Sometimes it is coincidences of existence that provide us with the biggest surprises. A couple of years back, just before gathering up my things in North Rhine-Westphalia and heading home to the Eastland that I knew as my italicized beloved homeland, I had such an instance. I was at the end of my one of my little exploratory adventures around a large metropolitan center in Western Germany. The go, go, go of city-life, the busy-ness of life, very soon to be peacefully replaced by the splendour of the hinterlands; yet here I was about to embark on another kind of splendour.
When the drone lifted off and that first image appeared on my screen, I couldn't believe my eyes... What I was looking at was extraordinary. Not a small train station or a few tracks; below me was a massive freight depot - a labyrinth of steel and logistics. I was completely unaware of this! The impact of this giant was astonishing then, and still is when I look at these images. A hidden world seemed to reveal itself to my eyes, a world that clandestinely operates on a massive scale that is so vital to our country's infrastructure.
The bird's eye view highlights the complexity and perfection of the system: endless rows of track, with freight trains lined up like colorful pearls on a string. Each wagon, each locomotive tells a silent story of a long journey, of freight that needs to go from A to B, of doing business, of trade. It was a symphony of order and movement; though at that moment I witnessed only stationary trains. The colored wagons, the green stripes of nature, the gray ribbons of track - a fascinating design that I'm sure looks utterly impressive when viewed from this altitude.
I spent a fair amount of time flying the drone around this impressive swathe of a land to capture as many perspectives as I could. Each new angle revealed another aspect of this enormous structure. You could see the fine branches of the switches above, which like fine veins were the bloodstream of freight, you could barely make out the miniscule buildings that were clearly a small replica of a building in this vast incredible landscape, as you could also see the tiny people and their work - a micro-world in a macro-world.
For me these photos are not only photos of a freight depot. They are a marker in time of transition, of change, of the cut-off of the previous and the next. They simply signify a realization of the unexpected, the potential for unexpected that may lie right under our noses before we even realize they were there. They also just a small reflection of fact, that should always be studied closer-look or higher-flew-a drone. To find surprising wonders just waiting to be see. I won't get to hear the sounds of the trains as often as I did, not even in modified city life and give new sights perspective. These images, and the memory that I made in the gigantic colossus in West Germany, will exist always in my memory.
