There may no longer be a Reading Railroad, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be a train that “ties” our past to our future. We want to bring the train back to Reading for a very special reason. All too often, segments of the Greater Reading community feel alienated from the arts. To some of our neighbors, art is inaccessible. We’d like to change that!

     Reading Arts In Local-motion, or RAiL, is a project that will bring the arts to the community — literally and figuratively. The vision is to develop a new “Reading Railroad,” that showcases art in a variety of forms and travels around Greater Reading and Berks County.  Launched in three phases, RAiL is a transmedia arts project that will provide canvas, location, and audience to Reading area artists in multiple disciplines.  In the first phase, visual arts will transform rail cars to art installations.  Phase two will comprise performing artists and filmmakers who will create or adapt theatre and film to the railway venues.  And, of course, there are many more possibilities to add cars for other disciplines such as culinary arts, architecture and design, and agriculture, for some examples.  Phase three involves the audiences who get to “take a ride” when the RRR arrives at a nearby “station” throughout the community.

     But for the first year, RAiL will remain at the “station” and feature a box car with a stage highlighting the work of our community’s visual, performing, and film artists. The car will be transformed by a visual artists and come alive through performances and exhibitions in a way that complements  the theme of “preserving our history by progressing with it” which is the impetus for creator and local artist, Andrew Pochan.  RAiL is more than an art history project, but that is certainly its inspiration, “ according to Pochan.