A Moving Vista

We decided to embrace downtown Bham's very nascent city-center/loft living scene, and are shacked up in the Jemison Flats, a building on 1st Avenue that used to be the Chamber of Commerce and was renovated into loft-style apartments in 2003. The apartment is, well, it's an odd raw bird; more on that later. (We like it a lot. It's just....as Todd's dad would say, "Diff'rent.") Our south-facing balcony looks onto Morris Avenue (just a bit east, Morris turns historic, with cobblestone streets and great old buildings, though there's overall a sense of vacancy to it) and the railroad tracks that divide downtown from the Southside part of Birmingham and the UAB campus area.

These are no inactive tracks. Trains rumble back and forth all day and night long, pretty much. Sometime one's going west while another's going east. They're not very noisy -- they're going pretty slow since they're smack-dab in the city at this point -- but they do make a nice low, rumbly sound. Occasionally there's a whistle blast, and bells clang. Occasionally there are appealingly muted metal squeals and screeches. Our enjoyment of all these sounds is muffled somewhat by the fountain in the "public park" at the back of our our building (more on that later, too), and we suspect that's by design: a fountain to mask the train noises. But I'd much prefer unadulterated rumbles and bells and squeals over the white noise of falling water.

I want to learn more about the trains: what sort of things they're carrying (all sorts, probably), where they come from, where they're going. Who becomes a train engineer or conductor these days? It's something to explore. I'm sorta hooked.

I did immediately read John McPhee's chapter on coal trains in Uncommon Carriers, which I'd given my dad for his birthday, while I was in Nashville Sunday night. (There's also a great chapter on an owner-operator of a tanker truck; I'd read it in the New Yorker years ago.) McPhee briefly mentions how modern-day hoboes are known to climb inside autoracks, get inside the cars they carry, and turn the cars on for warmth and, I suppose, radio listening. (The cars are driven off the autoracks, so they all have keys in them.) Some companies started locking the cars, and angry hoboes apparently bit back by breaking into them and urinating and defecating in them. Wild stuff! So I stare out my window at what I think are probably autoracks going by (these tall cars with what look like metal blinds as siding) and wonder if there are hoboes in there. . .

Turns out the Amtrak station is right behind our place on Morris. When the Amtraks pull in, we can see the people disembark and hear the conductor announcing the stop.

So take Amtrak to come visit us, eh? When you step off the train we'll be right there, waving at you from the balcony. Look for the seven-story building with a crazy tree mural covering it! (Pic of that coming soon.)

Meanwhile, I'll be wondering if any of these trains are hauling coal. Todd thinks so. We can't tell for certain though.

Note: In the picture there are two trains. The one on the track farther south (farther from the camera) is what's known as intermodal: it's carrying double-decker semi-trailers, of which only the top ones are visible.

(Transport. More interesting than you thought.)