Railway – Ramblings on my bookshelves

These three charming books were printed by Puffin Books in the 1940’s. They don’t seem to have been reprinted, not just by Puffin but by anyone, which bearing in mind that they are for very young readers, or more likely parents reading to young children, and their inherently fragile nature consisting of just eight sheets of paper, including the covers, folded and stapled in their centre makes finding them in good condition extremely difficult. Due to their rarity I have decided to include several double page spreads so that you can appreciate what a delight these little books (182mm x 110mm or 7.16 x 4.33 inches but so thin they are almost pamphlets) are. As implied the three books feature an anthropomorphic railway engine similar to the slightly later, and much more famous Railway Series by Wilbert Awdry and later his son Christopher which feature, amongst others, Thomas the Tank Engine, although that particular character isn’t in the first book which first appeared in May 1945.

The Holiday Train

Published in November 1944 as Baby Puffin number five, this introduces The Holiday Train as a character along with the love of his life The Little House which he passed every day whilst travelling up and down the line. Like the Puffin Picture Books, which were well established by then, the books were produced from plates normally cut direct by the artist, But Heaton was not a lithographer and didn’t know the technique so his drawings were converted in house by staff at the printers W.S. Cowell Ltd of Ipswich.

The story actually starts with the older engines, including The Holiday Train, being retired and going off to rest which he was happy about although he was really going to miss The Little House. But the seaside town where he had worked grew in popularity and population so the new engines couldn’t cope and it was decided to bring back the old locomotives.

As you can see above his return didn’t get off to a great start but soon all was well and The Holiday Train could renew his friendship with The Little House until…

The dreadful thing is a violent storm where a lightening strike hits The Little House and destroys it which sends The Holiday Train into depression at the loss of his friend. Trying to work out what to do to bring him back to normal the managers of the railway decide to get him to pull a special train, I love the expressions of the people on this next double page spread.

Of course The Holiday Train not only manages but sets a new record for the journey and as a reward it is decided to rebuild The Little House. I particularly like the puffin, the logo of the imprint, hiding behind a bush on the rear cover of the book as the Holiday Train settles down for the night in his new engine shed built from the ruins of The Little House.

The Holiday Train Goes to America

Published in June 1946 as Baby Puffin number six this takes the form of an international competition held in America between five locomotives from England against five from the USA which means of course crossing the Atlantic by ship. Which is a step up from the branch line antics of the first book, even if The Holiday Train is by far the smallest locomotive and is rather looked down on by the others. This book is very different to the other two, not only because of the use of four colour printing which allows for a full colour palate but also due to the much greater amount of text needed to tell a more complex story. This means a significantly smaller font is used, which along with the more literate style makes this definitely a book to be read to a small child rather than one they would read themselves.

Heaton makes full use of his extended colour range, it would have been difficult to do this book without the inclusion of blue. Speaking of which I’m sure the large blue loco called Blue Racer at the back of the left hand image above is a version of Mallard which at had broken the world speed record for a steam train in July 1938 by pulling seven coaches at a peak of 126 miles per hour, a record that still stands today. This can be better appreciated in a later picture where the streamlining of the LNER class A4 is shown, see below.

I love this picture of a seasick train, not a sentence I thought I would ever type, but Heaton manages to capture the abject misery of this condition so well on the face of the engine.

At last they arrive in New York and after being unloaded were welcomed to America and it appears that The Holiday Train runs on a narrower gauge that the mainline locomotives alongside him, which would somewhat explain his size difference. The two locos either side of him above are definitely giving him side-eye.

The three competitions are explained, a race, a beauty competition and a prize for the biggest engine which was almost certainly going to go to an American entrant as they are so much bigger than the locomotives from England. It didn’t look like The Holiday Train stood a chance in any of them. But there was a problem with the huge American engine Texas Tom who suddenly let out a lot of smoke obscuring the view for the other engines, but The Holiday Train is so small that he could see clearly under the dark cloud

and went on to win the race. I haven’t included the picture of the race itself but it does feature one of the errors Heaton made in his artwork as the green English train has vanished along with any tracks for him to run on. Another error is seen above as there is only one blue engine out of the ten and that is the Mallard lookalike but the loco shown above is missing the streamlining clearly depicted a few pages earlier. At the beauty contest there are again only nine tracks and no sign of the English green loco.

At the ball, where The Holiday Train is presented with the cup there are ten locos depicted but yet again Heaton has forgotten that one of the English locos is streamlined. It’s a fun story somewhat let down by the artistic faults, it is possible however that due to the age of the intended readership that this wasn’t noticed at the time by them, however it was spotted by Penguin management.

The Holiday Train Goes to the Moon

The last book in the series, not just of the Holiday Train but of Baby Puffins themselves as an imprint was published in April 1948 as the ninth Baby Puffin. Frankly this is the least interesting of the three titles, having a fairly simplistic story and a return to just red, yellow and black illustrations. It is noticeable that the scale between The Holiday Train and his engine shed formally The Little House has changed somewhat from the first book. In that the loco only just fitted in the picture on the back cover in the original title but now he is inside quite a roomy place with highly impractical curtains and a rug on the floor, see below.

The book tells the story of The Holiday Train being surprised by Carrumpus, a magical character who introduces himself saying “I come to visit trains when they get tired or overworked and cheer them up.” He does this by granting them a wish.

As you can see above The Holiday Train wishes he could fly and soon he has wonderful golden wings so he could fly around rather than running on rails.

Soon he decides to travel to the moon where he finds a railway, but not one like at home as here the carriages pull the locomotive rather than the other way round. But nevertheless The Holiday Train sets off to explore.

Arriving over the town of Lubbelium he sees some strange birds but suddenly Carrumpus notices the time, it’s almost midnight and the wish expires in a few minutes. Quickly The Holiday Train flies back to Earth and his home in The Little House.

It’s a pity that only nine different Baby Puffins were printed but I’m guessing that they were quite difficult for booksellers to display and sell them as they were so thin with no spine and usually were a horizontal format. With regard to the finishing of The Holiday Train books, by April 1948 the first book featuring Thomas the Tank Engine had appeared and he would go on to become enormously popular so did the world really need another anthropomorphic locomotive especially as Thomas and friends were somewhat more realistically drawn although not as delightfully whimsical. The rear cover of this last book has an appeal from Peter Heaton,

Dear Children,

As you know from reading my little books. I like having adventures. If you can tell me of any exciting places I could go to, write to me, care of Penguin Books, West Drayton, Middlesex, England

So clearly Heaton had no idea either that this would be the last anyone would see of The Holiday Train. Although he also wrote and illustrated the eighth Baby Puffin ‘Dobbish the Paper Horse’ Peter Heaton is probably best known to collectors of Penguin books for his Pelican titles dealing with a very different mode of transport, Sailing (first published June 1949) and Cruising (first published April 1952). He served in the Royal Navy during WWII on armed Merchant Navy vessels, corvettes and Motor Torpedo Boats ending up at the Admiralty and after the cancellation of the Baby Puffin series became friends with Penguin Books’ Managing Director, Allen Lane, regularly accompanying him on journeys on his boat. These trips led to the two factual books which made his name and which would be in print for several decades.

20200728 Murder on the Orient Express 1

This is not a traditional review of Christie’s most famous book hence it’s inclusion in the ‘Book Tales’ category on the blog. How could I say anything about the story that has not already been said? Sharp eyed readers will have noticed that despite me being English my copy of the book featured above is an American Pocket Book edition and there is a very good reason for that which gives a personal link to the story. Thirty three years ago I travelled on the Orient Express with my then girlfriend, who was American, and she brought a copy of this book for me which we both read whilst on the train. Another thing you may notice is right at the bottom ‘Formally titled MURDER IN THE CALAIS COACH’ this is a reference to the habit Christie’s American publishers Dodd, Mead & Co. had of altering the titles of her books which does make any bibliography quite messy. Other examples (Original English title first) include:-

The Sittaford Mystery – The Murder at Hazelmoor
Lord Edgeware Dies – Thirteen at Dinner
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? – The Boomerang Clue
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe – The Patriotic Murders
Dumb Witness – Poirot Loses a Client

and many more.

Rereading the novel again, probably for the first time in three decades, I was struck by how well it was written. Even though I of course knew the solution, as does almost everyone with an interest in detective novels, it didn’t matter, I still enjoyed how Christie developed the story and Poirot’s slow realisation of just what a fantastic solution it is. It is also a ‘locked room mystery’ in that the train is stuck in a snowdrift on its way from Istanbul to Paris so the murderer could not have escaped from the train and it is also impossible for Poirot to verify any clues he may discover or even who anybody is with the outside world as they are completely cut off. The train gets stuck just after Vinkovci (spelt Vincovci in the book) which is now in Croatia so on the southern route on the map below just as the line turns north to head to Budapest.

20200728 Murder on the Orient Express 3

This poster is from the winter season of 1888/9, forty years before the book is set but gives a hint of the glamour associated with the journey. It’s a trip Christie made several times whilst visiting her husband on his archaeological digs in Iraq so she knew the operation well and the story of the Armstrong family with the kidnapping of the baby daughter and the subsequent deaths which is the background to this book is a straight borrowing from the Lindbergh case which had happened a couple of years earlier. Everyone reading this book when it first came out would have been familiar with the Lindbergh story which had been a worldwide sensation in 1932, to my mind it was somewhat tactless of Christie to so obviously take this tragic case and turn it into a murder mystery of her own, there are too many similarities to be comfortable if you know about the original.

I also included the poster in this blog as it was this, rather than Christie’s novel, which inspired a trip on what was left of the Orient Express back in the late 1980’s. By then, although it still left Paris at 9am each day it only made it to Bucharest and by the time it got there it was hardly an express and the glamour was long gone on the entire journey. By adding on extra trains from Bucharest to Belgrade and then on via Sofia to Istanbul I did manage to stay at least one night in all the cities listed in the poster heading. It was natural that we would read Murder On The Orient Express whilst travelling on it. Nowadays there is only the luxury private train that carries that name and recreates the glamour that Agatha Christie would have known in the 1920’s and 30’s when she was a passenger and which she used as the setting for, if not her best then certainly her best known work.

A somewhat scary flashback photo below, reading this very book whilst travelling between Paris and Munich on the first stage of our Orient Express journey back in 1987.

20200728 Murder on the Orient Express 2