The Rail Runner
Trains and the landscape of the American West are forever linked. Some have romantic memories of riding in a vista dome car through the Colorado Rockies while others remember the theft of native lands and the destruction of the buffalo. Regardless, the transcontinental railroad opened the west to settlement and expanded commerce nationwide while affording views to an immense and majestic landscape.
My great-great grandparents played a small role in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. They immigrated from northern England to the US in 1854 to flee horrible working conditions. They were poor and uneducated. Elizabeth was the mother of two girls from her first marriage and her second husband, Francis Bussey was a coal miner. They took the train from Durham to Liverpool, England, then once in America the train took them to Wisconsin, Illinois and eventually to Carbon, Wyoming where Francis and their oldest sons worked in coal mines to fuel the trains used in the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Their existence was an ordeal. They lived in a dugout and endured the agony as two of their six children died of Cholera. After the death of their children, their marriage failed, and trains took Francis to California in search of another mining job and Elizabeth to Colorado in search of another husband.
My personal experience with trains included watching freight trains flatten the coins placed on the tracks as they passed near my hometown, Golden Colorado on their way west. Later, I rode that west bound route on ski trains to Winter Park. One hundred and twenty years after my Francis and Elizabeth split, I spent eight years riding Metro North from the Westchester County suburbs to New York City. I always chose a window seat facing in the direction of travel, so that I could watch the familiar scenes change with the seasons and the light as the months passed.
Seeking to recapture that experience, my project will explore landscape and trains. What can be seen from the train’s windows, how do other passengers experience the view? What can be seen to and from the platform and the stations. How does a speeding train alter the view from and to the train? How does early morning and late afternoon light impact the experience. What about night? Can I capture the romance of vista dome rides and the peace I found watching changing scenes from Metro North while honoring the sacrifices my great-great grandparents made to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
Specifically, I will ride the Road Runner from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and Belen and back in the morning, afternoon, and night to capture the romance, peace and even the danger hiding in the journey. The result will be a series of black and white prints and may be the inspiration for a book, “The Rails I Rode”.
