In the late 1960s, Romare Bearden began to frequent his good friend Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop. With Blackburn's encouragement, he began making himself familiar with the experimental technique, collagraph combined with intaglio printmaking that complimented his recently developed, unique collage process. With The Train, Bearden revisited a 1964 collage titled Mysteries, reworking the composition with new colors and textures. Using mesh screens and photography to generate the photogravure plate, they then cut the plate so they could ink the colored areas separately and reassembled it for printing. The result is a beautiful etching with a fractured rhythm of color, form, and figure quite similar to the surfaces of Bearden's infamous collage works.