Night Train

Staunton, Virginia is rich with the past; it was spared the destruction of many Virginia towns during the Civil War, and as a result is full of beautiful historic buildings, including the rail station. When I took this shot years ago, I was standing on the bridge at the train station admiring the downtown skyline that was lit it up all gold from the lowering sunlight. Three short bursts of the Unit Train’s whistle announced its approach to the station. I was thrilled to view its empty coal cars gliding under me on the bridge and to hear the sound on the tracks so close is intense; like feedback from an enormous guitar amp.

The train is really going so much faster than it seems when watching from above. The high-pitched screaming of the air rushing through the empty cars creates a ghostly choir, perhaps of souls who died there in the crash or from drunkenly stumbling on the tracks in the path of a Unit Train at night. It is an eerie, baleful sound.