There are two types of train stations in the world; the commuting station, and the escaping station. Sometimes, however, they're a bit of both.

Sitting on the edge of town, the buildings grand architecture has peeled and sagged, proclaiming loudly that the government no longer had the money to spend on such trivialities as painting the picket fence separating the platform from the megre rail-yard. Sections of track still lead, rusting, into industrial lots either completely unused, or simply without use for rail freight anymore. Occasionally, a yellow freightliner would drag it's way up the track laden with stone from a quarry somewhere north, eliciting stares from tired commuters.

Because commuters are tired. You find them at every tiny train stop in the suburbs, sat on benches or stood waiting on the edge of the platform, as they listen to the automated voice announce that their train is going to be later and later and stand back from the edge of platform one, the next train does not stop here and later. So they stand back and look down as the express plows through. No express is going to stop at a station like this. Even in the goddamn middle of the night, you have to wait for the little single carriage diesel engine to roll up. No express for you, small town kid. No comfy seats with tray tables or even little TVs. Maybe there's a discarded Metro to read instead.

I like to think of my own town as a suburb of something larger. Perhaps the next town over, or maybe even the nearest city to the north. It's less depressing than to think of it like than imagining the 3000 person cluster of houses and poverty as it's own entity. We commute and have rail-cards and wait listening to some hipster jackass chatting very loudly on his phone about how he's losing grip on his sanity. Just shut the fuck up.

It's a commuting station when you need to get to work or college or school. It's a commuting station every day during rush hour, but when those tired individuals disappear off to their respective jobs, something else happens. The platforms empty out, save for maybe the one person, expressions punctuated by something other than boredom. They're escaping.

A handbag for a dag, a rucksack for a week, or a suitcase for a lifetime, we see them go, and no-one stops them. For them, familiar stops and streets slowly blend into something else.

This is the escaping station.

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