Trains

Trains are a frequent plot device in many Agatha Christie stories. Naturally, her detectives and protagonists did most of their long distance travelling by train. But many plots were also woven around trains. Trains could serve as a kind of mobile Locked-room, like in Murder on the Orient Express. Careful attention to train schedules and stops could establish or break alibis. Because of the distances travelled, trains were used as opportunities to escape or create misdirection. Trains and stations placed different people close together from brief, almost random moments, creating situations for unexpected encounters and meetings. People on trains or stations can overhear or witness things inadvertantly.

Stories where trains are featured

 * Murder on the Orient Express
 * The murder on board is a Locked-room mystery.
 * Poirot overhead a conversation at a station on the way to Istanbul that gave a clue as to the relationship between two of the suspects.
 * 4.50 from Paddington
 * A chance encounter of two trains running alongside allows a murder to be witnessed.
 * Important inferences about which train the murder could have taken place on rely on careful attention to train schedules and whether the train in question had corridors or or not.
 * The Girl in the Train - a chance encounter in a train compartment leads to adventure and romance for the protagonist.
 * The Mystery of the Blue Train
 * The Plymouth Express
 * The Girdle of Hyppolita - a school girl boards a train at London but is not on board when it arrives in Paris.
 * The Sign in the Sky - a housemaid's report about seeing a train was used to establish the time of the murder and break the alibi of a suspect.

Trains in adaptations

 * The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge (Agatha Christie's Poirot episode) - in the ITV adaptation only, Poirot is able to reconstruct the crime based on a study of train timetables and the knowledge that some trains stopped at a small railway halt near the scene of the murder.