you never certain you are on the right train,  but you don’t even know when to get off it if you are.