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# Railtracks
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/railtracks/
- Published: 2011-11-05T01:11:48.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:13:31.000Z
- Description: "Impossible now to think of train travel without a kind of tenderness - as if that is what love is: arrival after arrival". A conversation between the writers Anne Michaels and John Berger, in dialogue with a photographic journey through southern Bohemia, evokes the intimate meanings and shared be
- Author: John Berger
- Tags: Cultural politics, #Migrated, Europe, culture, landscape & identity, arts & cultures, #en, #Import 2026-04-09 17:19

A. It is the sound of vanishing - the music as it plays itself to silence, the train as it travels away, a voice left on magnetic tape.

J. *Walking with you down the platform. The 8.26 for Laramie. In the minute that's still left we have to do everything.*

 *I hurry ahead faster than the train. This way, for a fraction of a second, I'll see you approaching again.*

A. A photograph of a ghost is sound.

J. *Your face in the window...*

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Anne Michaels and John Berger's [*Railtracks*](http://www.gotogetherpress.com/page3.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net), with photographs by [Tereza Stehliková](http://www.terezast.com/?ref=opendemocracy.net), is published by [Go Together Press](http://www.gotogetherpress.com/?ref=opendemocracy.net) in association with [Artevents](http://www.artevents.info/?ref=opendemocracy.net) and the[ ](http://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/?ref=opendemocracy.net)[London Review Bookshop](http://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/?ref=opendemocracy.net) (from which it is [available](http://www.lrbshop.co.uk/railtracks?ref=opendemocracy.net) exclusively and globally)