JOHNNY Cash heard that train a comin’. The 3:10 to Yuma may be the only train to ride. When he was away much too long, Boxcar Willie had the big freight train to carry him home — even though he hadn’t a dime and “not a thing to call mine.” And despite the trouble ahead, Casey Jones drove that train high on cocaine.

   Ever since James Watt patented the steam locomotive in 1794, we humans have been fascinated by the culture and romance of train transport. From Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train to Murder on the Orient Express, celluloid trains have been the place for glamour, excitement and intrigue. And don’t even get started on the music — there is an entire genre of train songs.

   Richard Harrington, a painter, and John Treichler, a photographer, have teamed up for an exhibit at the Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville, Dusty, Dirty, and Delayed, that explores the impact of trains and rail service through the northeast, especially the corridor between Philadelphia and New York. All aboard, and remember — please stand back when the train is approaching.

   Mr. Harrington has been intrigued by trains since his childhood in Utica, N.Y., where he played with his father’s old Lionel train set.

   ”As a kid, I couldn’t get close enough to trains, but as an adult I can,” he says in Lambertville’s oldest cooperative gallery, 18 members strong. “You can see from the train what you can’t see from the street — it goes behind and through rural communities.” Mr. Harrington takes the R-3 Line from his home in Newtown, Pa., to Philadelphia, where he teaches illustration at Moore College of Art and Design, and has traveled the Northeast Corridor, from Washington, D.C., to upstate New York, where he enjoys coursing through the Mohawk Valley.

   He marvels how things that seem romantic to us, like big old locomotives, were frustrating back in their day. Mr. Treichler, too, shares the sentiment, posting the following Susan Sontag quote on his Web site: “Nobody exclaims ‘Isn’t that ugly! I must take a photograph of it!’ Even if someone did say that, all it would mean is: I find that ugly thing... beautiful.”

   Both Mr. Harrington and Mr. Treichler spent a day at the United Railroad Historical Society of New Jersey in Boonton doing research for the project. They saw locomotives waiting to be restored and met the volunteers for whom maintaining these behemoths is a labor of love. The two men walked around, took photographs, touched the trains and climbed into a few.

   ”Some of the trains were meant to be used and scrapped,” says Mr. Harrington. “Growing up in the rust belt, I’m used to seeing them fall apart.”

   Mr. Treichler, who lives in Yardley, Pa., has also been fascinated with trains since childhood, his in Lambertville. “They are awesome and ordinary at the same time,” he says. “They are shiny and huge and have such power.”

   His train images evoke the loneliness of an Edward Hopper painting and the industrial beauty of Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express.

   Although trains may be a familiar sight, Mr. Treichler’s goal as a photographer is to make us see them in a new light. With trains, “you can be looking out the train’s windows, or you can be looking at the train.”

   A freelance account executive for an advertising agency, Mr. Treichler has been pursuing photography as a passion since junior high school. He took a hiatus and returned when the advent of digital photography eliminated all the aspects of the form he didn’t like.

   ”When I look at a scene there are things I want to bring out and emphasize,” he says, indicating his image of a train traveling along a snow-covered landscape at night. He mounted the camera on a tripod to get the very long exposure because “I wanted to create the shadows and light effects that make it look blown out and washed out,” he says. It almost looks as if the train, traveling alongside the river, is ablaze.

   Filmed in color, it appears to have a sepia tone, the blend of moon and incandescent light muting the tones.

   The undercarriage of a train, with its wheels, hoses, couplings and a step, was shot in black and white to emphasize shapes and tones. Mr. Treichler likes geometry, and in an image of the train approaching at the Hamilton Train Station, he finds supports that look like elements from an erector set.

   While at the rail yard in Boonton, Mr. Treichler shot an old box car with patterns of rust and the colors of graffiti. In another image, a plush toy lies face down on the step by the entry to a train, lost and forgotten, like many old trains.

   Seeing the community from the train is important, too, and Mr. Treichler has photographed power plants, the Meadowlands and industrial North Jersey from the windows. He appreciates the new windows on the double-decker cars that are crystal clear, compared to those older windows, frosted like waxed paper from years of abrasion.

   Mr. Harrington is interested in the power and the personality as the train comes down the track. “At 7 a.m., when the ding ding ding ding starts, signaling a freight train coming, it’s interesting to see the slumped over people straighten up to see the train rumble by.”

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  Dusty, Dirty and Delayed, paintings by Richard Harrington and photographs by John Treichler, is on view at the Artists’ Gallery, 32 Coryell St., Lambertville, July 10-Aug. 2. Gallery hours: Fri.-Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. and by appointment. Opening reception: July 18, 6-9 p.m. 609-397-4588; www.lambertvillearts.com