trainspotting

train engine in davis

I was never one of those kids who wanted to be a train driver when I grew up. (When I was a kid I wanted to be Ossie Ardiles) My experience of trains was on the London Underground, and I didn’t really want to go up and down the tunnels all day long occasionally grumbling into an intercom about being delayed at Hampstead or moaning about pesky passengers (sorry, ‘customers’) getting stuck in the closing doors. The romance of the railways was lost on me. I’m from Britain; we invented rail travel and we certainly invented moaning about it. As I grew up, I learned to love the railroad, and travelled all over Europe experiencing everything from the slick modern high-speed trains of France to the crowded hulking behemoths of Hungary, and finally back to the slow shuddering trains of the Northern Line. I still didn’t want to drive them though. Now I’m in America my appreciation of the train has only increased. I live nearby to a main line which crosses the continent, and for my first few nights in Davis I was kept awake by the slow rumbling of the long, epic freight trains that carried goods from San Francisco Bay to the rest of the USA. I grew used to it. These trains really are over a mile long, perhaps more. Here are a couple of drawings I did recently, the top one being a California Northern engine parked near the Davis Co-Op, and the other being part of a freight train moored down on the 2nd St railroads. I expect hobos and stray cats cross the country as stowaways in these all the time, swapping stories and travelling on. Who knows. It’s still too warm for me to get an anorak, but if people think I’m a trainspotter while drawing these things, then so be it.

2nd st freight train

by Pete Scully

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