Trains and Writing What You Know

by Charles A. Turek -- December 15, 2024

A fascinating steam locomotive - creative commons

Once again, it has been a long time between posts on this blog.  In retrospect, I find it hard to believe that I started the blog almost 20 years ago.  In the second year of the blog, 2006, I posted 89 times.  By 2014, that was down to about one post every other month, and I didn’t post at all in 2015.  Never having had a big following, I plugged on, posting at least something for every year until 2020, when again I did not post even once.

As you can easily see by checking the blog, I haven’t posted since May 2024, when I started out on an ambitious article about the Surface Transportation Board.  This required a lot of research, and a lot of soul searching as to whether I am really that interested in the tiny nuts and bolts of today’s railroad business.

This led me to check out some of the railroad periodicals and a revelation on current railroad writing.

Articles about railroads have devolved to the extent that they are either historical in nature, or they are more appropriate to dry business journals than to magazines that appeal to railroad hobbyists and fans.  This is my opinion, of course, but I think that you will see some accuracy to it.

History can be dry and uninteresting - MS Copilot

I have decided that I don’t want to write the “business journal” kind of piece.  Still wanting to write about trains and railroads, however, I find that I don’t want to write dry pieces on obscure history.  I’m sure the reader will agree that history can be as dry and boring as business.  “As exciting as an insurance seminar,” as the saying goes.  There has to be an element of fascination, even of awe, in my writing about railroads and trains.

From an early age, I was and still am drawn to railroads by their bigness.  Not just bigness of size, but also of motion.  And of sound.  Before I was even old enough to get close to a railroad track, I heard the sound.  I recognized the bigness of steam locomotives and steam trains by hearing those trains at a distance.  The exhalation of steam at a distance still able to be heard in memory some seventy-odd years later.  The thunderous tons of steel rolling over more tons of steel rail at a distance still shaking the ground.  The warning wail of a steam whistle at a distance still evoking a reaction that found heart and soul, making a small boy wonder who was being warned, why, and where the warning whistle needed to go that so many needed to be warned at a distance.

Big things.  Bigness.

An early fascination with trains -- MS Copilot

I recall a picture of myself seated at the pilot or “cowcatcher” of a locomotive that simply towered over the small boy.  I wish I could find that picture among the items stowed away with the other detritus of life, though it looms big in my memory.  I don’t recall sitting for the photograph, but I do feel the bigness of the hot steam locomotive at my back every time I think of it.  By that time, I was surely able to get close enough to the tracks to see a train thundering by.  I am still fascinated by watching the reciprocating machinery turning steam into linear motion and then, miraculously, into circular motion, and even more miraculous motion, that kept the process repeating, kept the wheels rotating, kept the whole thunderous thing moving.

And how did it stay on those tiny rails?

The small boy thought that the engineer had to steer the locomotive along the rails, just as a car is steered along the highway by the driver.  I even remember telling my father that I wanted to be a train engineer, but didn’t think I could ever steer the train. 

Then I discovered small things among the bigness.  The flange on a train wheel, a flange no bigger around than my middle finger, kept the whole giant, thunderous, ponderous engine and train on the track without any steering by the engineer.  I got into the small things among the bigness and found even more fascination. 

Train brakes, for example.  The engineer didn’t have to push a brake pedal or pull a lever with all his might to stop the tens of thousands of pounds of a train in motion.  Or the valve motion on a steamer, or the way in which the enormous power of the diesel engine was turned into electricity and then into the rolling motion, maybe motion even more miraculous than produced by the steam engine.

Locomotive valve motion - Wiki media

I am fascinated by the thousands of inventions and the genius of the mechanical and civil engineers that all goes into making railroads work.  Production of electricity at plants not even near the railroad transmitted for miles to run a fast electric train, and genius that can soon make that train run solely on the power of the sun.  Or the wind.  I am fascinated by the structures and devices that keep a pantograph lined up with the wires carrying the current for the train motors or at least one third rail shoe lined up with the current-carrying rail.  What keeps the trolly pole following the right wire when the streetcar goes through a turnout or switch?

Small details among the bigness.

But there is other bigness in railroads, too.  Civil engineers have to design the roadbeds and grades that extend for miles.  They must design bridges to vault deep valleys or cross rivers where the riverbeds are deep below the water surface.  Where the rivers must remain navigable the bridges either must span great distances or rest on columns built on underwater bedrock deeper yet under the surface.  Tides, one of the biggest forces of nature, must be considered.

Fascinating trackwork and bridge.

I could go on about all the things about railroading that fascinate me, none of which are the minutiae of running a railroad as a business or the dryness of statistics that only an investor could love.  It is said you should write what you know, and what I know is trains and railroads in the United States and Canada. So, instead of going on in like a dull business journal, I pledge instead to continue this blog by writing about the fascinating things of railroading and speculating about fascinating things yet to come.  I don’t think I’ll run out of material, but I do think my posts will be a lot more fun.

And I am Mr. Trains. -- mistertrains@gmail.com

©2024 - Charles A. Turek

Photographs used under creative commons license.

All other artwork created with Microsoft Copilot by the author.

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