Railway buffs and fans of the "penny dreadful" style will enjoy Andrew Martin’s The Necropolis Railway.
Set in 1903, this thriller features a young man who dreams of driving a locomotive.
Jim Stringer finds work with the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company which delivers coffins from the city morgue to suburban cemeteries.
He soon learns that his predecessor has mysteriously disappeared and then he is beset by a series of murderous attacks.
There really was a Necropolis Railway, which delivered coffins and mourners directly to platforms within the cemeteries.
The funeral trains usually ran once each day but after the mid-1930s they only ran twice each week, much of their traffic having moved to the road network.
The entrance to the station still stands on Westminster Bridge Road.
Stringer's second outing is The Blackpool Highflyer and he will return in 2008 in The Lost Luggage Porter.
Edward Marston has a series dealing with major crimes committed on Victorian railways featuring Robert Colbeck, a former attorney now serving as an inspector in the fledging Scotland Yard of 1851.
In his first case, The Railway Detective, Colbeck investigates a daring daylight train robbery that results in the derailment of the train and the theft of gold and mail, inspired in part by an actual train robbery that occurred in England in 1855.
This is the same crime which is described in fascinating detail in The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton.
Colbeck’s latest case, Iron Horse, is due to be published this coming September.
After reading the Marston books it was especially thrilling to pass through several Brunel tunnels while riding the rails in England last spring.
Rail travel is still alive and well, and you can consult the Library's collection for some ideas.