Profiling the album in 2007 for
The A.V. Club's "Permanent Records" feature, "an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most", Christopher Bahn wrote: The spare, quiet, even solemn quality of
Trains, which sounds like it was recorded in a church graveyard at midnight in November, proved to be the perfect framework for Hitchcock's crystalline songs. His offbeat lyrical sensibility was in particularly fine form here, laced with Freudian symbolism as well as melancholy–but sardonically funny–psychedelia. American music critic
Jim DeRogatis called the album "the best of [Hitchcock's] solo albums", while the All Music Guide to Rock said it is "one of Hitchcock's most introspective and charming records" and a "kaleidoscopic journey through a colorfully twisted world". Canadian music magazine
Exclaim! called it "arguably Robyn Hitchcock's finest album".{{cite web |url=http://exclaim.ca/music/article/robyn_hitchcock-i_often_dream_of_trains_in_new_york |title=Robyn Hitchcock - I Often Dream Of Trains In New York ==Track listing==