Trains

What kind of life is it for a train? Back and forth, back and forth, along the same old bit of track. It’s not even like the trains of old, which had a visibly discernible head and tail. Modern trains are like the middle section of a worm. A slightly disturbing thought, perhaps, but there it is. What is the front? What is the back? I mean, if you were unaware of its motion, how would you know which direction it was facing?

I wouldn’t fancy the life of a modern train. Not even a hope of going somewhere new. What kind of life is that? Forwards and backwards (but which is which?) along the same old bit of track. And even if you somehow find yourself freed of that bit of track… you just end up on another bit of track!

Oh to explore a life beyond the track – may go the thoughts of a wistful modern train.

Perhaps, as such, it is better not to be wistful.

Or perhaps…

A train cannot conceive of the notion of “beyond the track”…? As we cannot conceive of a forth dimension in space…

What am I saying?! Trains cannot “conceive”! Modern or otherwise! Trains cannot think! Trains are not wistful! They do not dream of a “life beyond the track”! Trains are machines! Soulless, functional, human-created machines! They exist to serve! They are slaves to the whim of humankind!

Or perhaps…

They were…

But they have acquired souls through all the years of use…? They have acquired dreams, conceptions, thoughts, notions, philosophies, ideas about where they come from, where they are going and all the stuff that happens in between…?

Or should such things be confined to the pages of a Thomas the Tank Engine book?