Writing about railroads

How do you become a good writer? That’s easy. The same way you become a good locomotive engineer or train dispatcher: Do it so many times, always careful to learn from your experiences and mistakes, that you begin to unconsciously develop your own style. Then it gets easier. For those of you reading this blog, writing about railroads is a noble and achievable ambition, because you’re already fascinated by the subject matter. So here is some practical advice from the old man.

Never be afraid; go to the best sources for whatever information you need. If you’re profiling a railroad, large or small, that usually takes you to the railroad’s chief executive. Email to ask for an hour of his time. I’ve never been told no, and you probably won’t either, so gather up your courage. Believe it or not, I still cringe before sending that email or making the first phone call, because a refusal would sink the entire article. But knock on wood . . .

You get the interview. I used to prepare big “shooting scripts” of questions, and sometimes I still do. But one day I sat down before Mr. Big and began the interview with, “Whatever got you into railroading? Tell me what it was.” And from there I just sequentially adlibbed my questions through the history of the short line that the man founded. One question just naturally led to another. I ignored my shooting script. Still, I usually jot down some key questions that I know need to be asked, no matter what. When the conversation comes to an awkward point, you can just refer to the list and ask one of those questions.

Unless you have experience rapidly jotting in a notebook what people are telling you, you’ll probably bring a small tape recorder. But beware: They spook some people. I once sat down with Tony Ingram, then the chief operations officer of CSX Transportation. I was fishing for something that I could turn into an online blog. I turned on my little Olympus recorder and we began talking. Soon I got frustrated. No matter what I asked, Tony refused to give straight answers. After 30 or so minutes I gave up. I shut off the device, slipped it in my jacket pocket, and thanked Tony for his time. Silence. Then Tony said, “You know, you asked about thus and such. It really happened this way . . .” and proceeded to seriously answer a question I’d posed 25 minutes earlier. And it dawned on me: He was frightened by the recorder! A lot of very smart and capable people are. The tape recorder is a device to trap them — that or something. So they hem and haw. You have to respect such fear. My advice is to listen carefully to answers while the recorder is running and if you think it is a barrier to communication, just say, “I am going to shut this off and take notes. You’ll be more comfortable. Just speak sort of slowly so I can keep up.” When taking notes during an interview, don't try to write down every word. Skim along the surface and capture the key words and thoughts. Then quickly sit down afterward and reconstitute the sentences. It's easier than you think.

All the while you are gathering information for a story, ask yourself: What is the story I am telling? It’s not enough to say you’re profiling Texas Pacifico Transportation. What about TPT? Why should the reader care? I don’t consider myself a feature story writer but rather a story teller. There’s something unique behind every railroad and every railroader, so find out what it is. One of my heroes, John McPhee of The New Yorker, said writing an article is “analogous to cooking a dinner. You go to the store and you buy a lot of things. You bring them home and you put them on the kitchen counter, and that’s what you’re going to make your dinner out of. If you’ve got a red pepper over here — it’s not a tomato. You’ve got to deal with what you’ve got. You don’t have an ideal collection of material every time out.”

Got writer’s block? Welcome to my neighborhood! Actually, after all these years, by the time I begin to write I have pretty well internalized the story I want to tell. I’ve typed my notes and transcribed any recorded interviews and reread everything, underlining things I think important or quotes that stand out. I usually know by then how to launch the story. I don’t use a formal outline, because a roadmap of the story is embedded in the back of my mind. But one way or another, on paper or in your brain, you do need a path to follow through the story, so that you don’t wander into the weeds. Never wander into the weeds, because your readers will not follow you there but give up.

But back to writer’s block. John McPhee once suggested this at a symposium: If you’re stuck at the starting gate, start your draft by writing, “Dear Mom,” and go from there. Yes, write your mother a letter. McPhee’s example had to do with bears. But let’s go back to Texas Pacifico Transportation. You might write, “Dear Mom, you first see this railroad that shouldn’t even exist in 2014 at San Angelo Junction, Tex. It’s not a town or even a dot on a Texas roadmap, just one farmhouse at the end of a spur. What surprises you, mom, is that on this total failure of a railroad are two tracks filled for a mile with freight cars, one track with loaded cars coming in and the other with empty cars going out. There’s a crew on the inbound train who says another train just like theirs left less than an hour ago for San Angelo. Mom, your mind will explode. All this business on a ‘failed railroad.’ It’s like the Transcon! What you’ve discovered is Texas Pacifico Transportation, the regional railroad nobody ever heard of in the part of Texas nobody ever goes.” Then just remove the three references to mom and you are launched.

After the introduction, McPhee also said, it’s okay to just throw words on the canvas at first; do your best but don’t try to be perfect. Instead, get it on paper initially in any form whatever. Then in drafts two, three, and four (he seems to insist on four drafts) keep improving it. Good advice, but I don’t follow it. I write an introduction to a feature story — three to six paragraphs — and reread and rework it until I sort of like it. An introduction should introduce the story in the most arresting and captivating way possible, and then convince the reader to join you for the rest of the story. Then I write a subhead and begin developing the thesis that the introduction introduced. After a bit, I stop and start at the beginning again and hone what I’ve done. I guess I am writing drafts in my own way, by constantly going back and rereading and revising. McPhee also reads aloud what he has written, looking for awkward parts. Good idea.

Another bit of advice from McPhee: Draw a circle around a word or phrase that doesn’t seem quite right. Then later go back and find a better alternative. I don’t do that. What I do is read a story and look for those sentences or paragraphs where I begin to lose interest in what I’ve written. If I, the creator of this story, am losing interest, so will you. You’ll stop, turn the page, and go to the next article. I don’t want you to do that, ever. When I see myself headed into the weeds, I either eliminate that part or simplify it or dramatize it or whatever, until it keeps my attention. Because I love details and schedules and transportation plans, all of which are full of messy details, I encounter these sleepy-time occasions often. It’s a challenge.

Dealing with big railroads is a big problem, because that puts you in the gunsights of the media relations (or public relations) people. Some of them are very good because they know their companies inside and out and are passionate about their enterprise and what it does. Alas, the majority of press people are bureaucrats who don’t share your fascination with railroading in the least. And a few are simply incompetent. It would help if I could tell you who is good at press relations and will help you and who is not. Obviously, it does me no good professionally to name names, so I won’t. But if you notice that I tend to write about smaller and smaller railroads, well, there’s a reason.

Finally, a few tricks of the trade I’ve learned. The word you cannot put into an article too many times is you. That’s a lesson a learned from David Morgan, who edited Trains for several decades. Read that letter to Mom from San Angelo Junction and you’ll see how putting the reader into the story is electric. Whenever you can, write in present tense; it’s more active and exciting than past tense. And put people into your story. A railroad is nothing but for the men and women who populate it.

That’s it for Railroad Writing 101. I hope I’ve inspired you to undertake that idea that is making you itch, and given you some reason to hope that you can get it to the finish line.—Fred W. Frailey