A Story on a Journey by Train: Model Answer with Marking Notes
Quick answer: An original 180-word exam story about a boy's first train ride alone from Bengaluru to Hyderabad, with notes on why it scores and three other ways to take the topic.
A train story earns marks when something happens between two stations that would not have happened anywhere else: a stranger in the next berth, a shared meal, a bag left behind, a lesson in trust. The train gives you a fixed start and end, which solves the structure, so spend your words on the people in the compartment. The model below is about 180 words and follows a thirteen-year-old on his first overnight trip alone.
Students often describe the scenery from the window for three paragraphs. Examiners cannot mark scenery. Put the story inside the coach.
The task
Typical wording: 'Write a story in 150 to 200 words with the title A Journey by Train.' Or an outline: 'first trip alone ... nervous ... a family in the compartment ... falls asleep ... a surprise on waking.' Decide who shares the compartment and what passes between them before you write the departure.
Model answer
Berth 34. Kabir's mother had put him on the Bengaluru to Hyderabad train with a tiffin box, a phone that was already at forty per cent, and a list of instructions that ran to two pages. He was thirteen and this was his first trip alone. He read the list twice before the train had left the platform.
The compartment held a family from Guntur: a grandmother, a young mother and a boy of about six who stared at Kabir until Kabir opened his tiffin and offered him a piece of paratha. That settled it. By Anantapur the grandmother had fed Kabir twice, corrected his Telugu and told him about her son in the army.
He fell asleep somewhere after midnight with his bag under his head, as the list had told him to, and woke at dawn to an empty compartment. The family had got off at Kurnool. For a moment he felt the whole distance to Hyderabad alone.
Then he saw the note tucked into his shoe. 'We checked your bag was safe before we left. Eat the laddoos. Amma.' There were four, wrapped in a newspaper.
Why it earns marks
Against content, organisation and expression:
Three other ways to take the same topic
Each puts the story inside the coach. Any of them would also suit Writory's monthly short story contest, which takes work from writers of 13 and over and returns a score out of 100 with a certificate.
What writers can take from this
- Decide who is in the compartment before you leave the platform.
- Use station names as your time markers.
- Food is the fastest way to show a stranger's kindness.
- Set up a fear early and test it with sleep or a missed stop.
- One object should travel from an early paragraph to the last.
- Keep the window scenery to one sentence.
Try it yourself
Write a 180-word story set entirely inside one train compartment between two stations you name, in which a stranger does something small for the narrator that the narrator only understands after the stranger has got off.
Questions
How long should a train story be for the exam?
Follow the printed limit: 100 to 120 words for CBSE Class 9, 150 to 200 for most school exams, 300 to 350 for ICSE. Cut the grandmother's son and the Telugu to reach 120.
Can a train story be written in the first person?
Yes, and it is the natural choice for a first-trip-alone plot. Keep the narrator's fear understated and let the compartment's people carry the story.
Does a train story need a moral?
Only if asked. A line such as 'Strangers on a train are often kinder than we expect' fits the model above. Do not add one where no moral is required.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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