Chris Wage Photography 

Union Pacific 4015 at the Union Station trainyard, Nashville, TN. December, 2009.

One of the things we really enjoyed in Spain was their amazingly convenient high-speed train system. Aside from the obvious benefit of being able to take day-trips to Spain’s various historical points of interest, it was nice just to get a feel for the country and its terrain. While watching the scenery fly by, I found myself thinking back to Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (my only real point of reference for modern Spanish history). It was hard not to imagine every burnt-out farmhouse or decrepit villa as the scene of some chapter of Orwell’s flight from the fascists.

Madrid’s Atocha train station, the site of the grisly 2004 bombings, seems to have recovered nicely, and was our main point of departure while we stayed in Madrid.

Cait and I took a train out to Cookeville this weekend. It was a fall foliage ride held every year by the Tennessee Central Railway Museum. It was lovely. Like most everyone these days, I’m enamored with train travel. — a relaxing and sentimental alternative to car or plane travel. The landscape whizzing by and the sedating white noise of the tracks provide the perfect background for quiet contemplation and casual conversation. Cait commented that the next time we’re on a train, we should be crossing the China/Mongolia border on the trans-Siberian railway. I couldn’t agree more.