Trains in Song and Poetry

“… All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by …”¹

The railroad has been celebrated throughout time in a variety of mediums, most commonly recognized in songs and poetry. Emily Dickinson wrote of the train, “I like to see it lap the Miles … Then chase itself down Hill …”² The linked cars remind us of mules roped together to form a mule train, or dogs attached to each other to pull a sled. This is as it should be according to the derivation of the word “train”, which appears as “treg” in Proto-Indo-European, meaning to pull, draw, drag, as in the train of a robe, a retinue, or the extension of birds and animals forming their tails. The tails of warm weather blue bird or of a cardinal on a snowy tree branch are no less startling and engaging than the sight of early trains.

“The railway train is starting off, / The engine gives a hasty puff,
The bell is rung, the whistle blows, … ‘Right!’ and off it goes.
Chorus – Ring, a-ding! A-ding! A-ding! / Puff! Puff! Puff!
Over the bridge, it shoots away …”³

The first three letters of the word “train” have survived throughout the ages in “trahere” (Latin) and “trago” of Vulgar Latin; in the verb “trahiner” of Old French, and “train” of Late Middle English. The word transfers to other things, as in “training a plant”, “training students” and “train of thought”, the latter two references surviving from about the 16^th century. Here, of course, we are concerned with the train as a series of connected cars coursing along railroad tracks.

“Down in the valley, the valley so green,
Rolling along ‘neath the mountains so blue,
Smokin’ its coal from the fields out back
Where Metzger College teaches clackety-clack,
The train horn blows, telling neighbors & friends:
Come along down to the station on High Street;
We’ve got the Cumberland Valley train meet!”⁴

The co-founders of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society were themselves the children of railroad magnate Henry Francis Shoemaker. Henry F.’s son was author, historian and diplomat Col. Henry W. Shoemaker (1880-1958), who, with Bishop J. H. Darington, also co-founded the Pennsylvania Folklore Society. The colonel and his sister, poet Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff (1888-1967), founded of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society (PPS) in 1949. The reader may imagine that their fathers’ crews were either whistling tunes or singing period songs from time to time as they worked along the rails.

Train songs and related music may have started with wagon trains (“Roll Along, Wagon Train”) and mule trains (“Grand Canyon Suite”), but they were to proliferate with the coming of the railroad.⁵ Jimmy Rodgers (1897-1933), known as the “Singing Brakeman” was the son of a maintenance foreman for the Mobile & Ohio R&R. He started his own career as a water boy for his father’s team and went on to become a brakeman. His original songs such as “The Brakeman’s Blues” made him the Father of Country Music.

“…Sing them blues, boy! …
Odel-ay-he
A-lay-he-ay-lee-o-lay-ee.
If that’s your mama
You better tie her to your side …
‘Cause if she flags my train
I’m sure gonna let her ride.
Odel-ay-he …”⁶

While its songs like “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo” that children have often grown up with, there is quite a long list of songs devoted to trains and riding on them, such as Jimmie Rodgers’ “Hobo Bill’s Last Ride” (1929). There are also quite a few poems devoted to trains. Although the following uses the word “song” in both its title and text, the composition is actually a poem:

“How grand by night o’er the country side
Is that wild melodious strain;
And music blown at eventide,
Is the song of the railroad train ...”⁷

Finally, writer and poet Will Carleton (1845-1912) carried the excitement of trains when he wrote:

“… Afar the lofty head-light gleamed; / Afar the whistle shrieked and screamed;
And glistening bright, and rising high, / Our flakes of fire bestrewed the sky, / Up the line.
Adown the long, complaining track, / Our wheels a message hurried back;
And quivering through the rails ahead, / Went news of our resistless tread, / Up the line.
The trees gave back our din and shout, / And flung their shadow arms about;
They heard us roaring far away, / Up the line.”⁸

Friendships and even marriages have formed as a result of the railroad. A young man named Douglas met his wife, Pearl, while working on the tracks: looking up from his work he happened to notice a young woman walking to the grocery store.⁹ Some couples may be married to the tunes of train songs.