When you hear that sound creeping towards you car by car, brace yourself, this is Slack Action. It's the sound of the future about to lunge you into motion to destinations unknown...

Despite the limitations of a fixed route, you really can't be sure where you'll end up when you catch a train. You see the journey rarely concludes at rail's end...

There's just something about the sound of a train blasting through the night; That harmonic whistle echoing up from the valley never fails to send chills up my spine. It seems to be calling me, promising endless adventure and unimaginable possibilities. As a boy, I used to watch the Southern Pacific freights roar by, fresh from Cuesta Grade, and disappear down the tracks that seemed to stretch off into infinity. Somwhere down that "Iron Road" was my future.

I can be found hanging out with the rusting locomotive hulks of Humboldt Bay, or on a speeding subway train deep down in the tunnels of New York, or walking old abandoned right of ways where the tunnels remain like inviting ghosts offering glimpses of the past and insight into the future. It wouldn't be strange to find me exploring an old branchline way out in the middle of nowhere,or even among the trench coats of the dashing commuters on the Long Island Railroad at the maze of tracks in Jamaica Queens, home of the famous, "change at Jamaica," where rail lines fan out all over Long Island like all too comforting spider webs.

From mainline freight to branchline excursions, from the new york subway to the abandoned railroads of the great Pacific Northwest, from Amtrak to commuter rail, this is Slack Action-what you find beyond the sidetrack!

Drop me a line:

Peter Lewis
freightyard98122@yahoo.com

Slack Action- Where there's no such thing as catching the wrong train...