We love everything train-related at The Station Inn.
That’s one of the reasons we spent so much time creating a map of The Big Boy schedule when it rolled through our region over the summer. (By the way: You can still order a print version of the map!)
So, when we compiled our list of movies with trains, we figured we should also create a similar list for books.
Below, you’ll find popular and hidden gems—and many of them are the perfect read for the next time you stay at our railroad-themed B&B.
30 Train Books You Should Read ASAP
6 Children’s Books About Trains
13 Nonfiction Books About Trains
11 Fiction Books About Trains
6 Children’s Books About Trains
Here are some of the very best children’s books with trains—ranked by their current Goodreads scores:
The Polar Express (Chris Van Allsburg)
Goodreads Rating: 4.32/5
About the Book: This popular holiday read chronicles a skeptical young boy as he boards the Polar Express to the North Pole—only to be greeted by Santa Claus himself.
Tip: The film adaptation appears in our 16 Movies With Trains to Watch ASAP article, and we’ve also compiled a list of the best Polar Express Train Rides in PA.
The Little Engine That Could (Watty Piper)
Goodreads Rating: 4.2/5
About the Book: Yes, we know, this one is as obvious a pick as The Polar Express, but we couldn’t not include it. This beloved children’s book is a timeless story of resilience, positivity, and self-reliance—all powerful lessons for young kids.
Freight Train (Donald Crews)
Goodreads Rating: 4.06/5
About the Book: This color board book received the Caldecott Honor Award—a prize reserved for outstanding visual artistry. In Freight Train, Crews introduces young readers to the different cars that make up a freight train, making this a wonderful book for budding railfans.
Locomotive (Brian Floca)
Goodreads Rating: 4.13/5
About the Book: Set in the summer of 1869, Locomotive offers a glimpse of what it was like to ride along the newly completed transcontinental railroad. This children’s book won two separate awards:
- The Caldecott Honor Award for outstanding illustration.
- The Robert F. Sibert Honor for outstanding nonfiction writing.
The Railway Children (E. Nesbit)
Goodreads Rating: 4.25/5
About the Book: In a small house near a railway line, three siblings befriend the local stationmaster and set off on an adventure of mystery and drama as they search for their father, who’s disappeared.
The Boxcar Children Series (Gertrude Chandler Warner)
About the Series: The Boxcar Children is an endearing collection of children’s novels chronicling the adventures of four orphaned siblings living in an abandoned boxcar. Together, they embark on adventures and solve mysteries along their travels.
13 Nonfiction Books About Trains
Here are some of the top nonfiction books, organized by their Goodreads ratings:
Nothing Like It in the World (Stephen E. Ambrose)
Goodreads Rating: 3.99/5
About the Book: Stephen E. Ambrose chronicles the race to complete America’s first transcontinental railroad. Follow the investors, engineers, surveyors, politicians, and thousands of workers who pushed the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads across mountains, deserts, and plains before finally meeting at Promontory Summit in 1869.
Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (David Haward Bain)
Goodreads Rating: 3.90/5
About the Book: David Haward Bain provides another sweeping history of America’s first transcontinental railroad—from its earliest proposals to the driving of the final spike. The book explores the engineering challenges, financial maneuvering, political corruption, dangerous working conditions, and devastating consequences that accompanied one of America’s greatest infrastructure projects.
Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (Richard White)
Goodreads Rating: 3.63/5
About the Book: In this brutally honest account, Richard White highlights the inefficiency, corruption, financial manipulation, and government support behind America’s transcontinental railroads. At the same time, he demonstrates how these troubled companies transformed western settlement, national markets, American politics, and the country’s physical landscape.
The Great Railroad Revolution (Christian Wolmar)
Goodreads Rating: 4.00/5
About the Book: Track the history of American railroads from the earliest experimental lines through the modern freight era. Along the way, Christian Wolmar explains how trains transformed commerce, settlement, warfare, travel, timekeeping, and everyday life—while creating powerful corporations that helped shape the United States.
Blood, Iron & Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World (Christian Wolmar)
Goodreads Rating: 3.78/5
About the Book: Get railroad history from the global perspective! Christian Wolmar explores how railways spread across Europe, North America, India, Russia, Africa, and beyond. These expanding networks connected isolated communities and accelerated economic growth—but also contributed to warfare, colonial exploitation, displacement, and cultural destruction.
Conquering Gotham (Jill Jonnes)
Goodreads Rating: 3.96/5
About the Book: At the beginning of the 20th century, the Pennsylvania Railroad launched an ambitious project: Build tunnels beneath two rivers and bring its trains directly into Manhattan. Jill Jonnes chronicles the engineering breakthroughs, political battles, financial risks, and architectural ambition that ultimately created New York City’s original Pennsylvania Station.
The Men Who Loved Trains (Rush Loving Jr.)
Goodreads Rating: 4.27/5
About the Book: Rush Loving Jr. takes readers inside the boardrooms and political battles that transformed Northeastern railroading. The book chronicles the collapse of Penn Central, the creation of Conrail, and the eventual division of Conrail between Norfolk Southern and CSX—all through the executives who fought over America’s struggling railroad industry.
Related Reading: The Pennsylvania Railroad Timeline
Pennsylvania Railroad (Mike Schafer & Brian Solomon)
Goodreads Rating: 3.90/5
About the Book: Packed with historic photographs, Pennsylvania Railroad traces the rise and fall of the company that called itself the “Standard Railroad of the World.” Readers can explore the Pennsy’s famous locomotives, passenger services, freight operations, stations, engineering landmarks, and eventual merger into the ill-fated Penn Central.
Tip: Get an overview of the “Pennsy” in our History of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Horseshoe Curve (David W. Seidel)
Goodreads Rating: 4.29/5
About the Book: Through historical photographs and accessible commentary, David W. Seidel explores the construction, operation, evolution, and enduring popularity of Horseshoe Curve—the engineering landmark that allowed the Pennsylvania Railroad to conquer the Allegheny Mountains west of Altoona.
Tip: To learn even more about this historic landmark, check out our Horseshoe Curve FAQ.
Set Up Running: The Life of a Pennsylvania Railroad Engineman, 1904–1949 (John W. Orr)
Goodreads Rating: 4.60/5
About the Book: Drawing from his father’s diaries and family records, John W. Orr offers an intimate look at life inside a locomotive cab. The book follows Pennsylvania Railroad engineman Oscar P. Orr while exploring operating rules, crew relationships, workplace dangers, steam locomotives, and nearly five decades of railroad employment.
The Wreck of the Red Arrow: An American Train Tragedy (Dennis P. McIlnay)
Goodreads Rating: 3.56/5
About the Book: Dennis P. McIlnay reconstructs the Pennsylvania Railroad’s deadly 1947 Red Arrow derailment near Gallitzin. By exploring the passengers, railroad employees, rescue efforts, investigation, and technical factors behind the crash, he tells the haunting story of one of the Allegheny Mountains’ most devastating railroad disasters.
The Railway Man (Eric Lomax)
Goodreads Rating: 4.14/5
About the Book: In this powerful memoir, British Army officer Eric Lomax recalls being captured during World War II and forced to work on the Burma–Thailand Railway. Decades after surviving brutal torture, Lomax confronts one of the men involved—beginning an extraordinary journey through trauma, remembrance, reconciliation, and forgiveness.
The Great Railway Bazaar (Paul Theroux)
Goodreads Rating: 3.89/5
About the Book: In this classic travelogue, Paul Theroux chronicles his four-month railroad journey from London through Europe, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia before returning aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway. Along the way, he captures the landscapes, cultures, conversations, colorful passengers, and uncomfortable accommodations that make long-distance train travel so unpredictable—and memorable.
11 Fiction Books About Trains
Here’s a collection of fictional books that use trains as a setting for the story or use railways as critical narrative backdrops. They’re organized by their current Goodreads rating:
Orphan Train (Christina Baker Kline)
Goodreads Rating: 4.24/5
About the Book: While completing community service, 17-year-old foster child Molly Ayer befriends Vivian Daly, an elderly woman with a hidden past. Vivian reveals that she was once sent west aboard an “orphan train,” which transported homeless children to unfamiliar families.
Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie)
Goodreads Rating: 4.2/5
About the Book: An Agatha Christie classic, Murder on the Orient Express tells the tale of an international train ride after a wealthy passenger is found murdered in his locked compartment. Detective Poirot interviews the mysterious passengers in search of the killer.
The Edge (Dick Francis)
Goodreads Rating: 4.13/5
About the Book: Undercover investigator Tor Kelsey boards a luxurious train traveling across Canada to gather evidence against a dangerous figure from the horse-racing world. Complicating his assignment, passengers are participating in a staged murder mystery—but the make-believe mayhem soon gives way to genuine danger in this suspenseful combination of trains, thoroughbreds, and murder.
Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
Goodreads Rating: 4.11/5
About the Book: Anna Karenina is often regarded as one of literature’s greatest novels, and it tells the story of the titular character’s affair with aristocratic cavalry officer Count Vronsky—while exploring contemporary Russia’s social classes and the human condition. The railroad operates as a critical thematic touchstone in this book, providing a symbol for upward mobility, the inescapable approach of fate, and technological progress.
The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins)
Goodreads Rating: 3.96/5
About the Book: Offering an updated literary twist on the Alfred Hitchcock classic thriller Rear Window, The Girl on the Train chronicles a woman who rides the same commuter train every day while inventing an idealized life for a couple she spots through an apartment window. But when one half of the couple disappears, the woman becomes convinced there was a murder.
Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne)
Goodreads Rating: 3.95/5
About the Book: Here’s a classic read! English gentleman Phileas Foggs makes an incredible bet: He can travel around the world in only 80 days. While traveling across Europe, Asia, and North America on everything from railroads to steamships, he’s pursued by a detective who mistakes Foggs for a dangerous bank robber.
Last Train to Istanbul (Ayşe Kulin)
Goodreads Rating: 3.88/5
About the Book: Selva, a Muslim Turkish woman, defies her family by marrying Rafael, a Jewish man, and moving to France. When the Nazis seize control of the country, Turkish diplomats hatch a daring plan to carry Rafael and other endangered Jews across occupied Europe aboard a train bound for the safety of Istanbul.
The Train (Georges Simenon)
Goodreads Rating: 3.83/5
About the Book: As Nazi Germany invades France in 1940, Marcel Féron evacuates his hometown aboard an overcrowded train. After becoming separated from his pregnant wife and daughter, he forms an intense relationship with Anna, a Jewish refugee fleeing persecution. Their dangerous journey across war-torn France gives Marcel an unexpected glimpse of another possible life.
Strangers on a Train (Patricia Highsmith)
Goodreads Rating: 3.75/5
About the Book: In this suspenseful thriller, a deranged stranger hatches a sadistic plan with reluctant architect Guy Haines: They can each get away with murder if they kill each other’s worst nemesis. This is a taut story of guilt and manipulation, and it all stems from a chance encounter on a simple train ride.
Tip: The 1951 film adaptation of this book appears in our 16 Movies With Trains to Watch ASAP article!
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (John Godey)
Goodreads Rating: 3.75/5
About the Book: In this taut thriller, four armed men hijack a NYC subway train and hold 17 passengers hostage for an enormous cash ransom with a strict deadline. The price for delaying: They’ll kill one hostage for every minute their demands aren’t met. Follow police lieutenant Zachary Garber as he works to thwart the hijackers’ plan.
Tip: The original 1974 film adaptation of this book appears in our 16 Movies With Trains to Watch ASAP article!
Snowpiercer: The Escape (Jacques Lob)
Goodreads Rating: 3.32/5
About the Book: This dystopian graphic novel envisions humanity’s survival in a desperately cold future. The remaining humans live on a train circling the frozen Earth—navigating both the Arctic terrain and the violent social hierarchy. As passengers grow disgruntled, they spark a rebellion that fractures the train’s class system.
Tip: The 2013 film adaptation of this book appears in our 16 Movies With Trains to Watch ASAP article!
More Ways to Love Trains
If you love trains, get an up-close view of the Norfolk Southern main line by visiting The Station Inn. You can watch dozens of trains pass every day from the comfort of our front porch!
Book a room today to start your adventure!