Fear of Trains

by Robert Feinstein

For as far back as I can remember, I have suffered from siderodromophobia, a morbid fear of trains and anything that reminds me of them. In an early effort to cure me, I was given a birthday present of something most young boys would have loved: a miniature set of electric trains. I didn’t even want to be in the same room with them, and the provocative gift was exchanged for roller skates.

I am fine about cars, ferries, and airplanes, but passing through the wrong kind of turnstile remains an impossibility.

Those who believe in reincarnation often assert that if you are strongly attracted to or repelled by a certain time period, you lived in it during a previous lifetime. For me, it has been the era of the Civil War, and I have fancied myself as playing a role in it, perhaps even as an infantry officer. My bookshelves overflow with biographies of the generals, and I subscribe to several journals that focus on those four years of American vs. American bloodletting.

Consequently, when I saw a newspaper article mentioning that Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery was asking for volunteers to seek out previously undocumented graves of Civil War soldiers, I was thrilled. The No. 35 bus took me to just a few blocks away. I showed up, wearing my replica Federal slouch hat, on the designated afternoon.

Greeting visitors to Green-Wood is a massive brownstone gate, and as I passed through its gothic archway, I marveled at its beauty. But I also surmised that it could easily be used as the backdrop for a vampire movie.

Green-Wood’s business office is in the structure’s ground level. The search group met on the second floor, which contains a seemingly out-of-place gymnasium and a bar-café. Actually, it makes good sense that they are there. Cemetery workers do a lot of heavy lifting, so their jobs require them to be in good physical shape. And if I had to spend so much time around mourners and dead people, imbibing in a drink or two would be appealing.

Everyone was enthusiastic, and after a pizza lunch, maps were distributed and we were divided up into groups of two. My search partner was an affable, somewhat excitable fellow named Fred. I never saw him again after that day, and I can hardly recall his features. On the other hand, I am sure that Fred will never forget mine.

Fred and I followed our map and examined hundreds of gravesites. But after three hours we were disappointed. We hadn’t located the final resting place of even a solitary Civil War soldier.

Shortly before we were about to give up, Fred, who was scrutinizing a family plot some thirty feet away from me, suddenly let out with a loud: “Wow!”

Happily, I yelled out: “Did you find one?”

“No, it’s something else,” he replied. “Get over here fast. You’ve got to see this.”

Fred was looking at one particular monument, glancing back at me, and then peering down at it again.

As I grew closer, I realized the object of his amazement was one of those oval-shaped pictures of the deceased, which are often affixed to vintage tombstones. I hadn’t yet gotten a clear view of it when I saw the epitaph: “Killed in the Malbone Street Train Wreck, November 1, 1918.”

I immediately backed off, but something beckoned to me, and I again approached. Forlornly staring back at me from that photograph was a man with my own face. Wide-eyed and nodding, I whispered: “This explains it. This explains it.”

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[Author’s note] There really was a Malbone Street Train Wreck in Brooklyn, New York. On November 1, 1918, an inexperienced subway engineer, who was at the controls only because of a transit strike, speeded through a perilous curve at the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Malbone Street. In the ensuing derailment and crash, almost one hundred people lost their lives, and some of the victims are buried in Green-Wood Cemetery. And I did participate in a search for the graves of Civil War troopers in Green-Wood, after a lunch of pizza, in the bar-café, adjacent to the gymnasium within the cemetery’s gate.