Chapter One (1st draft)

It was the summer of 1999. The summer between my sophomore and junior year in the photography program at the University of Louisville, and the summer I worked at the bar-b-q place not too far from the railroad tracks. I was playing drums in a band with two of my good buddies and our first show was right around the corner. We had the idea to shoot some random video and have it playing while we played. The show was only a few weeks away and we hadn’t any ideas of what to shoot. As I was leaving work one night I heard the distant rumble of a train coming into town. I raced down to the tracks just in time to catch the locomotives coming over the road crossing. I watched in awe as what looked like one huge continuous piece of steel passed by at 50mph just 10 feet away from the hood of my car. After the train passed I sat there in the car and images of trains at night projected on the way behind us at the show ran through my head. After that night I started to pack the old family video camera around in the car with me. Brian, who played bass in the band, and I would sit by the train tracks from time to time waiting for any sign of movement on the tracks. I’ll never forget the first night we caught a train on tape. It was a very warm night. I parked my car in a strategic location so we could see a train coming from either direction. We’d look east, then west. We would get so impatience just sitting there waiting. “I think I hear one” I’d say waiting anxiously for a horn blast to confirm my suspicion. “Nope, just a truck” Brian would conclude after a few minutes of silence. Another hour passed with no train. It was getting late, and about the time we wanted to give up the unmistakable throaty chugging sound of a locomotive was heard and seconds later the first “long” of the standard road crossing horn cadence would sound. A frantic scramble ensued as we rushed to get out of the car and find a place for the camera. I ran out to the tracks and put the camera between the rails. We stood back and watched. The engineer gave it some juice just as the eastbound came into view and our hearts raced as the train grew closer and closer. About the time it was too late, the fear of my dad hit me and I wanted to run out and grab the video camera. Just as I took the first step to get the camera out of harms way, the second “long” sounded and I thought twice. “Too late” Brian said, and my eyes were fixed on the camera. It was one of those old full size VHS cameras with the big handle on top. I thought for sure the handle would snag the bottom of the cowcatcher and the camera and my ass would be history. In a moment of extreme tension, we watched the train passed over the camera safely, and I could start to breath again. As the end of the container train came into view and I knew the camera would be ok and the images of what was being caught on tape started to run through my mind. My heart started to race again. Just then I noticed out of the corner of my eye a shadowed figure coming into the light. He looked very young, couldn’t have been much older me, if not younger. “What ya’ll doin?” he asked. “Umm… nothing.” I said. Just as the train cleared he exclaimed, “WOW! Is that your video camera?” “Yeah… we’re making a movie” and then I began to explain what for. He sounded very interested in what we were doing, and we later found out he was had just dropped out of the University of Kentucky’s music program to work for the railroad. He was working a utility job at the mixing yard in Shelbyville and had just helped out that eastbound pick up some cars. “There’s another one behind this one, shouldn’t be too far behind him” he said as I walked over to the tracks to get the camera. We took turns watching the video through the eyepiece. After we each had a turn, I queued the video up for the next train and started to sit down when he said, “Hey, come in here”. He pulled out his switch key and unlocked the door to the small building at “East Shelbyville”. “I’m Joe by the way”. “Oh, I’m Alex and this is Brian.” Inside were a few desks and a computer terminal. He sat down at the terminal and pulled out a book about trains and began to talk about railroad stuff I knew nothing about but pretended I did. “That locomotive was a dash-9”, he said. “Wow, awesome” I followed, wondering what the heck a dash 9 was. A few minutes of chitchat between the three of us and Joe said, “Here comes your second east bound”. Brian and I raced back outside. Just as I turned the camera on and hit record, the locomotives gave us a loud horn blast and the engineer waved. As the seemingly endless string of auto carriers streamed by, I made sure to hit all the cool lighting angles. We hung out with Joe for a few more hours just talking railroad stuff. He continued to talk about train watching and about how he had taken trips out west to photograph trains. He told us about the job and how cool it was. Joe worked on the line from Louisville to Danville, which serves as a major connection between St. Louis and the southeast. This line follows I-64 from the west end of Louisville all the way to somewhere between Shelbyville and Frankfort were it takes a dive south towards Danville. He talked about seeing the beautiful landscapes of downtown Louisville and Central Kentucky from angles only railroaders could see it. We didn’t catch any more trains that night, but we exchanged phone numbers with Joe and heading down to East Shelbyville to meet him turned into a nightly ritual for me. Some nights Joe would call me and take me into the mixing yard with him. The bright lights with the night sky as a backdrop made for great footage. Sometimes, we hop on a slow moving train and ride if for a little while. The excitement of seeing parts of my hometown I’d never seen before and those I had but from different angles made the adventure of being somewhere you weren’t supposed to something more than just getting film for a show. But, by the day of the show we had gathered plenty of film… mission accomplished.