Somewhere between arrival and departure.
I hear trains.
That isn’t an admission of something unhinged in my mind, or a euphemism for a kind of illegal activity. It’s just that where I live, on a hill behind the mainstreet of an old town, I can hear trains.
Even when I’m putting clothes on the line I can hear the sound of trains coming and going, freight trains especially, as they heave and clatter in and through and on to the other side.
As is obvious it’s a sound I adore. After twenty-five years living in Canberra I’d begun to miss it, though I didn’t know that then – sometimes it’s only when you move from one place to another that you realise what’s important.
Perhaps the sound reminds me of being a boy in Sydney and having to catch trains to get to school and back, all of us jammed into the clunky, stinky ‘Red Rattlers’, the windows so hefty that if they suddenly closed they would chop off arms or fingers. So we imagined, or feared. Of course, back then, having to catch trains every day wasn’t anything unusual; it was just part of living in a city. These days I look on it nostalgically, as though I once lived in a more exciting land, somewhere big and dangerous and overflowing with life. Strange then that whenever I return to Sydney, even on a train, I’m filled with terror – that place always reminds me of a snake trying to eat its own head.
So why this love of the sound of trains?
It could be because it just feels old-fashioned, a delicious thing of the past, and for those like me who find the present a trial the past can be a good place to go. It could be a reminder of the sort of adventures once discovered in books for children. But trains aren’t necessarily historical. Look at the sort that can be found in Europe and the larger cities of Asia – those trains are like something out of Star Trek. Maybe the sound is a metaphor. For arrival: the joy of becoming, of making real the new, the hope there is in that. For departure: the melancholia of leaving behind, of letting go, of saying good-bye. Because it’s somewhere between arrival and departure that life can be found most readily, whatever that life might be.
Oh how much there is in a sound.
(First published in Panorama, The Canberra Times, 15 March 2014.)
Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecote 
12 comments
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March 22, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Gabrielle Bryden
Beautiful piece of writing Nigel and love this ‘Because it’s somewhere between arrival and departure that life can be found most readily, whatever that life might be.’
I don’t think you are alone with your love of the sounds of trains – maybe it is a throwback to the sounds we heard in our mother’s womb – the sound of blood pulsating rhythmically through veins. I can understand how some would get obsessed with trains – their is a musicality and pleasing repetition to the sound and the look of trains (and trains are rarely late which is an added bonus). I loved the old red ratttlers too – hahaha – I bet you could chop a finger off with those windows (the Goverment kept that hushed up 😉 ).
March 23, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, love your response to this piece. Very interesting observation about why some people become obsessed with trains: a connection to the womb. Will have to ponder that more. Re. the Rattlers: Goulburn has a railway museum and they’ve got a few on show. Amazing. But they really were very clunky!
March 22, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Gabrielle Bryden
‘Government’ I meant #oops
March 23, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Better not upset THIS government!
March 22, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Michele Seminara
Lovely piece, Nigel! I am nostalgic for the ‘sleepers’, the lovely family carriages we used to ride in overnight as a child, and also for the amazing train journeys I took in India…you never sleep as well as on a train!
March 23, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Michele, good to hear from you. Those Indian train journeys sound amazing. And I agree that you never sleep as well as on a train (another connection to the womb, perhaps?). I’ve traveled on the Indian Pacific (twice) and also caught the train from Vancouver to Toronto and even though I didn’t have my own sleeper on all three occasions, I still slept so very well!
March 25, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Michele Seminara
Hi Nigel, yes, must be the connection to the womb, I think….which is strange, considering that trains are so phallic!
March 22, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Brad
I’ve had a love of trains in my blood dating back to my childhood in Canada. The freight trains that ran through my hometown of Kamloops were awesome rusty iron creatures easily over a hundred carriages long and would plod along so slowly that we could easily sit in the car at a crossing for 15 minutes waiting for one to pass while I’d sit in the back seat counting each carriage go by. I went back in 2008 with my wife and kids and they couldn’t understand me wanting to stand on the overhead footbridge in the sleet and snow with them just watching the trains groan along against the backdrop of the sheets of ice flowing down the Thompson River and building up in the North-South arm below the further backdrop of those Mounts Peter and Paul that I used to stare up at while making snow angels outside our trailer and getting my mittens all clogged up with snow.
So my wife and kids would go shopping and I’d stand there alone in the sleet and the snow and my melancholy casting my mind back to that time when we moved to Australia and took the Indian Pacific to live with my Great Grandparents in Broken Hill. There were these massive floods going through and around Parkes at the time and it happened that not long after I drifted off to sleep to the sound of the Indian Pacific and the rush of the water going underneath with a can of coke balanced in my hands the sleepers washed out from under the train, the lines buckled, and my can of coke went all over me. We spent the night sitting crooked in the train with water rushing around us and rumours going around that someone had been washed away and drowned because they were standing in between the carriages having a smoke when it happened.
But now that you mention red rattlers, Nigel, I realise it was on the way back to Sydney after staying a year with my Great Grandparents that it happened. We couldn’t fit in Broken Hill because we didn’t sound Australian. Dad had gone back to Sydney dejected a long time ago, and my school teacher had been encouraging the other kids to put shit on me for a while for not saying my vowels properly. Yes, I remember now. We were rescued the following morning by a fleet of buses. The bus we were on had drowned cows floating just below the windows, and as soon as we hit dry land the bus driver had to stop to let me out to vomit properly instead of doing it in paper bags. And when we made it past the flood – I think it was Orange – Mum called Dad in Sydney and said we needed to be picked up. For some reason we got on a red rattler instead and rattled and bounced in the freezer-like cold that was red rattler cold back to Sydney. Dad met us at Central, and Mum and Dad weren’t talking.
So yes. I’d agree there’s much to be found in the sound of a train, and your arrival/departure metaphor works nicely for me. Thanks, Nigel
March 23, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Brad, wow, what an amazing response. Love it all. So many terrific memories – and the Indian Pacific crops up again. That image of the coke spill: very evocative. And you’re right about the Red Rattlers: they were horribly cold (and sometimes wet) in winter; amazing more of us didn’t get sick. Apart from enjoying train travel, I’m not a train buff: no photographs of trains in the house, no models. Perhaps just hearing them is enough. And I like that very recently my niece came to visit and she traveled by train. Car travel is quick (mostly) and comfortable (mostly) and efficient (mostly), and train travel can be the opposite, but I do like that we still have the option in our lives. Perhaps, as Gabe says, it really is about the womb. Perhaps EVERYTHING is about the womb. But that might have to be the topic of another First Word/post. Thanks again for sharing your memories and observations – I appreciate it.
March 23, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Brad
Thanks, Nigel. I’ve been trying to nail the extent of my train loving memories in writing for a few years. I think that comment your post prompted of me comes closer to doing that than my previous efforts, but there’s no doubt in my mind I have more pieces to fill in. The connection Gabrielle makes to the mother’s womb is a great one to my mind; when I write about my experiences with trains it often feels like I’m trying to prove–by way of connecting all the cars–that the clear and distinct memory I have to this day of losing my breath and fearing I was going to die at that moment just before I was born can be trusted.
For instance, after thinking about what I wrote in my last comment, I remember now when I was somewhere between 1990 and 1994 (the time I was working two jobs, one as a static security guard) I was assigned for a stint to guard the Chullora Railway Workshops. During my first handover to the next guard, at 6am in the morning, my Dad walked up to the security office to bundy on for work. He’d been upholstering train seating there since not long after he’d left us behind in Broken Hill, and noted how smart I turned out in my uniform. That was the first time in all those years that it mattered to me to know where he was or what he was doing. Which is all well and good, and opens up other places to write about from there. But it still sticks in my craw that I can’t make certain which way the Indian Pacific was going (Sydney to Broken Hill, or Broken Hill to Sydney) because no-one in the media (that I’ve come to rely upon) at the time appears to have reported that it ever actually happened.
Thank you, Nigel. Your writing reminds me that being reminded of memories accurately (something great writing often seeks to do) can be like being ‘a snake trying to eat its own head.’ This is a good thing.
March 23, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Gabrielle Bryden
Hi Brad – that sounds like a pretty traumatic event, what with the derailment and the dead cattle 😦 I remember you writing about it previously. You’d think that might put a person off trains, but no – there lies the power of the railway in a way. Take care.
March 24, 2014 at 9:16+00:00Mar
Nigel Featherstone
Brad, many thanks for sharing more of your thoughts. I do look forward to reading how your writing about this plays out on your own blog. I’ve just realised that my two trips on the Indian Pacific were around the same time – 1991 and 1992 – but I have no recollection or knowledge of the event you’ve been exploring. I agree with Gabe that it must have been traumatic, and, yes, there be the power and pull of the railway. Amazing.