Bescot on Rails

Considering at the age of 5, I ended up under a stationary train (I’ve never seen a train full of paper clips *ahem*) at Birmingham New Street, after faling through the gap, I’m not getting on too badly with our local train network.

Contained in this short art film, is perhaps something magic we’ve lost in car travel and perhaps air travel too. I’ve always seen train journeys as a movie reel, each trip is slightly different, a movie you can watch over and over again and see something new. The sweeping landscapes passing from urban sprawl to open countryside within a matter of tracks on the iPod. Music is an important part of this expereince, you have some tracks that are clearly winners as birds fly next to your windw trying to race your train, or the other classic being overhead lines criss crossing in time with your music. It’s a personal expereince, but one that we can all say; Yup I like that too.

So yeah, I was bored the other night of train delays, it took 2 and a half hours to do a 25 minute car journey (I’m first in line to twonk Richard Beeching bewteen the eyes on this one) so I thought I’d capture this expereince on my local line between Walsall and Birmingham. A route which takes in Bescot Stadium, which is rail road mania, there are so many tracks, you could get Thomas the Tank, friends and Richard Branson all in a drag race! Plus this video also lets you hear what I listen to as a soundtrack to this daily movie that lest we forget, plays in reverse on the way back! Foals – Spanish Saraha; I’m really liking this track, any track by Foals for the percusion and arrangements, that seem to be in time with the movie outside the train window. Also as the year is 2010 and we’ll all soon be thinking about peak oil, (if we aren’t already), train travel is going to be increadibly important to us in this decade. Ani Difranco makes this point in her Self Evident poem.

Here’s to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
and find that train ticket we lost
cuz once upon a time the line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
I dream of touring like Duke Ellington
in my own railroad car
I dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my face

Posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010