The Romance of Disaster

There's an intriguing double standard that exists in the realm of the rail fan. To illustrate the point, ask yourself the following question: Would you purchase an item with a picture of a traffic accident on it? What about an airplane crash? A sunken boat? While we remain fascinated by these things (as evidenced by the slow-down of traffic passing an accident on the highway), we would feel uneasy about owning a reminder of these tragedies and disasters.

So why is it different with train wrecks?

In our gift shop, we sold a mug with a picture of a wrecked train bearing the words, "I'm a wreck without my coffee." Commercialization is one thing, but this blurs the line between tacky and tasteless. And yet, for some reason, it's ok. It was one of the gift shop's best sellers. A mug with an airliner crash or a car wrapped around a telephone couldn't possibly do as well. Right?

Is the sentimentality of John the Rail Fan so powerful that he doesn't perceive this? Is he so enamored with a niche of history that even its most somber tragedies can't escape reproduction?

Maybe it's easier to remove or ignore the human element. Fatalities aren't so in-your-face when a 600,000 pound locomotive folds in on itself, spilling a mile-long swath of cargo and equipment. Maybe the carnage to injury ratio is low enough to make things palatable. Sure the wreck covered more than a mile, took out a bridge, and will require weeks to clean up, but there were only seven people killed. Only seven people killed. Please don't let that be the thing.

There is a romance attached to this way of life. It speaks of a time gone by. The quaint, simpler, slower days when the day's activity died as the sun set were the era of the locomotive. Trucks and planes rule the industry now, but there are beasts of steel that still traverse the hills, the second, third, and fourth generations of iron horses, each calling up the past with whistles and rumbles. The good comes with the bad. Those trains would jump the tracks. People would die. The railroads took enormous safety measures because of the dangers involved, and they took responsibility when even a single man was injured.

Is this what we want to remember? Between the Scylla of overwrought memorials and the Charybdis of unhealthy obsession lies the path of tasteful remembrance.

If we learned from those experiences, we're better for them, but if they become entertainment, what are we?