Don’t you know me I’m your native son? 
I’m the train they call, “The City of New Orleans”
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
Heh. I’ve always had a soft spot for that song. Apparently, my mother used to sing it to me when I was but a wee bebbah.
Ridin’ on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central
Monday morning rail
Anybody actually rode the City of New Orleans?
Yeah, I rode it from Memphis down to Nawlins, and I couldn’t get that goddamned song out of my head the whole way.
It goes through the back parts of the back slums of tiny towns in Mississippi. Doesn’t anybody want to live next to the railroad tracks? Hear the mournful whistle blow? The odd thing: You can tell the moment you cross over the line from Mississippi into Louisiana. I’m not accustomed to thinking of Louisiana as a rich state, but damn. The worst parts of Louisiana back-end towns are sure a whole lot better than the worst parts of Mississippi.
Additional story I can’t resist telling.
Friend of mine drove down from DC to see me in Memphis while her marriage was on the rocks. She stayed in the upstairs bedroom. Next morning my husband and I asked her how she slept. “Not so well.” What was the problem? Oh, well, the bed was strange… and the rain kept making that noise, beating against the window… and just when she thought she’d get to sleep, the two AM train went by, with its whistle making that mournful sound.
And she couldn’t help thinking about her husband, and the trouble between them. And the empty bed.
I stood there dumbfounded.
“You… had… the… BLUES!”
“What?”
“You had the BLUES! Rain, train, mournful, man, empty pillow - In MEMPHIS! The blues in MEMPHIS! The quintessential American experience! I am so freaking JEALOUS!”
She smiled. One of those torn, awkward smiles you see in Raymond Chandler novels on the partly tainted heroine.
Hell, I’m still jealous, and it’s nine years later, and she’s been seven years divorced.
(Is it done to ask Sampiro to come look at an anecdote?)
I work on a train but I don’t have a son. I have two daughters. They’re not impressed. But then again I’m not a pullman porter or an engineer. But I love riding in that sucker.
This thread just begs for a list of train songs and/or movies featuring trains or hoboes!
I saw a movie within the past few months with Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine with a title something like “Emperor of the North Pole” about hoboes. Not all that bad a movie, but dated as much as you’d expect.
Yo, Sarge, maybe you could get a game going with a train theme of some sort.
For me there will never be a more lonesome sound than a train whistle in the night. Hank Williams must have felt the same way.
Yup. By accident, believe it or not. Hubby and I, pre-kids, flew into Chicago and were supposed to take a train down to Chambana where a friend would meet us. Well, our plane was a little late, getting through Customs took longer than it should have, and a hundred other little delays meant we missed the local train we thought we’d take. I pleaded with the Amtrak people until they got us seats on the next train that would stop at that station, although it was a long-distance train and technically speaking last-minute tickets weren’t supposed to be available. We were seated and heading out of the station before we realized we were on the City of New Orleans.
The song, alas, is a lot more romantic than reality.
The real City of New Orleans has been gone for some 50 years. The Amtrak version, which I rode from from Memphis to New Orleans in '87, is a pale imitation whose name was borrowed from the original.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.
I love this song and have loved it since I was a little kid before I understood what any of it meant. John Denver had covered it on an album my mother had and I used to play it all the time.
And gabriela, at least your friend hadn’t shot a man in Memphis just to watch him die. 
I goofed. That should have been 35 years.
Mean as that means Texas. Memphis is just blues. Named a guitar Lucille once just to hear it cry.
Great story, gabriela. And it has to be the blues. It can’t be a country song because you haven’t said anything at all about Mama, or trucks, or prison, or gettin’ drunk. 
Sgt Schwartz
City Of New Orleans, Bob Dylan
500 Miles, Peter, Paul & Mary
Northern Line, Opal
The Wreck Of The Old 97, Traditional (thought I heard it as a song about a weary P-51D Mustang)
‘though’.
Haven’t had the chance yet, personally, but I do hear its whistle every morning (when I’m awake). The southbound train comes through at about 1:30 a.m. and the northbound one comes by about a quarter after 3.
When I spend time in Memphis, I can’t sleep for all the FedEx planes taking off all damned noc.
but I love the song in the OP. I used to ride the Illinois Central into Chicago.
Now it’s called the Metra. Whoopee-no romance there. :rolleyes:
Long Twin Silver Line–Bob Seger
Train, Train–Blackfoot
Casey Jones–Greatful Dead
I am trying to think of a way to do a train thread game, I would welcome help or suggestions.
Sgt Schwartz