Secret Worlds

Basil and I ride the train quite a bit. I’ve always loved trains, and probably love bicycling for many of the same reasons I find travel by rail so appealing.  The window of a rail carriage provides a view of a world not easily seen by any other means.

Maybe that’s not exactly true: the neighborhoods we view from train windows aren’t really invisible.  It’s just that their best-known face isn’t the one viewed from a rail carriage.

Some of the structures we see were probably built after the rails went through, like this little settlement.

Others look as if they probably pre-date the railroad.

In many communities, housing along the tracks can be pretty sketchy:  rundown or carelessly built.  Along the Main Line near Philadelphia, that’s not always (or often!) the case.

This sprawling house looks like a miniature estate., though the front yard is now a railroad line.

Though the grounds of this home appear a bit scraggly and the fence is rusted, the multiple chimneys testify to a significant past.  This structure, too, faces the tracks, not the neighborhood behind the building.

Driving down a street, or even cycling, lets us see neighborhoods in a way we accept as conventional (though we see much more on a bicycle than by car).  But peering into the less public side of the geography is like peeking into secret worlds.  It’s a view at once intimate and completely impersonal.