Trains Symbol Analysis

In Trainspotting, trains represent hope, possibility, and new beginnings. Although trains feature prominently in Trainspotting, offering an escape from the insular and often limiting environment of Leith, they are even more notable by their absence. The book’s title comes from a quote by a drunken old man at an abandoned train station. He approaches Rent Boy and Begbie to ask if they’re trainspotting (watching trains as a hobby), which is a joke because the station is abandoned and no trains run there anymore. A new supermarket will soon replace the abandoned station. Since a train station stands for travel and expanding horizons, the arrival of the supermarket suggests that Leith has prioritized suburban convenience and respectability—the very thing Rent Boy dislikes most. The trains that do remain in the story, like the one that carries Rent Boy to London to get clean or the one that carries Stella to meet Stevie after they confess their love, signify hope and progress, making the absence of trains in the abandoned Leith station a bleak image. As it turns out, the drunken old man in the abandoned station isn’t a stranger but Begbie’s father.  Without any trains to get out, he remains trapped to wander the station, just as so many characters in the story remain metaphorically trapped by heroin, alcohol, and other addictions.