The Train Gods Smiled

Let’s play a game:

I get a camera. A nice modern DSLR, or a phone, always in the pocket, always ready. Or both.

You drive a train down a track that’s been there for a hundred years, standard gauge steel rails that never move, save for a slight flex under the hundreds of thousands of tons that pound the ground as you rumble by.

All I have to do to win is snap a picture of the locomotive where you sit, and I win.

For you to win, you must sneak the locomotive by me.

And you have to honk. Four times.

I almost always lose.

For style points, you might shave off the lengths. It’s not crushing to miss a train by 7/8ths of it.

But to hear the throb of the diesels just out of reach of the camera, too far up the track to photograph, but oh, if you could look back and see me wave my hands and gnash my teeth, you’d laugh and laugh.

Beginnings

I’ve always liked trains, watching them trackside with my father as a toddler, taking one up to Connecticut to visit my grandma and so badly wanting to be a conductor, and building model railroads as a tongue-tied child.

(It was the kindness of a man at the train club who, through listening and respect, showed me a world of communication that I might inhabit. He wasn’t particularly extroverted, but I figured out that I sure was.)

Decades ago, copying my brother, I got a DSLR camera, too.

“The lens goes both ways, man” he smirked when I couldn’t copy his shots.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He just smirked some more, and I kicked him. You know, brother stuff.

“Whatever man, I’m gonna get a good shot of a train.”

But I always lost. By feet and inches. The rules of the game remained stacked in my favor: The train had to honk four times, weight a bazillion pounds, only went forty miles an hour on an exact track, and often heralded it’s arrival with the bells and lights of a grade crossing.

I’d be three steps too late.

I started to get a complex. Wouldn’t you?

Oh, it’s continued for years. Last week, loading up from a gig in Salem, I heard the southbound creeping along the river. But speakers are heavy, and the priority, so I packed them away neatly, and drove off in search of a sandwich.

The Sheetz gas station stood right by the triple tracks. Perfect. And a little outdoor table with a good view…!

Stepping inside, ordering the three cheeses and pickles and receipt in the pocket and…what’s that rumbling sound?

In a window of two minutes, man.

The locomotives were way out of sight, while double stack containers rolled by, lazily,.

SEA LAND

JP HUNT

LOSER.

Well, maybe another one will come by. I got my sandwich.

But…

Scooby Do’s methhead brother’s trailer parked by the outdoor table, a live-action Bevis and Butthead with their learner’s permit rolled up in their diesel truck and started to help their fellow fifteen year old girls fix their car in the parking lot right next to me.

Oh man, they’re gonna back into me. I’ll sue you kids, I’ll take your truck, I’ll….get off of my lawn!

I left before they could.

Or a train came.

Yesterday

The track by the farm stretches from Lynchburg to Durham, writing towns like Gladys into existence. (She was the daughter of the railway president back in the 1800s.)

Well, it runs everywhere, a steel river that flows into the mythical south, dark pines clustering on the bank through fragrant summer nights, and then to the west, across great echoing plains searching, searching for the Rockies.

A train track goes everywhere, and to have a seat on the riverbank is to be connected to America.

If you listen to the cold steel basking in the winter sun, you might even hear the hammers that built the forgotten factories in New Jersey, or a stockyard in Chicago.

There’s been rust on these, growing for over a year. They put new ties down, and then nothing has happened. No trains, no diesels, no games to lose. It’s frustrating to miss, but tragic when the game leaves town.

I watered the first tree in the new yard yesterday, and started to pound a stake into the ground.

The voice of an old friend, my rival, echoed off the hills.

Wait…that’s not the eastbound to Appomattox up the way. That’s from the south. Could it be?

I hit 28 miles an hour on the ATV past the beehives, then rolled to a breathless stop trackside.

Nothing. The rails sat rusty, sullen, forgotten. A crow called in the distance.

Putting one foot back on the ATV, I heard it again.

He’s back!

This time, the Train Gods smiled on me.

The screech of steel on steel, a low rumble of the engines, and….

Back! Back! Back in business!

And then, another growl mid-train. Pusher units, including the ultra-nerd prize, a heritage unit. (Railroads are like banks–big, and always merging. Norfolk Southern did a tip of the hat to the predecessor lines.)

The Penn Central Unit! The only one on the 19,500 mile system! (I almost got a nosebleed.)

And the pushers on the back!

Oh, what a lucky, lucky little boy I was.

Maybe this was just the pre-fight photo op. But I’m okay with that. It’s time to rumble again. I’ll probably lose the next round. There’s brambles to contend with.

All good.

And I put a new plumbing part in, and it only leaked slightly.

What a lucky day.

Happy Friday!

–Josh