Night train
this is a very long post.
Here, I am going to share some photos and stories with you about me being an irresponsible person. What else is new though.
A few days ago I went to a pool party and I decided to ride my bike. To avoid major roads I took a bit of a roundabout way to get there. On the way I noticed some trains and didn't think much of it right then in particular.
The next day, for no particular reason I assembled some kind of nostalgic outfit. I've had the boots since middle school. I always wore them because they were good in all weather, comfortable, and durable. People started making fun of me for being a 'dyke', and I didn't know what that meant at the time. but when I found out I got all self conscious and tried to stop wearing my baggy pants, flannel and boots. I only ever had a few bras, because I didn't take much pleasure in them. They were just a necessity. One old standby was my lime green one. I wore it until it got ratty as hell. And I didn't care, even when people would want me to look sexy, I didn't even bother with the whole underwear thing. The dress was my graduation dress. I was pissed that the girls had to wear dresses under our gowns. My dad bought it for me, and I was like 'I could wear a bag and nobody would even fucking know, why waste the money?'
However all the things combined together gave me a pretty good impression of myself at maybe 19 years old. A simple dress, unshaven legs, and boots that looked straight out of gay military porn.
I didn't think I would be going anywhere, so I didn't bother to make myself look even remotely presentable. No hair straightening, no concealer, etc etc. But as it turned out my mother started fighting with my stepfather and I rode off on my bike so I could continue to fill my ears with nothingness.
It wasn't practical or wise to end up in the train yard, but that was where I ended up. In particular I noticed the old silver train first. I am quite taken to trains, especially old ones and bullet-like ones like this one. I wanted to get inside of it.
I climbed up into the front of the train. It was very difficult to see inside.
The door inside was locked, obviously. I tried, but couldn't get in.
So I sat on the steps for a bit. Haha, yeah don't I look classy. It came to my attention that sitting cause me to flash anything that might come by.
Something did come by, it was a trucker pulling into whatever abandoned parking lot was beside the train. Stupidly, I ran back inside to try and hide but realized there was nothing to hide BEHIND. So I panicked, thought about jumping out of the front to the ground, realized that was a bad idea because it was so high up, but out of desperation did it anyway and just ran north, haha. I left my bike and all my belongings I had with me in the crate I tethered to the back. That was probably bad idea #1 right there.
Somewhere a long there I ran into this cat and just stalked it for a while. It didn't want to be friends though. It did all sorts of pissed off gestures at me. The picture doesn't do this thing justice. It was friggin huge.
This was probably another irresponsible and not so safe thing, but I climbed the trains. Haha. These were just some normal everyday trains that you'd see blocking people during rush hour around here, only they were rusted to all hell.
Not particularly interesting but good for climbing.
This is probably the worst picture ever but I'm putting it here because it's funny. I like accident pictures. It looks like I'm scratching my crotch while I'm fixing my bra SO CLASSY
I got down after a while. Right when I did this big black dog came out of nowhere. I just stared at it and didn't have time to decide if I was afraid or not before it knocked me down. Then it just started licking me and stuffing it's snotty dog nose all over my legs and I was laughing. This guy called it and it went running off down the tracks.
I forgot to resize this picture. Sorry. Too lazy to do it now.
I decided that I could continue down the tracks in the opposite direction of the dog. I had no idea what was in that direction at all.
This was the point where my camera started dying. Which sucks because it was when things started getting very interesting. Only once and a while, I could turn my camera on, take a quick photo, and then turn it off again.
I walked down the tracks for a while, passed a rubber making factory or something. The tracks started to become overgrown with trees and other plants and there were snake and groundhog holes around. I started getting a little nervous that maybe I would run into some sort of animal.
I saw more abandoned trains. They started off as the ones I was climbing. Common, but rusty. One though, had the door hanging open to one of the ones that is just a big metal box of nothing.
Upon continuing further, I saw more silver ones with the airplane windows, like the one I had wanted to get into. Excited, I ran along side of it. On the side of it, it had the name of whatever train it used to be. It was "North" something. This was when I saw there was shattered glass all over the little landing. I looked up and saw that it was from a punched-through window. For some reason, I didn't think about it very much. I immediately grabbed a handlebar and swung myself up onto the landing.
I looked in through the hole in the window. To my surprise it looked very house-like. There were old fashioned chairs. I saw a record player in an old wooden entertainment center in the wall. I have never seen a train car like this before! What is this?? I was confused, and curious, but that was it. I reached in through the window to see if I could reach the door handle though I didn't expect it to work. But the I clicked it and the door swung open easily.
There were chairs and tables on their sides in front of the door. I stepped over them and continued into the room to investigate. I looked at all the furniture first. And the record player. There was a smashed mix tape on the floor. I found some photographs on one of the smaller chairs. One was of trains, I don't know what the other ones were of. But I knew that they had to be handprinted photographs, like with a colour machine. I recognize the look as I've fished many out of the trashcan in the photo studio at school. I went over to the other corner with the other chair because there were papers all over the floor. When I picked them up,they were all shittily drawn maps of things. There were houses and lines and stuff. I was confused. You can see them a little bit in the picture I took through the broken window.
At this point I wondered, 'could someone be living here or something?' I don't know why up until now I wasn't really thinking and there wasn't a worry in my little head. When I thought about the glass, and how it was all still perfectly right beneath the window, it looked like maybe it was recent. I started to get a little nervous.
There was a narrow hallway which was the only thing that extended from the room. And when I say narrow I MEAN narrow. It was like airplane proportions, from the hallway and down. This is when my camera completely died. I know it seems a little silly, but this made me feel super alone and more scared. At this point it was about dusk and the sun would be setting soon. I continued down the hallway anyway, and as I made my way down I just started feeling unbearably scared, which is kind of weird because I'm generally not a very fearful person. I guess it's because I had absolutely no idea what could be in the place I was in.
There were doors along the hallway, to closets and bathrooms. They were extremely small. I tried the water and power just because, but didn't expect it to work. It didn't.
I entered a small bedroom. There was a bed and a chest of drawers. The wallpaper was peeling. What if I had someone I was with with me, would I do them in a freaking scary abandoned train? Hahahahha. Maybe. Right then though I might have actually been too scared. I left that room and went into another bedroom. I started not wanting to open doors because I was getting so scared or wondering if I would find a person or a dead person or just something so fucking scary. The last bedroom smelled like pee and I made a sadface and left.
The last room was some sort of larger room, a dining area. There was a large table in the center. What I noticed was that there were plates and utensils scattered around with old dried food on it, like someone had been there. I picked up a can and sloshed it around, and it still had orange soda in it. I bent down and poked at a Twizzler that was on the floor, trying to see how hard it was to maybe judge when someone was here. It was generally squishy, but it was also 90 degrees out that day. There was some sort of lotion that was stuck to a shelf. Some of the chairs were tipped over. Everything else was fairly normal except for that there was a saw on one of the chairs.
I went back into the hallway. The very last thing at the end of the hallway was a narrow, oddly shaped hallway that went into a small, cramped kitchen. It was very dark and there were no lights. Everything was metallic, there was a stove and utensils and knives were hanging everywhere. When I was in the center of the tiny kitchen, the big metal door slammed shut. I didn't jump, or scream, or move, or do anything. I stood very, very still and tried not to breath. I also couldn't see anything. I started thinking all sorts of things like, 'oh my god, what did that. Is there a person in here? Is there a thing in here? Am I GOING TO DIE oh man if I die in here probably nobody would even know I am going to be dead in a dress in the middle of nowhere.' So after a while, I didn't hear anything and I got ballsy enough to move again. I felt my way back to the door and pushed it but it was stuck. I thought 'okay,' and then I didn't think anything, haha. Then I took a break, and then went back to pushing the door. I found that it wasn't locked, just closed. After enough effort, I got it open. I looked around to see if there was anything that could have done it. however I didn't see anything. but knowing I had to walk the whole way back to the broken window and the door was almost so overwhelming that i didn't want to do it. But I sucked it up and went back at a normal pace, trying to do that thing where I pretend I am totally confident, hahaha. I didn't run into anything at all. I went out the door I came in through, and respectfully closed it.
That train car was connected to another, which was connected to many many more. I don't know why I didn't just go home then, but I didn't. I seemed to have left my terror in the train car I had just exited. The adjacent car I could not get into. I climbed from car to car, and got maybe 7 train cars down. Some had missing windows and I could look in. Some were filled with weird things, and some looked like regular train cars filled with seats. Since my camera had been off for so long, it had recuperated enough to allow me to take a few bonus pictures, as long as they didn't have flash.
There was another train, where the door window was gone. When I looked in, there was a chair pulled underneath, like someone used it to climb in. It was one of those 'around the corner hallways' entrances so I couldn't see anything part that into the train.
I decided I wasn't up for it. This was the point where I decided I would venture home.
Sometimes PA is pretty interesting. And scary in a kind of hillbilly-eque kind of way.
I walked the whole way back along the tracks, to my bike as it got dark. I was pretty pleased with myself for not dying, haha. When I got back to my bike, everything was still there safe and sound. Oh, I was so very happy.
I rode home, and when I got there, I was so tired I slept for 12 hours.