Describe the sights and sounds of an enchanted journey. A whistle blew from somewhere out of sight. It pierced the still cold air like a gunshot.

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Describe the sights and sounds of an enchanted journey.

The station was full of people, each eager face looking expectantly at the large glass clock that hung over the platform. Its frost-covered face read eight-fifty-five in the morning, only five minutes to go. I knew it wouldn’t be late; Norwegian trains never are. The early morning light that hung over us seemed to sharpen every detail of the old station, so that every bolt and brick were as clear to me from twenty feet away as if I were a whisper away from them. It was still very cold; I clung to my coat as tightly as I could, trying desperately to stop heat escaping. Six-inch icicles were dotted along the platform roof; where they caught the light they burnt with a sudden ferocity that put me in mind of storybook fairies, their shimmering bodies dancing in the pale dawn.

A whistle blew from somewhere out of sight. It pierced the still cold air like a gunshot. The sound of screeching brakes seemed to pull on my every nerve like fingernails on chalkboard, and we were bathed in thick white clouds of steam which gleamed with a luminescent brightness as it met the frozen air, before dissipating into nothingness. As the throngs of waiting passengers began to embark I caught my first glimpse of the carmine-red steam engine which was to take me northwards. My journey had begun.

I found my way to an empty wood-panelled compartment; it was warm and afforded a handsome view of the old, now empty station through a large window. The train lurched and began to pull away from the platform. Through the streets we silently crept, where the town was still sleeping under a duvet of freshly fallen snow. We turned a bend and the ornate gothic spires of the cathedral loomed into sight. Its copper-green roof was adorned with weathered gargoyles, these forgotten relics of a past age whose enduring gaze ceaselessly watched over the townspeople below, and whose arms now held the remnants of birds’ nests, from which the former occupants had long since departed. The little wooden houses became a blur of crimson as the train gained more speed. Soon the last vestiges of suburbia were behind us as we made our way through open countryside.

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Dusk followed dawn with indecent haste. Barely three hours had passed since leaving Trondheim and already the windows were darkening. It was as if the sun was retreating, unwilling to stay and suffer the cold of winter. Then, quite suddenly and without any warning to speak of, a horn sounded from somewhere in front of the carriage, its low echoes reverberating off the sleeping mountainside. It had not yet died away before, as if conjured by the sound, a masked figure appeared at my compartment door. His ghoulish face and twisted features seemed ominously foreboding in the twilight. His ...

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