Closely Observed Trains

I read Closely Observer Trains by Bohumil Hrabal in college, a seminal 1965 novel and subsequent Czechslovakia New Film about, among other themes, the absurdities of government and futility of resistance. The comparisons were not lost on me as I strolled the Westboro Rail Yard with my dog.

For 5 years my office was in the former West Lebanon library next to the Westboro Railyard, where the once-important switch-yard sat functionally obsolete but for the occasional spur-line traffic of hopper cars for the Carroll Concrete facility.

I'd often bring the dog to work, and we got in the habit of walking through the rail-yard during the day, and occasionally across the bridge connecting the downtowns of West Leb and White River Jct. [Study of how to make it a pedestrian connection].

I got a crash course in Street Art from the awesome group of artists we'd met in Quincy, Mass. who did the art murals at Paragon Boardwalk. That appreciation of the art-form has influenced how I look at city streets when I travel [Athens at Night], and led me to commission Sam Pao to do the billboards at Bridge Street Park, and the murals at River Park by visiting artists from Ecuador.

Over the course of ongoing delays and increasing frustration with obstruction by City Hall, I started taking photos of the graffitied rail cars that caught my attention.