There is a specific quality to Colombia at night that does not belong to any other country I know. A Train Journey makes it real,

It is the warmth, partly — the particular warmth of a coastal city that has absorbed heat all day and releases it slowly after dark, so that the air at midnight still carries the memory of the afternoon. It is the sound — the specific soundscape of a port city that never entirely sleeps, where the harbor and the old town and the modern city exist simultaneously, in the same few square kilometers, in a kind of productive contradiction.

But mostly it is the light. The way Cartagena is lit at night — the amber of the colonial streets, the blue-white of the port facilities, the warm yellow of restaurant terraces spilling into plazas — creates an atmosphere that is simultaneously ancient and alive. It is a city that has been beautiful for centuries and knows it.

This is where Mike Dunleavy boards his train.

The Departure

Cartagena Central Station sits at the edge of the city — close enough to the old colonial center to carry its atmosphere, far enough from the port to feel like the beginning of something rather than the end. Platform 3 at midnight has the quality of all very late public spaces — the overhead lights slightly too bright against the surrounding dark, the few remaining passengers wearing the slightly dazed expression of people who have accepted that they are awake at this hour and stopped fighting it.

The air smells of diesel and the sea.

The train to Medellín departs at 00:39 am. First class. The journey covers approximately 700 kilometers through some of the most dramatic landscapes in South America — the Caribbean coast giving way to the Andes, the mountains giving way to the coffee valleys, the valleys descending finally toward Medellín in the hours before dawn.

On a clear night, the full moon over Platform 3 illuminates the train from above — turning the carriages silver, casting long shadows across the platform stones, making the departure feel like something more than a business trip.

Mike Dunleavy is trying not to notice any of this. He is making notes on his iPad.

The Route

The journey from Cartagena to Medellín by rail passes through three distinct landscapes — each one corresponding, in the world of the book, to a different emotional stage of the night.

The coastal corridor — the first hour. The train moves southeast along the Caribbean coast before turning inland. The landscape is flat and semi-arid, with sparse vegetation. In the darkness, this section of the journey feels suspended — the train moving through a landscape that offers no landmarks, no reference points, no way to measure progress. This is where the hijacking begins. The flatness is intentional.

The Andes crossing — the middle hours. The terrain changes dramatically as the train climbs into the western Andes. Here, the journey becomes physically felt — curves, gradients, tunnels, the specific motion of a train navigating mountainous terrain. The temperature drops. The world outside the window becomes vertical. This is the hardest section of the journey and the deepest section of the night — where the hopelessness and despair stages unfold. The mountains do not care. The train keeps moving.

The descent toward Medellín — the final hours. After the highest point of the Andes, the terrain begins to descend into the Valle de Aburrá — the valley in which Medellín sits at approximately 1,500 meters above sea level. The descent is gradual and long, occurring in the hours before dawn, when the sky begins to change color along its eastern edge. By the time the lights of Medellín appear below, the night is ending. What happened on the train is already becoming the past.

Why Colombia

I did not choose Colombia arbitrarily.

The setting of the Midnight Train Trilogy — both Book I in Cartagena and Book II on the overnight train — is deliberate. Colombia is a country that contains contradictions in a way that serves the world of these books exactly. It is simultaneously dangerous and beautiful, passionate and calculating, ancient and modern, earthly and — in certain lights, at certain hours — something that feels like it exists at the edge of another dimension.

The women who board the train with Mike Dunleavy are Colombian. The station announcement that plays over a black screen in the trailer is in Spanish. The air on Platform 3 smells of diesel and the sea. These are not decorative details. They are load-bearing elements of the atmosphere that the book requires.

Hijacked at Midnight could not have been set anywhere else.

The train from Cartagena to Medellín departs at 12:39 am. Platform 3. The full moon is above the carriages. The air is warm. Six young women are already aboard.

Board now.

— Richard Lionheart, 2026