I have a tiny TV. That’s how I always think of it, not the tiny TV, just my tiny TV, like a pet with poor manners. It sits on a tiny table—particleboard, one leg shimmed with a folded receipt—in the middle of my adequately sized living room. The room is big enough that the TV looks embarrassed to be there, like it wandered in by mistake and decided to stay. Couch against the wall. Window that faces nothing important. Carpet that remembers better decades. Everything reasonable. Everything quiet.
The TV gets one channel.
I got it at a yard sale in Visalia, California, from a woman who didn’t look at me while she took my money. She kept staring past my shoulder, like she was waiting for a bus that had already decided not to come. The TV was five dollars. No remote. No brand I recognized. The casing was yellowed, warm to the touch even unplugged, like it had been thinking about being on.
When I turn it on, it needs time. It hums first. Then it clicks. Then the smell starts.
Pizza.
Not fresh pizza. Not even good pizza. Old pizza that’s been reheated too many times. Grease soaked into cardboard. A memory of oregano. I wiped it down when I got it home. Vinegar. Baking soda. Bleach once, which felt excessive but I was desperate. The smell never leaves. It doesn’t fill the room, exactly—it hovers around the set, a low, persistent reminder that heat is happening somewhere it shouldn’t.
As I said: one channel.
The Train Station.
That’s what the channel calls itself. White text in the lower right corner. No logo. No scrolling ticker. No commercials. Ever. I checked. I left it on for an entire Saturday once, just to see if it would blink or apologize or ask me to buy something. It never did.
Just trains.
Platforms. Rails stretching out like unfinished sentences. Waiting rooms with plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Conductors leaning against walls, drinking coffee they don’t seem to enjoy. Cows watching trains go by, chewing like they’re counting time. Snow. Heat shimmer. Rain that looks heavier on camera than it probably is in real life.
The shows have names. They appear in the corner at the top of the hour and fade away again, modest about it.
Beltway Fever Dreams is all night freight circling Washington, D.C., headlights sliding past monuments you can’t quite see. Rails and Cows is exactly what it sounds like, and better than it has any right to be. I like how the cows never flinch. Like trains are just weather to them.
There’s no narration. No music. Just ambient sound—the low thunder of engines, wind slipping through gaps, an occasional voice too far away to matter. It’s honest television. It doesn’t try to convince you of anything.
That’s why I watch.
I don’t remember when I started timing my evenings around it. Somewhere between “just checking” and “I’ll leave it on while I eat.” The tiny TV has a power button you have to press just right, slightly to the left, and sometimes it takes two tries. Sometimes three. When it finally catches, the screen blooms softly, like it’s relieved.
The pizza smell intensifies once it warms up. I’ve come to associate it with night.
After midnight, the programming changes.
There’s no announcement. No title card warning you what’s coming. But the tone shifts. The camera angles get closer. The waiting rooms emptier. The platforms narrower, more intimate. The trains linger longer before departing, doors hissing open like they’re exhaling.
That’s when Railway Risqué comes on.
I don’t know who named it. The title feels almost embarrassed about itself. But the content is unmistakable.
Roomettes. Sleeper cars. Narrow bunks. Dim, amber lighting that makes everything look older, softer, like memory. People sit too close. Knees touch. Hands rest where they could move if they wanted to. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes there’s food—deep dish pizza, of all things—its shape exaggerated by the camera, obscene in a way that feels intentional.
Men. Women. Once, a couple I couldn’t quite categorize, their reflections overlapping in the window glass so they looked like one shifting figure.
It’s scandalous, sure, but not explicit. It’s suggestion stretched to the point of discomfort. Desire humming like the engine beneath the floor. The knowledge that everyone is going somewhere, and no one is fully in control of when they arrive.
The first time I watched it, I told myself it was a joke. Some avant-garde art channel. A prank broadcast that no one bothered to shut down.
The second time, I noticed something that made me sit forward on the couch.
One of the stations.
It looked familiar.
The camera lingered on a platform sign, just long enough for my brain to do the work before I told it not to. The font. The way the paint was chipped. The sun-faded edge where a sticker had once been peeled off.
Visalia.
I laughed out loud. Of course. Confirmation bias. Once you live somewhere, you see it everywhere. I told myself that as the train pulled in, brakes screaming softly, and the doors slid open.
No one got off.
No one got on.
The doors closed again, and the train pulled away, leaving the platform empty. The camera stayed behind, focused on the bench. On something scratched into the wood.
A name.
My name.
Not carved neatly. Scratched, like someone had done it with a key while waiting. Letters uneven. Familiar.
The pizza smell spiked, sharp and sudden, like something had burned.
I reached for the power button.
The TV didn’t turn off.
Instead, the screen cut to black, and white text appeared in the center.
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