Lullabies by Trains by Night

“I would like to visit the factory that makes train horns, and ask them how they are able to arrive at that chord of eternal mournfulness. Is it deliberately sad? Are the horns saying, Be careful, stay away from this train or it will run you over and then people will grieve, and their grief will be as the inconsolable wail of this horn through the night? The out-of-tuneness of the triad is part of its beauty.”   - Nicholson Baker, A Box of Matches

Six express tracks and twelve locals pass through Palimpsest. The six Greater Lines are: Stylus, Sgraffito, Decretal, Foolscap, Bookhand, and Missal. Collectively, in the prayers of those gathered prostrate in the brass turnstiles of its hidden, voluptuous shrines, these are referred to as the Marginalia Line. They do not run on time: rather, the commuters of Palimpsest have learned their habits, the times of day and night when they prefer to eat and drink, their mating seasons, their gathering places. In days of old, great safaris were held to catch the great trains in their inexorable passage from place to place, and women grappled with them with hooks and tridents in order to arrive punctually at a desk in the depth, of the city.

As if to impress a distracted parent on their birthday, the folk of Palimpsest built great edifices where the trains liked to congregate to drink oil from the earth and exchange gossip. They laid black track along the carriages’ migratory patterns. Trains are creatures of routine, though they are also peevish and curmudgeonly. Thus the transit system of Palimpsest was raised up around the huffing behemoths that traversed its heart, and the trains have not yet expressed displeasure.

To ride them is still an exercise in hunterly passion and exactitude, for they are unpredictable, and must be observed for many weeks before patterns can be discerned. The sport of commuting is attempted by only the bravest and the wildest of Palimpsest. Many have achieved such a level of aptitude that they are able to catch a train more mornings than they do not.

The wise arrive early with a neat coil of hooked rope at their waist, so that if a train is in a very great hurry, they may catch it still, and ride behind on the pauper’s terrace with the rest of those who were not favored, or fast enough, or precise in their calculations. Woe betide them in the infrequent mating seasons! No train may be asked to make its regular stops when she is in heat! A man was once caught on board when an express caught the scent of a local. The poor banker was released to a platform only eight months later, when the two white leviathans had relinquished each other with regret and tears.”

  - Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpset

My place is a place of trains. At a short distance from my home, the largest marshalling train yard in British Columbia spreads its breadth across 68 tracks. Grain arrives, coal leaves, spilled sulphur paints the tracks a garish dandelion yellow.  Its 360-acre expanse did not suffer noticeably from the First World War recession, nor the fire of 1920 which destroyed the downtown of our small town, nor the flood of 1921 which flooded half the city and produced a mammoth log jam that pulled down two bridges. At one time, in the 1930’s, these trains carried silk from far destinations to far destinations; silk spun in the making of cocoons of evolution, and slipped lovingly through the fingers of grand ladies. It seems that the steadfast history and grit of the trains here is as perpetual and persistent as the repetitive clickedty-clack sound of metal wheels on metal tracks.

 Clickedty-clack. Clickedty-clack.

Recently, relatives visited from the Interior. We sat on the back deck in the soft, summer air. At one point, the deck shook and an emphatic bang made the crows in the tree flash up, circle, and flutter back to their perches. We didn’t notice the tumult or the shudder, but our guests were alarmed. The rumbles, thuds, booms, claps, and clashes resounded throughout the afternoon. Interspersed with this orchestration were the plaintiveness, howling, or trumpeting of train whistles.

As I sat and made polite conversation amidst the bedlam of train, I became hyper-sensitive to the fact that, to someone unused to living near trains, these noises would seem clamorous, raucous, even deafening. But we don’t notice them anymore. Instead, these cannonades and trills are part of the fabric of the soundscape in which we live. The turbulence of train cars being shunted from track to track, the boisterousness of trains arriving to and leaving from the yard, carrying the wealth and treasures of nations and peoples, is exciting. Trains play in train yards like children in a playground – without inhibition, negligent of their glad-full noise. 
We have learned the language of trains. Whistles and horns – babble, wailing, and lamentation. The sonance of communication. One long – I am approaching you. Three short – I am backing up. Multiple short – I am in trouble! Happy New Year, Happy Canada Day. Even one that means good night.


 Good night, train.