There are no substitutes for being there...

...But these days, at least, we can still enjoy railroad events even if we're stuck at home.

Running a railroad blog and contributing to periodicals like Trains means always keeping one foot in the world of social media. Web sites like Facebook and Twitter provide an invaluable platform for building an audience and keeping in touch with hundreds of people involved in the railroad industry. I have the pleasure of being connected with so many people in the industry, in fact, that pictures of almost every major event show up in my feed. From restoration efforts to historic conventions to Christmas trains, the Internet brings them all.

Sometimes, certain events are so well marketed and and attended that the entire Internet seems to stop in its tracks and focus on one event. This effect has been out in full strength these last few weeks.  Three weeks ago, a cadre amatuer journalists provided minute-to-minute coverage of the 611’s inaugural 2016 excursions.  That same weekend brought dispatches from the lectures and awards ceremonies at the Center for Railroad Photography and Art in Chicago.  After that, my feeds were beautified with breathtaking pictures of the Colorado Railroad Museum frosted by a late-season snowstorm that happened to coincide with the Spring ATRRM conference. Events like these are always bookended with pictures of crowded airports, yawning train stations, stretches of open highway, mementoes that the people going on the journey find the getting there almost as validating as the destination.

I enjoy these kinds of events the most, of course, when I am able to attend them in person and add my own anecdotes to the mix, but real life has conspired to keep me home from most of the events over the past month. I have viewed the events as a consumer, not a producer, and I can never completely stop being a little bit jealous of the people who did manage to attend.

No app or web feature will ever substitute for actually being there at the edge of the ballast. Microphones will never convey the way an entire valley resonates with a well-tuned whistle. It will never be able to make one’s living room fecund with the smell and humidity that shrouds a steam locomotive as it goes about its business.  Online conversation cannot begin to substitute for the fellowship that happens over dinner and drinks after the fires are dropped.

All things considered, though, I’m of a the opinion that the present is actually a pretty good time to be a train watcher.  These days, almost everyone carries a Smartphone with a camera attached--the latest models have a near-professional quality--and most people can upload those photos to the Internet within a few minutes or hours of taking them.  Live-streaming technology has evolved to a point where, so long as there is stable Wi-Fi access available at the source, events can be broadcast in real time. Social media and  is a welcome augmentation of more traditional forms of coverage, where constraints of page space and running time tend to limit what can be disseminated to audiences. Online content allows space for shots staged more creatively staged than the typical roster shots or the three-quarters perspective.

The upshot of this is that while political and economic factors might be making excursions rarer, the ones that do happen are far more thoroughly documented than they were in previous years. Those of us left at home might miss out on the camaraderie and the more visceral aspects of a excursion, but we can at least still observe the action from a distance and can, to a limited degree, still observe and participate in an event.  

Soon, the tables will turn. This time next week I’ll be arriving in Roanoke, Virginia to cover the 611’s Pelican and Powhatan Arrow excursions, and two weeks after that, I’ll be on the way to Denver to host the first of Trains Magazine’s Colorado Tours. I’ll be the one posting pictures, videos, and trying to put the right words together to give the people back home an understanding of how it feels.  

It is a pleasure, a great honor, to be able to go into the field and be able to open the experience to other people. Done this way, railroad journalism truly is, in the most literal sense, a conversation between thousands. Heritage railroading is at its best when we have a good context of what it means to each of us, and I look forward to hearing many voices offering their support in the next few weeks.