Raconteur: Stories From The Road

Stories From The Road

The Overland Tales: Wanderlust, Steam & Transcendental IDGAF

What goes through the mind of someone who would make a 4,000 mile round trip just to see a steam locomotive? More than one might think, and certainly more than I expected.

Big Boy #4014 and Union Pacific #844

Steaming Through Mosby’s Confederacy

A passion for steam trains can send one to places they would otherwise never explore. The northern Virginia hill country is one such locale for me. 


Seeing Ghosts on the Allentown & Auburn

Sometimes I wish I was ignorant of industrial history. I could cross out of service railroad tracks without wanting to know where they went and why. Alas, I cannot.


Connections of Steam: Understanding the Draw

Six decades after the end of American steam, a small contingent of boilermakers, machinists and mechanics keep a handful of coal and oil-fired locomotives active. 


Penn Station: A Citizen’s Guide to an American Tragedy

To understand Penn Station is to understand America. For better or worse, the station has always been a reflection of the times.


Donkey Wings: Chicken Wing Life Part #3

Melancholy is not on the menu at the humble white house on the corner of Grace and Brighton where barkeeps pour beers to the beat of classic rock while chefs fry up poultry history. This house is legend, chicken wing legend: JoJo’s at The Donkey.


Ontario Hockey Morning

I’m on a bus headed east across southern Ontario. The leading edge of a storm front hasn’t quite made it to the horizon, leaving room for a narrow slice of orange and purple sunrise to glow through, just enough to brighten the snow covered fields and outline the silhouettes of trees scattered along farm boundaries, roads and creeks.