Locomotive Obsession

I used to lick the subway as a child. Not just the subway but any piece of MTA property. My parents would glance away for just a second, and I would move quickly to put my mouth on the handrails, the pumpkin-spice looking (but not tasting) subway seats, or the window. Anything I could get my mouth on was fair game. 

Between my train tasting, I traveled far and wide with my grandma, visiting churches just to light a candle and yell “ECHO” in the nave. We would sit at Harlem 125th’s raised platform and train watch. The feeling of the towering diesel locomotives chugging by still rattles my bones in the most vibrant way, and the violin sound of an electric train departing still makes me smile from ear to ear. 

Trainspotting was a common activity between my grandmother and I. Whenever she came to New York to visit my family, we would spend hours on the Larchmont station pedestrian overpass ll.

When I was four years old, my parents and I moved to Larchmont from Manhattan.  Larchmont, slathered along the Long Island sound, was the epitome of New York suburbia. It was full of white alcoholic mothers, as well as dads who often traveled “for work.” 

My time there was long, and I enjoyed it, spending countless hours biking around the town with my Nerf guns loaded, searching for my friends, lying in ambush along the side of the road like pseudo guerillas.

 In my time fighting in “the war,” I lost track of my trainspotting. I made very few trips to the city and never went to the overpass to watch them anymore. My interest had entirely fallen apart, and I did not take up my “train gospel” for over a decade. 

I can’t remember if I hated or loved Larchmont, but moving again broke up my status quo and placed me in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Dobbs Ferry is far removed from Larchmont, but the town’s culture was the biggest difference between the two. Dobbs Ferry is a dying town. Everything in Dobbs seems as though it is on its last legs, just about to be bought up by chains or demolished to put in more low-density residential housing. 

The people all seem tired. They seem as though they don’t want to be there anymore, or that the town has been ruined by new people and businesses entering and then, later, subsequently leaving Dobbs.

But after moving here, I got back into the hobby of trainspotting. Weekends would often yield multiple hours spent on a random overpass with me sat atop it gazing into a quite unremarkable rail yard to watch the trains go by. It is a dismal and boring activity. But there is always the reliable sense that another train will come. Despite the assured arrival of a train, I remain atop my perch, drenched in suspense waiting for the next train to pass by.

 I do this in every city I go to, the almost foreign but familiar sense of a rail yard is picturesque when you subtract the ugliness of their surroundings. The towering train sits, waiting for a mediocre commute for thousands. Most of my perches sit on desolate viaducts or parking garages, I cannot count the number of times I have almost been run down by a car while trying to get the perfect view of a train pulling through the yard. The crossy road type of adrenaline is always with you while you are trainspotting. 

I was at an antique machinery show in Kent, Connecticut, at the museum I used to go to almost every weekend with my grandparents. The Kent Machinery Museum is a machinery enthusiast's dream. They have everything you could ever be interested in and more. The blacksmith operates his forge, indicated by the sound of his hammer hitting red-hot metal upon his anvil. 

You could hear the hundreds of steam engines moving large flywheels, some the size of a building. The nearby whistle of a steam-powered tractor sounds to clear pedestrians off the path. This museum is where it all started. My grandmother and I would go to the train museum and sit on a diesel train for hours. I would run around the field where the museum was located going from machine to machine. I would climb cranes, tractors, and steamrollers. But the best times were when the volunteers would start up the diesel locomotive and take us for a small ride around the siding. They would sometimes allow me to sit in the cab of the locomotive and show me the controls of the small but powerful machine.

Since I have returned to the hobby, I have also returned to a lot of my old spots. Seeing the dingy overpasses as they stood a decade ago but with new eyes never gets old. I remain enchanted by the uncomfortable MTA benches – maybe the taste keeps me coming back. I would not say I am searching for some old feeling with my migration back to old spots, but it is something I find peaceful and thrilling. Now since I have gotten into official trainspotting, I will say I have grown it into somewhat of an obsession. If I hear the thrum of a diesel engine, I will book it to the closest train track to try to capture a flyby.

 I don’t get tired when I am sprinting to catch a train: I have run full 300-meter races at a competitive pace in order to catch a train. It is freeing, when I am sprinting through a mire to take a photo of a train I have already seen hundreds of times before. The best part is that it never gets old. No matter how many times I have to dive under a fence or climb halfway up a tree or almost get hit by a car on an overpass, the adrenaline I feel when I hear a distant horn or make out the bass-filled thrum of a diesel express train is unmatched. 

My trainspotting rebirth has been a bit of a lifestyle change. I have begun to take the train everywhere. If there is the option to, I will take the train. It is a bit of environmental rebellion paired with a genuine enjoyment of public transit, but I have sort of reverted back to my younger self in how I go through the world. Younger me would fight violently to take the train everywhere: I would scream and cry if put in the car and would only be satisfied aboard a piece of MTA property. I think now, the only difference between the two of us is that I no longer lick the trains.