Hilton and Mears: Nostalgia…

You can hear this photo. We’re stuck in the street, “once again” is not exactly what we’re muttering, and those cement hoppers will always be the most appropriately labelled items of rolling stock in the history of railroading. Starting them is almost as fun as trying to push water up hill…

8704 on Beaverbrook. Photo and model by James Hilton. Words by Chris Mears.

It’s kind of cool, almost heartwarming, to be grabbing another oily notch on the throttle. We’re shoving cement around this afternoon because Moncton’s growing and fed on new developments cast in concrete. It’s a city for tomorrow, being formed today, and we’re delivering it. 

They talk about a past and the language always feels like describing a memory so distant it’s almost fictional. Yet, here we are. Describing the past is the work of nostalgia and memory, intangible narratives, but my hands are holding the reverser on this machine. Neither of us are new.  The roadbed carries the track, the track carries the train, I’m in the train. This cooperative, connected by touch, moves the food of a new tomorrow’s place. 

We are not lost to the past but from it. We lived there. It never ended because it’s still here now.