Why night trains feel like stories

A night train contains two landscapes at once: the small, warm interior and the dark moving world beyond the glass. The passenger does not have to make either one happen.

Stations appear as brief chapters. A lamp, a clock, a person on a platform—then the train closes the distance and moves on before anything needs explaining.

This makes trains especially suited to bedtime fiction. Motion continues even when the reader stops paying attention. The journey can finish without being witnessed.