The Newsletter of the Global Passenger Rail Renaissance.
// Thank you for joining me here—and I mean that.
I'd especially like to thank new members. By taking the time to share your email, you've become a passenger aboard the HIGH SPEED newsletter.
I should introduce myself. I'm Taras Grescoe, the author of eight non-fiction books (and counting), and a professional journalist with a lifelong interest in transportation. In my book Straphanger I visited 14 cities around the world looking at transit, bicycles, active transport, and alternatives to the car; that said, I've got a special soft spot for trains, funiculars, trams, and anything that runs on rails. I suspect that it goes back to the time my family and I migrated from Toronto to Vancouver on Via Rail's The Canadian. I was a small child, but I still remember the multi-day voyage as my introduction to the beauty, romance, and controlled sense of freedom and adventure that comes with rail travel.
When I travel, wherever and whenever it's possible, I go by train. Life's too short for driving (and I suspect that a lifetime of driving makes for a shorter lifespan). And, as Paul Theroux puts it, getting around on a jet plane isn't really travel; it's just transfer. Happily for me, my wife (who took the picture of me on the shinkansen above), also loves a good train trip; and we've been bringing our kids on board with us since before they could walk.
My latest project focuses on inter-city transportation—which includes, but isn't limited to, high-speed rail. I'm working on a book-length sequel to Straphanger. By signing up for these dispatches, which I aim to send out on a weekly basis, you'll be helping me get the word out about the best (and the worst, and the I-guess-it'll-have-to-do) in rail-based transportation. There's a big change happening in the way people travel, and I want to cover all aspects of it, from night trains to heritage tourist trains to the most advanced bullet trains out there. It's a wave that's swept the world, particularly Asia and Europe, and I'm quietly confident that it's one that's going to come to North America (even if the immediate future of rail on this continent is anybody's guess).
If you've signed up for a free membership, welcome aboard! There's definitely room for you in coach. You'll receive every newsletter, though for some of them, you might be able to read only the first few paragraphs in the public preview; others will be free for all to read. If the spirit moves you, and you're enjoying what you see, I hope you'll consider upgrading to a paid membership.
If you have signed up for a paid membership, please feel free to spend time in the observation car and lounge anywhere on board at your leisure. You'll get every post, and be able to roam the archives at will.
Also: you fare-payers have got my deepest gratitude! Not just saying that. I've worked in journalism since I was in my twenties, when I traveled the world for National Geographic and The New York Times; it's never been harder than it is now to make a living at this rewarding but challenging trade. Very few media outlets pay the expenses that allow freelancers like myself to get our boots on the ground, or our feet on the gangways. The small but steady income I get from HIGH SPEED allows me to keep going out in the world, and reporting on the ill-understood, and shamefully under-covered, everyday miracle of steel-wheels-running-on-steel-rails.
So, once again, thank you: you are, in a very real way, keeping this train rolling down the tracks.
For those who haven't yet signed up, doing so is as easy as typing your email address into the space below:
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