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Tomorrow the Train: Journey to the World Record

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Customer Reviews

  Brakes the Guiness World Record on rail travel , 01/07/2007
Reviewer: Pauline Hager
TOMORROW THE TRAIN is a riveting memoir of Ms. Tippins' rail travel to thirty-three countries, on her own. Although her intent was to break the Guinness World Record, which she did in 1997 traveling 79,841 unduplicated miles, she also crafted a colorful memoir of her fascinating experiences. The author intimately acquaints the reader to each countries's peoples, customs, points of interest, their idiosyncracies, including thiefs, drug addicts, gypsies, beggers, among others. Exotic names like The Chopin Expresa and Poland, The Glacier Express and Switzerland, The Artic Circle and the Scandinavians, The Trans-Siberian Railways: Moscow to Vladivostok, and many, many more are some of the rail lines Ms. Tippins ventured into courageously. Mona Tippins is not your typical, middle age, female traveler. Read this book and "see" the world.

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  The Reader Experiences the Journey , 08/23/2008
Reviewer: L. Karlin
Author Mona Tippins paints in the mind of the reader vivid scenery and colorful people in far-away places most of us will never see. Venturing alone in unfamiliar territories among people of such different cultures brought her face to face both with real personal danger and magnificent rewards. Her journey to the Guinness World Record for unduplicated rail miles many times tested her physical and emotional stamina, but her persistence paid off with success. The reader becomes part of the journey and experiences the thrills, disappointments, setbacks, and successes.

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  Book Review: Tomorrow the Train , 11/18/2008
Reviewer: Charles M Baker III
The other day, I received a copy of a book in the mail. The book is entitled, Tomorrow the Train: Journey to the World Record by Mona McDonald Tippins. The main title immediately suggested to me, the way in which Mrs. Tippins had faced an uncompromising inevitability, such as waking upon a Monday morning with a groan. On the other hand, she may have been referring to the future of mass transportation. Yet, I delved deeper into the thought (and the book), and in the beginning of her introduction, I read: “The Guinness Book of World Records! These words comprise a title, a book, a collection of astonishing facts and amazing records, and for many of us, a dream. I dreamed of being in that book.” She goes on to reveal her aspirations: “One night I was struck with the idea of combining my love of train travel with my dream. I had a goal then, not just a dream…It was tomorrow the dream, tomorrow the train.” The story she tells is how she made her dream come alive and true. Mrs. Tippins achieved her goal, her vision and her quest. She has achieved a form of greatness that few of the world’s teeming billions has ever done. She now nestles within the covers of the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records for all of eternity. Not bad for a grandmother, I bemused, not bad at all. After these initial impressions of the title, I felt a sense of nostalgic loneliness when viewing the picture on the cover. It was of a rushing train viewed from a distant hilltop. A billowing steam of smoke partially obscures the cars as a steam locomotive pulls its train to a distant destiny. I wondered within which compartment Mrs. Tippins might have been. Was she sitting beside a window, excited by the exotically foreign landscapes rolling by? On the other hand, was she quietly sleeping, rocked by the interminable, steel rails? I did not know, which caused me to enter her mental depot a little more deeply, just to find out.

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  TOMORROW THE TRAIN: Guinness Record-Tippins , 10/04/2010
Reviewer: Charlotte Liebel aka Sharliebel
TOMORROW THE TRAIN: Journey to the World Record By Mona MacDonald Tippins [Review by Charlotte Liebel, M.Ed. aka Sharliebel] It is as though you travel the world in her shadow while Mona MacDonald Tippins captures the details in varied descriptions of train travel, scenery, people-watching, foods, smells, and even her heroics throughout these impressive journals. In her book – Tomorrow the Train: Journey to the World Record – you read about Mona’s visits through thirty-three countries by train with notebook and backpack. Her experiences are recorded in a profound compilation of documents about this dedicated writer’s true experiences. Be entertained in twenty-seven chapters of adventures – over 79,841 recorded miles – that will not soon be forgotten. Mona sets out alone to break the Guinness World Record and proudly does so. She has the heart of a teenager in her sites as Mona waits to raise her family before embarking as an adult upon this ambitious adventure. Believing global travel is safe Tippins is surprised to find that it is often dangerous. Mona Tippins miraculously survives encounters and threats as she awaits each train with undaunted patience and apprehension. She is robbed and beaten as thieves and muggers come out of the shadows to attack her. On one occasion, she looks on as a woman jumps off the train at her appointed destination. Mona watches her leap and the unexpected happens. The woman hits an embankment and rolls backwards toward the railroad tracks. Mona jumps heroically off her moving train from her safe position, grabs the woman, and saves her life. She then has to run to jump back onto the train. Incredible. These acts that Mona Tippins records happen in the course of her lifelong dream. It’s been her ambition in life to break the Guinness World Travel Record by Train and the results are noted in her book Tomorrow the Train: Journey to the World Record. How proud she must be to proclaim this title for America. Mona passes endurance tests that less dedicated travelers never could. Some days she misses meals because of her train schedules. Layovers are occasionally not in towns or she arrives in town at midnight when diners and clerks are unavailable. Foods on trains are unpalatable or non-existent. Mona’s book records old bridges and castles she observes from her train windows and cross-references in her travel guides. She carefully maps the routes from one country to the next by recording train stations and asking conductors to oblige her with their signature of miles traveled. Her requests are not always acknowledged so that she actually traveled more miles than those stated of record. In their tales of 18th Century historical travel, some of my favorite novelists and historians imagine their most daring of travelers to create fiction about feuds and religious wars. In comparison, read Mona MacDonald Tippins’ true adventures and experience her story as she takes you to countries you have never seen for the adventure of a lifetime. Tomorrow the Train: Journey to the World Record. Available from all booksellers. Published by Infinity Publishing.com. ISBN 0-7414-0330-7.

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