Tales of the track New book recounts best mates’ journey round UK and touching stories of ordinary folk they met

Fellow traveller John Aitken. also 68, from Keith, let the train take the strain for their marathon.

“We did it in nine blocks of journeys, taking one part of the country and completing each in about five days,” said Stuart.

“We spent about £ 1000 on fares.”

The duo would frequently jump on and off around 15 trains daily, with one exceptional day on the c ommu t er ne t w o rk ar o u n d Glasgow and Lanarkshire involving 22 different changes.

Astonishingly, over the nine weeks they only had a couple of really late trains and one that failed to show up at all.

A massive part of the undertaking was to find out about their fellow travellers and around 300 passenger conversations recounted in the book.

“I’m not actually very good at talking to strangers, which is a bit of a drawback considering what I set out to do,” smiled Stuart.

“John would have to prod me to go to speak to people.

“When I told them I was travelling on every rail line in the country, they were almost without exception lovely people. They’d start off by saying they didn’t know why I wanted to talk to them as they weren’t interesting people – and then proved they were.”

Many of the meetings are still fabulously fresh in Stuart’s mind. One was with a 92-year-old former sailor in Cornwall.

“He was a bit deaf so he spoke

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