Twenty Trains in Twenty States

A year ago I set the goal of taking photographs of 20 trains in 20 states (or Canadian provinces.) I thought it was a relatively simple goal and one that I'd be able to attain. I was wrong. It turns out with professional and personal obligations just getting to 20 states is hard to do. Still, I had a pretty good run; I managed to get photos in 15 states and one Canadian province for a total of 16. But a pretty good run wasn't what I signed up for, so when 2010 turned into 2011 I decided I would try again.

                I have kept the same ground rules I had in 2010. A photo only counts if it includes a locomotive in revenue service. Static displays don't count and I decided not to count streetcars, subways or tourist railroads -- although I will post photos of them when I get them. I also decided I would count trains taken in Europe or Asia or on any other continent, but I would count each of those countries as a single entity towards the 20. For instance, if I took a photo of a train in County Kerry and another in County Cork, I wouldn't count each one as a separate province or state, even though the Irish might. Instead I would count all photos taken in Ireland as just one step toward my goal.

                To people living outside the U.S. this may seem completely arbitrary, and I guess it is. But I decided to count the totals this way because the ultimate goal of this exercise is to get me out of the house and taking photos in places I don't usually go. A trip down the Rhine through several German states would simply dampen the challenge -- not that I was going to take a trip down the Rhine, but you get the idea.

                As I stated above, my basic goal for this exercise was to get me out of the house, but there is more to it than that.

                The world is constantly changing and I am at the age now where I have seen it change a lot. The world I grew up in, the one I took for granted, the one I thought would never change,  is gone. People, places and yes trains that I saw every day, and thought I would always see, have disappeared forever. When I think of those people and those places now, I wonder could I have asked more questions? Could I have opened myself up to more experiences? Could I have taken more photos?

                The answer is yes.

                 I realized recently that if I had a chance to go back in time I would gladly accept the opportunity. But I wouldn't go back to change the course of my life. I wouldn't go back to make things easier for myself or to engineer some brighter future. I wouldn't touch a single thing that might change the life I now have. Instead, I would go back just so that I could smell the newly grass on my high school's  football field again, or hear my adult children laugh as toddlers again, or meet my wife for the first time again, or watch a headlight appear in the distance knowing that was the train bringing my father home.

                Time travel, at least the kind where we hop into a DeLorean and find ourselves back in 1955, isn't possible. But the kind of time travel where we find ourselves old, infirmed and unable to influence the world anymore is not just possible, it is a certainty. In that world, this is the past, this is the place to which we would travel if only we had the chance. So given that I am here now, and I have the chance, I decided to engineer a way for me to see a little more, experience a little more and appreciate a little more of the things, people and places that are all around me. And while the goal of taking a photo of one train in 20 states may be a simple device to that end, it really is much more than that. At least for me.