Growing Up Miles, Part T1 (T for Train)

"There's something about a train that needs watching. I think we forget that." -Neil Ellis Orts

I rarely, if ever, forget that.

Having grown up in the desert, just the sound of a train in the distance calls my name like you wouldn't believe. Unless you grew up somewhere huge, wild and empty... where you could hear trains.

We used to run across the desert to the railroad tracks to stand as close as we could to the trains rushing by. Since they were in the wide open spaces, they were flying. According to Google Maps, the tracks were a little over 200 yards from our house. You could definitely hear the trains pass, even feel them somewhat. But we'd hear the horns long before they were close enough to hear the rumble of the diesels, the squeal of the metal on metal, the clanks and hisses and other delicious noises that go with trains.

But we could always hear the horn.

There's something lonesome yet inviting, wild and wonderful and mournful, about that sound. How much is auditory, based on the specific frequencies (which certainly cut through other noise, nevermind the stillness of an empty land) and how much is cultural, I don't know. I just know what it does to me, reaching way down inside, and calling me to join it, whether in person, or late at night in the distance, in my mind.

When we could get out to the tracks, we'd see who dared to stand closest. Usually that meant we each[1] ended up the same distance away, carefully watching each other's toes, hands, and heads to make sure we weren't being chicken. I know we were within three feet of some of those trains, probably a foot and a half at times. They were going 50 to 70 MPH. The wind, the ground's vibration, the sound of the horn frantically yelling at us to move back when we got there before the train arrived... nothing quite compares to this.

In later years railroadmen told me tales of banding steel coming loose on flat cars, flinging itself wide like invisible, scrawny, steel bird wings, cropping bushes-- and people-- too close to the tracks. I don't know if these stories are true or folklore, but it certainly seems possible. And only makes the adventures more wonderful. Today I suspect it's most often be banding plastic, which wouldn't be likely to decapitate or disembowel you, but could flail you pretty well.

Which means I can't recommend getting closer than, say, six feet to a fast moving freight train. Or 100 yards if you're terrified of derailments. Does that mean I'd stay that far away? No way. I don't know if I'd get as close as I used to. I guess it depends who else is there, and how close they were. Not because I'd still worry about being chicken, but because there's just something about sharing adventures with friends. And train watching up close is always an adventure.


[1] The main people I recall doing this with were Clifford Bossie and Freddy whose last name I forget. But I'm pretty sure Randy Johnson and a couple of others were involved at some point.