An Appreciation of Good Spots

   
 Most of us who watch trains as a hobby, or latch on to them as artistic subjects, have a few favorite locations. Often, these spots are extolled for their convenience: They may be close to home, or on the way to work, or the geography means that the light is always perfect. Other spots, though, are discussed more reverently.  Something about being in exactly that spot, as opposed to another one a quarter mile up or down the track, graduates train-watching from amusement to edification.

To  dig into this question of what makes a train-watching spot truly stand out, I'd say that the most obvious criteria for a good spot is, of course, a proliferation of trains. The more varied the cargo the better, and frequent foreign power garners extra points. High-quality background scenery,  be it biological or starkly industrial,  also factors into the quality of a good railfanning spot, and the location will ideally be faced into the sun and be relatively free of visual distractions. Finally, even the most picturesque and well-let spots are useless without a safe way to access them and a safe place to set up the camera.

Recently, I happened upon a new-to-me spot that satisfies, even exceeds, this criteria. It’s a little nub of a hill in the oldest part of town,  a few dozen yards back from the Union Pacific mainline, tucked away down an underused sitestreet. Its elevation and positioning allows perfectly composed views of oncoming southbound trains  or the DPUs trailing on northbounds. The local grain mill makes an arresting backdrop, and from this vantage point, the neon advertisements for Corn-Kits perched atop the silos reads appropriately from left to right.

Someone before me  has cherished this site. There’s a bench on top of the hill, the kind of heavy rubber-covered iron seat that you find at  parks and playgrounds. There’s no clues left behind to hint at the identity of the group or person that petitioned the city for its installation, but it feels like  an official acknowledgment that this little hill is tied to and its surroundings is steeped in generation of railroad industry and train watching.  The signs of that are plain for the attentive eye to pick out:The grass next to the street is scarred where one leg of a wye was located until Katy’s twilight years, and abandoned telegraph beams hang cockeyed on decaying poles. I like to imagine that the dark weathering on nearby houses is a lingering signature of bygone Katy moguls.

The first day I spend here yields a number of satisfying photographs. It’ll take a few trips to really become familiar with how the light falls and the best time of day, but I can tell that all the good elements of train photography come together here. I make plans to come back again, but on the way out I realize that there’s more to be gleaned here than just artistic composition.

I realize that I have found one of those truly good spots that sings out “...the stories I could tell!” as trains pass through, an enclave that doesn’t just illuminate the size of the railroad infrastructure but also its permanence. There is nothing else in this town but the railroad that has outlasted such pronounced technological change endured such a byzantine corporate consanguinity, and yet gone on providing its basic function. It will continue to do so for years to come, given the high volume of cargo on this route.

The best thing about spots like this one is that they give the impression that the place itself remembers, records, believes itself to be enriched by the trains passing through. We walk away from them not just with pictures in hand and souls bolstered by knowing that even if we only observed, we participated in something that will outlast our own lives. Spend enough time here, we tell ourselves at spots like this, and maybe someday we’ll become one of those little memories kept safe among the ballast stones.  That’s not a bad fate, if you ask me.

In fact, it’s one I will aspire to.