T - R - A - I - N

They call with a whistle (rather loudly) at each crossing.  Then there's the deep base rumble of their weight on the earth, mingled with the breath of the engines' diesel motors.  And the wonderful clatter clack clack of the wheels as the cars follow along swaying with their forward motion along the tracks.

It's loud if you are working in our studio, right about a block above the tracks, where we have a clear view of each passing if we chose to look.  Yet there is one person, Charles, who always calls out loudly "traaaaaaain!" in answer to the rumble.  It's gotten to be so routine, if he's not there, someone else will say "traaaaaaain, says Charles."

Quote for the day:

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.  Simone Weil

Sound through the vale

Whether in an afternoon, or lonely sounding through the night, our moaning wail from the train is usually evident to most of us in Black Mountain.

And most of us feel that it means we're home.  When I first moved here it would make me smile, thinking of commerce traveling along the rails still.

At times it makes me so sad, thinking of the coal coming out of the mountains going to feed the power plant which relies upon it, so everyone can use electricity.

  We think we're using a clean source of power.

Like the diesel engines pulling the train that warns of its coming at each cross road.  Long toot, two short ones.  I think.

How many times a day does it pass?  How many times going east?  How many times going west?  I have no idea.  But I hear the sound echo off the humid mountains. 

Traaaaaaaain

You hear it first, then the rumble, and when you look through the trees at the clay studio, it's going pretty fast, but just look how big that engine is towering above that SUV that's stopped at the crossing!  I'm always awestruck by the power it represents.