Every holiday season the city becomes a lattice of lights, but the brightest line is not strung across a street. It moves. Word spreads and people drift toward the tracks from bus stops and side streets. Parents check mittens and scarves. Children lean against the temporary barricade and watch the dark horizon. The first pinprick appears, then another, until a seam of color opens and the train writes its signature into the night. The music is still minutes away, but in that arrival there is already a story about distance narrowing, about something built for freight arriving for us.
The...
