Train rides, oh yeah.

I enjoy train rides, but these days you have to look for them. Metros, subways and the like are one kind of train riding, but check out these train rides, a little more costly but what the heck, easy come easy goes, right?

Is it possible to see a squeak?

I just like train pictures.

In my lifetime trains were an omnipresent part my everyday life. I left my home to go away to the Air Force by train. Trains were an alternative mode of transportation to get us where we had to go. Up to recently I awoke sometimes to the sounds of train activity from across our town. Through most of my life in our town and most other towns you could not go from one side to another without having to wait for a passing train. I miss them and wish they would make a comeback. In these troubled times of energy crisis springing up frequently it might be a good idea.

This poem written by W.H. Auden in the thirties brings back memories of the day of the train, and also in stanza three another activity that has in fact disappeared into memory, and that is letter writing. The letters we used to write with pen and ink. I was never very good at it, and in fact much prefer email, but you have to admit getting a letter on paper, written in ink, and sent in a stamped envelope means something a whole lot different. You were receiving something personal, it felt that way, and in some romantic instances it even smelled nice. Email can't do that.

Anyways, I miss those days, I suppose because it is part of my past. You understand.



NIGHT TRAIN

by W.H. Auden (1907 - 1973)

This is the Night Mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner and the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: The gradient's against her, but she's on time. Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder Shovelling white steam over her shoulder, Snorting noisily as she passes Silent miles of wind-bent grasses. Birds turn their heads as she approaches, Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches. Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course; They slumber on with paws across. In the farm she passes no one wakes, But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes. II Dawn freshens. Her climb is done. Down towards Glasgow she descends Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes, Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen. All Scotland waits for her: In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs Men long for news. III Letters of thanks, letters from banks, Letters of joy from the girl and the boy, Receipted bills and invitations To inspect new stock or visit relations, And applications for situations And timid lovers' declarations And gossip, gossip from all the nations, News circumstantial, news financial, Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in, Letters with faces scrawled in the margin, Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts, Letters to Scotland from the South of France, Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands Notes from overseas to Hebrides Written on paper of every hue, The pink, the violet, the white and the blue, The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring, The cold and official and the heart's outpouring, Clever, stupid, short and long, The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong. IV Thousands are still asleep Dreaming of terrifying monsters, Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's: Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh, Asleep in granite Aberdeen, They continue their dreams, And shall wake soon and long for letters, And none will hear the postman's knock Without a quickening of the heart, For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

THE RAILWAY TRAIN.
By Emily Dickenson

I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop -- docile and omnipotent --
At its own stable door.

Do I love this story?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/07/pf/sivy_apr.moneymag/index.htm?section=money_topstories
You bet I do. It just seems too right though to be something that could actually come to pass.

But with Buffet buying up stock you have to know it might be a serious story. Read the article, it touches on all the reasons why it is the right thing to do. The number one thing that I immediately thought of was fuel efficiency. It's about time someone put their money where their mouth is.

The government for years has had a hand in our national transit system Amtrac and have done nothing more about it, while the oil cartels in the Mid-East gouge us more each week, and our pols (stated with a sneer) talk about us regaining our oil independence from OPEC with words that have not one lick of credibility.

Starting rail systems to handle some of our commuting would rid the street of a lot of traffic and conversely a lot of gas consumption. My state of Ohio governor Strickland has stated he would like to consider establishing a high-speed rail system throughout the state. Sounds fantastic to me on one hand, but being a political realist, I know this won't ever happen. What really ticks me is not so much that the weak link is money raising, but the sneaking suspicion that the pols don't mean a word of it.

It would help solve too many current problems to have any chance of succeeding.

This is for all those who want to travel, but don't want to leave the comfort of their homes, and what video on the internet was made for.

Vacancies are few. Can you imagine sleeping in this? I would think I was in a you know what. I am a bit claustraphobic anyway.