Yes, indeed. Highly effective. However, makes its effect by being what used to be known by such names as "programme music", or "tone poem", etc; i.e music telling a specific story, whether based on stories already known like Tschaikowsky's Shakespearean "Fantasy Overtures", Strauss's "Til Eulenspiegel" &c., or, as the first name above implies, needing a programme note to explain the 'story'. Still, this one does work as you say.

But it does, as all the work of his I have listened to, rely primarily on the ostinato, the obstinate [which of course is what the word means] repetition of the same phrase. It works in Difft Trains because it supports, and is supported by, the explicit narrative, with the wind-down effect at the end & so on. But the use of ostinato to represent train journeys is surely something of a cliché [cf Honnegger &c]. & can anyone point out how the, to my ears, tedious ostinato atonality in 18 Musicians qualifies that work for inclusion in Howard Goodall's list of "most important of all time"? To me it comes over as both meaningless and ballsachingly boring. Who will defend it, and justify Mr Goodall's respect & admiration for it?

I will hold my breath! ~~

~M~