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COMMENTARY BY ALEXANDER B. CRAGHEAD whiteriverproductions.com


P.O. BOX 48, BUCKLIN, MO 64631 (877) 787-2467 • (816) 285-6560 INFO@WHITERIVERPRODUCTIONS.COM


www.railfan.com PUBLISHER


KEVIN EUDALY


KEUDALY@WHITERIVERPRODUCTIONS.COM Contributions of features and photos


from our readers are always welcome. Please contact the editor for details.


EDITOR


E. STEVEN BARRY (862) 354-3196


EDITOR@RAILFAN.COM


EDITORIAL ADDRESS RAILFAN & RAILROAD P.O. BOX 554


ANDOVER, NJ 07821


ASSOCIATE EDITOR/ART DIRECTOR OTTO M. VONDRAK OTTO@RAILFAN.COM


ASSISTANT EDITOR LARRY GOOLSBY


Perhaps part of the lure of railroads is the battle against nature, such as this BNSF train heading upgrade at Avon, Mont., on Montana Rail Link on September 19, 2008. STEVE BARRY


Our Attachement to the Railroad


IN THE EAST AND MUCH OF THE MIDWEST, the railroad was at the heart of industrialization. It is part and parcel with the smokestack, the blast furnace, and the coal mine, and its effect upon the landscape is for better or worse indelible. In the West, the railway was the agent of settlement, but more than that it became a part of the Western myth of man against nature and all the good and ill that implies. What matters here is not the moral value of rail transportation on history, but rather the potency of its presence every day. Railways today are far less publicly


visible. Amtrak has experienced remarkable ridership increases over the past decade, but it is still a tiny fraction of the traveling market compared to those who drive or fly. While freight rail has also grown, gone are the days when the average person went down to the depot to collect a package or a shipper to schedule an empty boxcar to be spotted. How, then, can we explain the hundreds of thousands of people who love railways, who are by inclination if not self-identification railfans? Relatively few of them work in rail transport, given the pathological suspicion the industry has long harbored against those who love their occupation. In the past, when I have asked readers how they got their start in this hobby, I received notes sharing childhood memories of streamliners and first train rides. But the answer I was looking for eluded me, for while many could say how, none could explain why. Put more plainly, it remained a mystery how so many people could come to love — and that is not too strong a word — the railroad? That there are so many ways of express-


ing this affection — collecting old paperwork, making models, taking pictures, riding passenger trains — only makes the question harder to answer. There is no common method of being a railfan, only a common disposition


4 NOVEMBER 2015 • RAILFAN.COM


towards inanimate equipment, corporate entities, or systems of technology. Yet there are greater commonalities


than it may at first appear. The clues lie in the widespread nostalgia, the nameless melancholy that seems to affect so many of us. They lie, too, in how often it is that memory is so central to everything that we do. Collec- tors curate slips of paper, objects that are fragments of something past or that is about to be past. Photographers attempt to freeze moments sweeping by. Train travel enthusi- asts sit beside the coach window, senses heightened as those of no other passenger, building memories as others build appetites. In many ways the railroad is not our subject


at all, but the past and the about-to-be-past. Few other hobbies are so resolutely backwards glancing, so mournful as to be downright Victorian. The railroad? It is a sympathetic foil, tied like us to the past. The aircraft has always evoked the future and escape, the automobile the promise of roads yet to travel, of Robert Frost at 55 miles per hour. By contrast, the railway is the road itself,


fixed in a series of places, binding, moving yet immobile. While there is likely no physical stick of rail still in service that dates to the first transcontinental of 1869, nevertheless the railway seems so old that it is ageless, like the face of El Capitan, or the falls at Niagara. Somewhere, in some laboratory (or several), scientists are busy trying to make a computer that thinks like us and robots that act like us, but they are too late. The railway is memory, and thus closer to human than any other thing we have built, or ever will build. How could you resist wanting to be a part of of something like that?


Consulting Editor Alexander B. Craghead is a transportation historian, photographer, artist, and author.


CONTRIBUTING EDITORS MICHAEL T. BURKHART MIKE SCHAFER JEFFREY D. TERRY


CONSULTING EDITOR ALEXANDER B. CRAGHEAD


NEWS COORDINATOR KEVIN C. SNYDER


COLUMNISTS


KENNETH ARDINGER GREG MONROE


JAMES PORTERFIELD VINCENT REH


JAIME SERENSITS GEORGE M. SMERK WES VERNON


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RAILFAN & RAILROAD (ISSN 0163-7266) (USPS No. 516-650) is published monthly by White River Productions, Inc., 24632 Anchor Ave., PO Box 48, Bucklin, MO 64631. Periodicals Postage Paid at Bucklin, MO and additional mailing offi ces. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: U.S.A. and possessions $37.95 per year, Canada $50.00 per year, Overseas $58.00 per year. Single copies are $5.95 plus shipping. Pay- ment must be in U.S. funds. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Railfan & Railroad, PO Box 48, Bucklin, MO 64631. Send new subscriptions, renewals, and change of address (please include mailing label if available) to Railfan & Railroad, PO Box 48, Bucklin, MO 64631 or email subs@whiteriverproductions.com. Please allow six weeks for change of address.


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