A train is a closed world. Each carriage is like a small room, with windows and doors, but you can't get out when the train is moving. The world outside is far away, and you can forget your home, your work, your friends. On a train you sit with strangers. You don't know anything about them, but you sit next to them for hours, or perhaps days, in the same small room. You can't get away from them.

As the wheels of the train turn, these stories show us three different people. A beautiful young wife - going on holiday with her new husband, through the green hills of England. A carefree young man - travelling across the mountains of Yogoslavia, looking for work. A sensible middle-aged man - travelling north through the forests and lakes of Finland, hoping for a quiet journey.

This is a collection of short stories about adventures on trains. Strange, wonderful, and frightening things can happen on trains - and all of them happen here.

The Oxford bookworms library offers a wide range of original and adapted stories, both classic and modern, which take learners from elementary to advanced level through six carefully graded language stages:

Stage 1 (400 headwords)

Stage 2 (700 headwords)

Stage 3 (1000 headwords)

Stage 4 (1400 headwords)

Stage 5 (1800 headwords)

Stage 6 (2500 headwords)

This book is at stage 1.

At the end of this book, it supplies questions to help you check your comprehension after reading the stories.