green galoshes

My special lady friend calls me a romantic for my choice of travel today. I reply that it’s cheaper than a flight – and perhaps more importantly since I’m not having to connect via JFK in New York (I’m just going to Boston, after all), I minimize my environmental impact. I’m also not driving, which, when you factor in parking for several days, is about the same price as the train, and my impact would in theory be higher unless I had been carpooling. The bus sounds cramped and uncomfortable compared to the spacious accommodations I have here on the train – and good luck finding an electrical outlet on a bus, or even a plane for that matter. No thank you. This is as practical a choice as any.

But Maybe she’s right. It’s definitely going to be a longer trip than if I had flown, driven, or taken the bus. What’s more, I can’t seem to get Arlo Guthrie out of my head, as he sings “Riding on the city of New Orleans…”.

And the view out the train window is a much different one from what you are used to from a car, bus, or plane. Its not just the pastoral scenes, covered bridges, farmhouses, and the deep hunter green of an anonymous river just beginning the flows of spring. You get to see the neglected side of buildings and towns, the underbelly of every village, city, and hamlet you pass through. The storefronts, porches, and forward facing sides of houses are all on the other side of the tracks, where the cars and driveways are. Where you’d expect visitors or passers by to see the building from. You do see the same sights from the air in a plane, but they are smaller, and you are passing by them much faster.

The train ride is an up close and personal look at the industrial parks, landfills, rotting buildings, and junkyards that we don’t often get to see, interspersed with a host of other sights. Ice floes with walls rising several vertical feet straight up, consisting of dark grey silt from the river, packed with sheets and chunks of aquamarine. A man burning a brush pile. A mural painted on a rural fence. Fields covered with chunks of ice and silt after spring floods. An old popup camper behind a garage (what would you park behind your garage?). Almost coming to a stop over a broad river. A mobile home factory. A Llama. Abandoned barns sagging into themselves, a thousand shades of brown. Empty factories and mills, long since abandoned, their broken windows reminiscent of a mouth full of missing teeth.

I make it sound like one long, winding, strip of of rural and urban decay, but it’s not. There are plenty of nice looking houses, and buildings, and quaint towns to see from the wide windows of the passenger car. It’s just that these other aspects – the rusting machinery, collapsing silos, abandoned buildings – are sights that are often hidden from such up close view, especially when travelling by other means. And there is real beauty in these overlooked scenes. They force you to wonder who lived there before, why they left, and what that rusty hunk of metal might have been. If you don’t believe me, then you’re not looking hard enough. Check out the rural decay or oxidation groups on Flickr if you need more proof.

Riding the train is shaky at times. At least while you are trying to so something like type. But for the most part, it feels more like a gentle rocking, jostling, not unlike what you would expect from a ride in a washing machine. I really am enjoying the ride – and they do call it riding the train, as in “if you want to ride the train today you’ll need a reservation”. In any case, I’m really enjoying the trip so far. Can’t wait for the trip back!

[UPDATE: Not too long after writing this, we got stuck in Brattleboro, VT because of a broken rail farther on ahead. I may have to leave my luxurious seat and power supply and cram onto a bus to catch my connection to Boston. I did take the opportunity to get some good shots with the d70 though. …. turns out I had to bus it the rest of the way to beantown … still looking forward to the ride back….]