Time and place, the two dimensions in which we travel. Except for the very large fact that as gay people, Todd and I would very much have needed to hide the nature of our relationship in the late ‘forties, early ‘fifties, I’d like to get into a time machine and take a vacation to back then. Because that was the streamliner era, and trains are the second love of my life. I see people on a beach in 1949 and think of the trains they rode. This photo also brings to mind William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice because of scenes in the novel.

I reblogged the above photo from loverofbeauty.tumblr.com. See more Andreas Feininger photos at Photographers Gallery. The photo immediately below, of the diner lounge on the overnight Denver-Salt Lake City 195os Prospector, is from a Rio Grande Railroad leaflet in my collection. But note that the car isn’t that different from the diner pictured at bottom, which currently operates on Amtrak’s Silver Meteor from Florida to New York, complete with sleeping cars with upper and lower berths. A time machine, of sorts.