Audrey Snyder is excited to share the project she and Joe Riley are working on this summer Parallel Cases-Tramp Printing and the Abandoned Railroads of Northern California.

Starting June 20th Joe and Audrey drove cross country, from Richmond, Va, to San Francisco, CA with their Kelsey Excelsior 3"x5" Letterpress, a custom build rail-bike, and a carload of gear to start their trip into the abandoned rail-lines of Northern California. In early July, they traveled down a series of abandoned railroad tracks that once connected areas of industrial production and raw materials with metropolitan areas within the state but are now unused. They have modified bicycles, adding a clamp attachment to the front wheel and an outrigger (easier said than done) which allows them to ride on the rails. This project was inspired by the legacy of the tramp printers, a group of itinerant type setters during the golden days of type who hopped freight trains from town to town in search of a couple days work. According to their tradition, a printer's training was not complete unless they had traveled, and they have taken up their methods and means as a way to both collect and distribute their findings. They have proposed this project as a way to is to situate themselves in this lost landscape by traveling a series of abandoned train tracks in Northern California on rail-bikes with the aim of producing a primary document of their experience of the past and present states of the lines they travel.

They received the Benjamin Menchel Fellowship and look forward to showing in the fall at the Cooper Union! You can follow their progress and periodic updates along the way: http://parallelcases.tumblr.com/