Choo-choo or chuk-chuk, or the Joycean frseeeeeeeefronnnng. Whatever your preferred onomatopoeia, these sounds, suggestive of a train darting across topographies — the familiar swiftly blurring into the unfamiliar — trigger instant recall. We have journeyed towards, and away from; we have slithered through towns and villages, lurching forward on moonlit tracks. We have crisscrossed gorges, slid through tunnels, click-clacked across bridges. We have halted or jolted to a halt at railway stations cacophonous or silent, swirling with brisk warmth or shrouded in intrigue.
Trains are our psyches in locomotion, introducing us to ourselves, allowing us (quite literally) to distance ourselves
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