Waking on the sleeper

Text 1: By Night to the Highlands, by Duncan Ferrier

An original travel writing written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

I left Euston at eight in the evening in one of the new sleeping carriages, and I recommend the experience to any traveller who is not too particular about his elbows. My compartment was a marvel of contrivance, a bed, a basin, a rack for my hat and a little lamp, all packed into a space hardly larger than a wardrobe. I undressed with the dexterity of a man changing his clothes inside a sentry box.

Sleep was another matter. The carriage rocked and clanked and rattled, the engine shrieked at every junction, and at some dark station in the Midlands a porter rolled milk churns past my head with a noise like artillery. I lay awake for hours, convinced that I should never close my eyes.

And yet I must have slept, for when the attendant knocked with my hot water and I raised the blind, England had vanished. In its place were mountains, purple with heather, a loch as still as a looking-glass, and a stag watching the train from the hillside. I had gone to sleep among chimneys and woken in another country, and I declare it felt like a conjuring trick.

Text 2: The Night Train North, by Isla Brennan

An original contemporary blog.

I caught the sleeper from London at nine o’clock on a wet Tuesday, clutching a toothbrush and a lot of excitement. My cabin was tiny but cleverly designed, with a bunk, a fold-down sink, a hook for my coat and a reading light, all squeezed into a space about the size of a lift. Getting into my pyjamas involved a kind of yoga I had not attempted before.

I did not sleep well. The train lurched and squealed, the brakes hissed every time we stopped, and somewhere around two in the morning a freight train thundered past the window like the end of the world. I lay staring at the ceiling, certain I would arrive a wreck.

Then there was a tap on the door and a cheerful voice with my coffee, and I pushed up the blind. London had disappeared. Outside were huge brown hills streaked with snow, a loch like polished steel, and a herd of deer standing perfectly still beside the line. I had fallen asleep in drizzle and traffic and woken up somewhere wild and enormous. It felt like magic.

Both writers describe a night journey on a sleeper train.

What are the similarities between the writers’ experiences of the night and the morning?

Draw on evidence from both texts to support your answer.