The Box Car

On Christmas Day in Tulsa, Oklahoma the work does not stop.

The freight trains, headed west and east, north and south, keep rolling. Sometimes it seems the connected box cars and fuel tankers are miles long, and all pulled by one strong massive engine. How much weight can one engine pull?

Slowly, but with all deliberate speed, the trains progress across the open landscape.

In the west, the importance of freight rail to the American way of life is more evident, because the trains are less hidden by the terrain. In some parts of the country, trains run through the backside of America, the part you can’t see from your car window. In Tulsa, and cities like it, these trains are part of the picture as much as the architecture itself.