In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

RAILROADS 179
as an emblem of randomness? Trains, tracks, schedules, stations, station
restaurants, and restaurateurs' families constitute a world of contingency
with respect to individual needs and expectations because the railway
system's internal complexity cannot be adapted to them. [see Elevators]
No individual traveler will ever be able to anticipate the encounters in a
railway car or a station restaurant, and trains will never wait for passengers
who wish to bring their randomly begun conversations to a happy
conclusion. This independence of the railway system from the world of
chance interactions is also illustrated in Thomas Mann's "Unordnung
und friihes Leid" ("Disorder and Early Sorrow"), where the nanny of
Professor Cornelius' children teaches them a simple little poem:
Train, train,
Locomotive proud,
Goes away, or maybe stays,
Toots its whistle loud.
(Mann, 500)
Reports of deadly railway accidents always present trains as agents of
fate and ascribe to the victims full responsibility for their deaths: "The
management of the Altona Railroad reports that at 6:10 A.M. four workers
were killed and two were severely injured by a freight train arriving
at the Berkenthin station from Hamburg. Apparently the victims thought
that the alert which had sounded referred to train 70122 coming from
the opposite direction and therefore failed to notice the approach of train
7599, which came along their track" (Berliner Volks-Zeitung, November
6). In Jules Supervielle's novel Le voleur d'enfants (The Man Who Stole
Children), the portrait photo of a rich bourgeois who has died in a train
accident reminds his family of man's impotence in the face of destiny,
and, as readers soon come to understand, it thus foreshadows the imminent
kidnapping of his son: "Wherever the widow goes in the room, the
dead man follows her with his cold, paper gaze. That energetic chin
could not have been separated from life without some difficulty. He's the
father of the child, framed in his role of ineffectual observer ... He died
in perfect health in a train accident and seems to object night and day
that it is unjust, that he has not had his fill of life, that not long ago he
was authoritarian and jealous" (Supervielle, 44-45). [see Action = Impotence
(Tragedy)]