City of the Rails: Review and Q+A With Danelle Morton
The iHeart podcast series that dives into the world of train hopping, modern hobo life, the subculture of young "travellers," brought to you by a mother who watched her daughter slip into that world
When I came across this show I was getting ready to take an 8-hour train trip to visit a friend, and I thought this would be a perfect podcast companion piece. I would be riding the rails too; albeit from a comfortable seat looking out at the snowy fields, sipping my Yeti cup full of warm tea, as I enjoyed the free Wifi.
My train experience was nothing like the train experience that Danelle’s daughter Ruby undertook, risking her life and limbs to jump on and off trains as they circled America…but it’s not often that you have the chance for a poetic echo between your project and your surroundings.
While I’m being honest, I should admit something else: I’m the mother of three teenagers, which makes the idea of listening to a story about a teen who went “off the rails,” told from a mother’s perspective, made me feel uneasy. I was pretty sure this story was going to unpack some ugly stuff. Stuff that’s a bit hard to hear as a parent. I was right.
Parenting teens is a brutally hard job. Full stop. Most teens are hardwired to reject their parental figures (their mothers in particular, even more so if your teens are girls).
If you’re not there already in your life, spoiler alert, there’s almost no right way to do it. And if you’re reading this and you’re closer to teenage life than parenthood, maybe you’re smiling and nodding along, quietly thinking: “Yeah, I did push them away…I was kind of shitty to my parents sometimes…”
Danelle Morton is the no-guff-about-her, all-out-in-the-open single mom (and writer and journalist and many other things too). You get the feeling that the way she wrote the narration for this series echoes the way she narrates her life; not much is hidden or obscured. She’s brave and fierce…and like any mom, she’s willing to do just about anything to help her daughter get back (home) to safety.
Either this story opens as a cautionary moms-tale, or I read it that way because that’s where I am in life. It all begins when her kid slipped off into the night, the evening of her high school graduation, when she jumped a boxcar and went her own way.
Clearly, Danelle is fascinated with railway life, now that she was forcibly introduced to it by her daughter. It’s a counter-culture, full of people who have rejected materialism, status, comfort and predictability, for a life that puts adventure, stoicism, tradition and community first. This series offers a not-seen-before glimpse into the life of “travelers,” an updated term for “modern hobo,” who travel in “families,” with secret maps and insider codes.
“If I was right that she was hopping trains to escape modern life,
it was funny to me that she hopped on the thing
that created the world they were rejecting.“
It also highlights just how dangerous this life is; from train accidents to overdoses, to living with criminals to poverty…as I listened to the first few episodes, I wondered (worried?) if Ruby was going to turn up dead, and that this series was going to need to pivot from memoir to true crime. This felt like a big and awkward leap to make from where it started.
That didn’t happen, which required the story to take some new avenues; 10 episodes is a lot of space to fill, and this story needed to travel. Danelle chose to turn the down the essay road, weaving the history and culture of the railroad with her own personal reflections.
There was also the leitmotif of parental advice that circled back in most episodes - which in some cases was a fair leap to make. As the story zigged from personal stories, and zagged to history, it would then zig back to difficult moments, as she examined some very personal moments of her parenting journey.
From the mom perspective, I’m thankful she was not investigating the death of her daughter. From a story perspective, it made it a bit unfocused at times.
This show offers a history of the railroad
But more of a facts-n-stories approach, it’s not nuanced through a fine political/cultural filter. At different points, it was hard to discern between being pro-union, anti-union, pro-anarchist, pro-police, anti-railroad cops, but then there was one good guy railroad cop? In the end, it was people-centered, not politically centered; there were no judgements of who stood where on any sort of paradigm. Maybe that’s in keeping with life in the railyard.
As I listened to this series, I learned something about memoirs; if they aren’t purposely located in a specific timeframe, or anchored around one central event (which could be timeless), it leaves me feeling a bit woozy. I realized that details, like time and place, which are actually specific and explicit, tether a story to the ground in a way that gives it a ballast.
Towards the end of the series, it references a fire at a squat in New Orleans that sadly killed a bunch of travelers; one kid was just 17-years-old. Many of them were in their early twenties. I had no recent memory of hearing about something like this in the news, which seems likely for a fire that deadly.
When I googled it, I learned it was from back in 2010…but in the series, Danelle and Ruby team up for a mother-daughter reporting trip, which made it feel very recent and contemporary. With the time element removed, it stole my focus as I wondered about those details, rather than fully absorbing the facts of the story. But then I was lulled back to the story with the incredible, very connected and memorable music that is featured throughout this series. Danelle even offers to share her hobo playlist in the show notes.
There’s a big reveal in the last episode…which seems to open a door into the future of this podcast
I don’t want to drop a giant spoiler here, please listen to the series, but in the very last part of the last episode, Danelle reveals what she’s sort of been after all along; her good-journalist nose led her to a (likely) serial killer, whose victims were often those folks who had gone missing, or no one was looking for, along the railways of America.
The challenge for me to learn these details, given the vague timelines and oblique references to era, it made it all feel like this show, that’s almost 10 hours long, was now the backstory to the next (potential) show. And that one has all that True-Crimey-vibe that is quite different from this story. It felt like a runaway train, to stick with my metaphors. But after I posed that question to her, I learned that actually, the exact reverse was true (see the Q+A below).
The narration hits a stride in the last episode
I’m big on the voice of the narrator, and I have a lot of opinions about it. I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of narration (this year alone). I have my perennial favourites (Erica Heilman, my first podcast crush Pheobe Judge from Criminal, my new podcast crush, Hannah Àjàlá from Love, Janessa) and I’ve done the job myself. Clearly, there’s no right answer and no best way.
The first episode of this series is polished, and yes, Danelle speaks quickly, you can hear that she’s learning how to translate her writing from the page to the ear. But then I found there to be a lull as the season went on. I kept hearing a dynamic voice, a voice full of character with dropped-g’s, and her own tone and a style, which instead of owning that space, was mellowed, polished and somehow sped up (but not always trimmed down to size - most episodes clocking in over 45 minutes).
Her character, that person that screams personality and connection, would appear in small bursts, but then it was edited back down to fit into a box that didn’t always match the story.
By the last episode, I noticed a measurable shift. Danelle found her groove, and as she pours her heart out, it sounds like her, like what I would imagine is her true character. If I were her producer, I would have workshopped that voice, and turned it into a reliable character, and tethered more connection around it for the listener.
Here’s an important takeaway from this series: if you’ve lost hope that a narrative podcast can be an opening to another horizon, that they have the potential to open into a business model; that inside of a good story, there’s often an even better story waiting to be discovered, then you need to listen to City of the Rails. Because that’s exactly what seems to have happened here.
The following is an email interview with Danelle Morton and Samantha Hodder
[Samantha Hodder]: What was the timeline for this story of Season 1? There were a couple of audio timestamps, but it was hard to place in time for me.
[Danelle Morton]: I've been looking into the rails for 14 years, ever since my daughter disappeared into the world of hobos. When I got the opportunity to do a podcast, I blended the timeline of the year and a half she was away with my present day forays into the train yard.
In some episodes I was retracing my steps, going back to places I'd been when she first left. But having a crew with me, and having a lot of new questions, and stories to tell, meant that I could bring that story into the present day. It took some skill, and great talent on the part of the iHeart team, to make this seem somewhat seamless.
[SH]: Tell me the pitching story of how you managed to get this story made…so many people who are not audio professionals come forward with a story. Few of them actually get made; even fewer by a Top Flight company like iHeart.
[DM]: I've got a long history as a journalist and collaborator on books (20 books, 4 bestsellers). Years ago had pitched a story about Dirty Mike, a serial killer on the rails, to my now business partner at Flipturn Studios, Mark Healy, who was then the editor of Men's Journal. He bought the Dirty Mike pitch, but the magazine was sold to National Enquirer before I could complete the story.
In the summer of 2020, beginning of the pandemic, Mark contacted me and suggested we make a Dirty Mike podcast. What could be more obvious than a juicy true crime story like this? We wrote a pitch, and used Mark's contacts from the magazine world (many of whom ended up in podcasts) but no one bought it.
At iHeart they said that in every true crime story there is a mystery, but there was no mystery about Dirty Mike. He was a monster. What fascinated them was the rails. Was there a way we could re-pitch a podcast about the rails with Dirty Mike as a side character?
Over the Christmas holidays Mark and I thought about it and I realized the real story was something I'd never told, the story of my search for my daughter on the rails. We could weave in a lot of other train subjects around that. We did a much different pitch. I had begun to realize the amazing power of audio to tell a story without words. And most people have a huge emotional connection to the rails even if they'd never hopped a train.
We hired a former hobo, now podcast sound pro, to go to the train yard and record sounds. The new pitch was presented on a webpage where, when you landed on it, you were immersed in the evocative sounds of the train yard created from those recording, and in the story of me searching for my daughter. iHeart bought that.
[SH]: What was involved in your audio training? You allude to this in Ep2 and I’m always curious how producers approach non-radio/audio folks who enter this medium, especially writers who have their own style already (as you do).
[DM]: I had no audio training, although I did take a UC Berkeley Media Lab class on podcasting while we were writing the pitch. That was a big help in me getting the basics of sound first, economy of language, writing for the ear instead of the page and simplify, simplify, simplify.
The most helpful part of the class was the final where all of the 20 students debuted their two-minute, self-produced pieces. I heard how much mine stunk because I was still writing for the page, still using interesting words rather than very plain language.
And of course the process of making the podcast, the multiple revision rounds, was rapid education in this medium that forced me to let go of a lot of the storytelling ideas I had from my decades as a print journalist. Annoying at times, frustrating, but ultimately exhilarating.
[SH]: What was the timeline of this production? You had some tape from your reporting time, like when you went back to New Orleans with Ruby. But the fire in the squat from episode 9 was actually in 2010, when did you go back to report this? Then you seemed to have recorded conversations more recently. Help me stitch together the different timelines here.
[DM]: It took 18 months to make the podcast, and you're right I did use some recordings made more than a decade ago. I went to New Orleans shortly after the squat fire in 2010 to report a magazine story and still had that terrible tape recorded with a Sony cigarette-lighter-size digital recorder.
Re-visiting that story 12 years later, we needed better quality recordings and a new angle. I found some other sources who had been in New Orleans at the time of the tragedy and used their recollections to re-create the atmosphere of the squat and give the listener a more vivid, audio-first sense of the reason hobos are drawn to New Orleans.
[SH]: By around episode 5 you started asking for voicemails from listeners…was that part of the original plan, or did it evolve? What the response was and where this has led you to…sounds like a community has been born here…Rail moms? Former travelers…Who reached out?
[DM]: That was my idea after I started reading the very strong reviews of the podcast from the traveling community. I couldn't anticipate how modern hobos would respond, as they are a very secretive bunch. They thanked me for describing their world, and their point of view, without judgment. As this evolved, I wanted to hear more, so I offered that Google voice number.
The response has been impressive. During the run of the show I was getting as many as 20 calls a day. Some from travelers, past and present, who were re-thinking their lives, some from moms whose kids were on the rails, or who were making sense of their deaths. Some people who wanted to share their music, It was a fantastic boost in the long process of bringing a ten-episode series to a close. I recommend it!
[SH]: For me episode 10 felt like you were a different person on the microphone; different writing, more polished. Why does this sound different?
[DM]: Episode 10 I was summing up the series and, in a sense, summing up the 14 years I'd spent digging into the rails. I wanted to come clean to the audience about the blended timeline, and to address directly how my daughter felt about me making a podcast about a period in her life she'd put in the past.
In a way I was returning to my print writerly self because the middle act was mostly VO, It was emotional and the team and I decided it was appropriate for this very emotional series.
[SH]: Wonderful to hear that you’ve got ideas and are ready to work on Season 2…when I heard there might be more, wondered if Season 1 is almost backstory to what will likely be the True Crime reveal of Dirty Mike…how do you see it?
[DM]: I've got a helluva story with Dirty Mike with whom I've been corresponding for 11 years. I've got more than 200 letters from him that describe every aspect of being part of a murderous gang on the rails, including hand-drawn maps of his murders.
I've also interviewed many of his associates and law enforcement who dealt with him over the years. But the problem iHeart raised in that first pitch is still a problem. In the last year I've stumbled across a way to broaden the story beyond the excellent foundation I've built with these letters, so stay tuned. I think, if we get a second season, it's going to blow people's minds as it's not just about Dirty Mike, but about the deeper secrets hidden in the train yard.
[SH]: You appear to have managed to have forged both a business plan and a community out of this project - maybe even a new job…am I wrong about this?
[DM]: Maybe! Who knows where the podcast business is going…but I've been in New York for the last week for our wrap party and meeting with my literary agent and some journalists about other projects related to the rails.
Mark and I at Flipturn have a bunch of very good ideas for other narrative shows. Fingers crossed that we get a season two for City of the Rails, and that we find partners who share our vision for podcasts to come.
It's such a great way to tell a story, and to reach a bigger audience than one can in print. We don't want to stop!!