The second is the train itself. The railway is a pervasive presence in Sebald’s work. Far from being reducible to a mere means of transport through his travelogue-like literature, trains and train stations are deeply entrenched its traumatic visions of modernity. Vague echoes of death, destruction and deportation can be discerned in Sebald’s many evocations of the railway, including the poem that was his very first publication.