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The Drink Tank 229
 
The Comet: Living in a Photographby Christopher J. Garcia
It’s impossible to say which is cooler: thereality of a photo or the surreality of it’s connec-tion ot the real world. I have experienced manygreat moments through photos that I couldnever have been at. The photos of the FallingMan from September 11th, the evacuation of the American Embassy in Vietnam, the greatestsports moments recorded by incredible photog-raphers from around the world. I can tell storiesabout how things went down at events I wasnot born for simply because I’ve examined thephotos. It is in this vein that my love for a cer-tain train that had been dismantled years beforeI was even born.Emerson College bought the Little Build-ing: 180 Tremont Street, right on the corner of the Boston Common. It was a lovely building builtin the past and forgotten until what was thenthe present. Emerson bought it and we movedin my Junior year. It was a beautiful building, notquite completely nished when we moved in,but it was delgithful. To get us into the modethat this place had a history they put up a seriesof photographs. There were photos of Bostoncelebrities, a recreation of the Boston Massacrefrom the 1970s, a big photo of the Building as itwas being nished, and then a photo of a trainpulling out of a station. It wasn’t a regular photo,it had obviously been touched up. It was likesomething from the not-so-distant future. Thiswas a train obviously pulling into South Station,but it looked like no train I’d ever seen. And, asa budding Historian, I now had a quest. The onlywriting on the photo said
The Comet- 1940 
The chase beginning at the EmersonLibrary, a former brownstone that had beenconverted into a library, which was a really nicething. It was actually Mrs. Gardner’s, that is thesame Mrs. Gardner who founded the IsabellaStuart Gardner Museum, rst house, right upon Beacon Street. I had been a regular on theinternet from the Library,, but they’d gottentired of me printing out long lists pf WrestlingChampions so they banned me from the com-puters. I had to use the Card Catalog. I was no-where near sure where to start, as I gured TheComet would lead me to everything from therst Fanzine to the worker’s periodical that wasthe biggest thing in Liuthuania. I decided to startwith the general study of trains. I found a book that listed train lines from around the world. Iwas amazed at the detail they went into. Everyline had dozens of details about everything fromdeparture stations, number of stops, number of 
All aboardan Introduction by James Bacon
Trains have always been fascinating tome. From an early age I would year to watchor ride on trains, and trips in old CIE AEC1950’srailcars, recongured in push pull sets withre-engined Class 201 Engines from Tara St toDalkey, as a youngster in the late seventiesand early eighties was brilliant.I remember being taken in 1979 tosee the Railway Collision in Dalkey, betweentwo commuter trains and running in Tip-perary near where my Aunt and Uncle lived,to see the train go under the Bridge nearSolahead, that went from Tipperary Town toLimerick Junction.My father lied to get us into WesleyCollege and see a Model Railway Exhibit in1979, we are still unsure what the lie wasand he bought us a GNER A4 Pacic 4-6-2with teak carriages. We had already played hisHornby Dublo trains, and he even had someTriang American styled coaches until theywere worn out. I played with Lego, but onlyfound Lego trains in 2001. Thanks to a modelshop who had loads of it, and no one elsewasinterested.And then I became a Train Driver. orsomething like that. I am very greatful to allcontributors, nice to see Tony Kean in print,as ever, and hope you enjoy this Drink Tank.If it proves popular, I may pester Chris to doanother one, next year or something.
 
cars, wheelwidth, etc. Sadly, it was arranged bycompany name, so it took me a while to nd it,but there it was: The Comet.The New York, New Haven and HartfordRailroad paid for The Comet to be made by theGoodyear-Zeppelin Corporation. It cost a hun-dred thousand dollars, which is a lot of money.It weighed about 100k pounds, which was con-siderably lighter than the average locomotive.It made heavy use of aluminium, which led tothe light It featured two Westinghouse Dieselengines, 400 HP and all. It was something of amarvel. There were three cars, and they sharedcouplings, so as to save weight. The train movedon hydraulic shock-absorbers, so it gave a gentleride, which is always a pleasant thing. The earlypromotional material said that it ‘oated aroundbends in the track’, which may be a slight exag-geration.They put a ton of other features, in-cluding stairs that came down with the door,so there was no way to close the doors if there was someone on the stairs and the traincouldn’t move unless the doors were closed.This did lead to occasional problems, but it wasa nice safety feature. The whole thing was veryfuturistic, including little touches like no visiblelight sockets and air-conditioning. That’s a nicetouch when you’re trying to make things look magical to simply hide the plugs and cords.I was in love with this thing. I found tonsof references to it all over the place. When Icould access the internet again, I managed tond a couple of sites that featured informationabout the Comet, which was awesome. It wasthe earlyish days of the Internet. so knowingthat you could nd this kind of info was still anamazing thing. I read all I could get my handson and then I noticed something. It was a linebetween Boston and Providence, and I was inBoston. While it ended its run in the early daysof WWII (after running from 1935), it was putinto local Boston service until 1951. Someonearound town that I could talk to must have hadsome experience of the train. I had one feeling,a professor who had a wicked bad Boston ac-cent. He was in his 70s, so he must have knownsomething. Tony, as he insisted all his studentscall him. He was my history of Jazz teacher, myfavorite class, so it wasn’t weird that I hung outafter class.“Tony, you ever take trains when youwere a kid?” I asked“All the time. Haven’t in 30 years.” Heanswered.“You ever ride The Comet?” I asked.“44 miles in 44 minutes.” He said.“So you rode it?”“I loved that thing. I used to go toProvidence with my dad. sit up front. Everyonedressed up to ride it. It was the nicest train I’dever been on.”I loved talking with Tony about stuff, andhe got this odd look in his eyes. I wasn’t surewhat it was, but it had something behind it that Ihad to call beautifully distant.“One thing about the Comet,” Tony said,that look still on his face, “is that it was a mo-ment in time when that could have been theFututre. “I totally got where he was coming fromthen.
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