Trains 3

It's Thursday evening, 10:30 PM. We had a hell of a thunderstorm a couple hours ago, with hail so heavy that I thought it might damage the cars on the street. And perhaps it did. Right now it's dark, so any damage won't show until morning. 

I'm thinking about trains again. Maybe because yesterday's post was the folk song City of New Orleans, written by Steve Goodman as he and his wife road the train and Steve made notes of what he saw outside. He said it took him 45 minutes to write the song. That's not much time to write a hit song, but after all, he was only writing down what he saw and felt outside and inside the train.

I used to love riding trains (as I've said before on this blog). When I was a kid, it was the fastest way to get from central Virginia to Clearwater, Florida, and back. My dad had family in Florida and I was born there. 

The first time I rode a train, I was a baby. Diesel-electric locomotives were in widespread use at that time, but steam locomotives were also in use. I know because until the age of six I lived a half block from railroad tracks and I can remember seeing steam locomotives. One dark night I saw a steam locomotive pulling a train and all the train's brakes were full on. The train's wheels look like rings of white fire due to sparks flying off the wheels. The sparks were caused by the train's brake blocks pressing on the steel wheel rims. The brake blocks were embedded with metallic particles, and those particles were likely responsible for the sparks I saw. And if you're thinking that all those sparks sound dangerous, you're right. When my mother was a girl, she and her parents had their home burn down because of a grassfire set by sparks from a passing train using its brakes.

The years before and during my early teens saw me riding the Seaboard Air Line Railroad's Silver Meteor passenger train that ran between New York City and Miami, Florida. I got on the train at the Petersburg, Va, station. After 1967 the Silver Meteor hauled passengers for the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. It still hauls passengers today, one of the few long-haul streamliners that survives, along with its sister, the Silver Star, which runs from New York City to Tampa, Florida. But now both trains are owned by Amtrak.

One time I was riding the Silver Meteor headed north to my home town when the train broke in half. I was on the half that had the engine, and we stopped and reversed back to the other half to recouple the two halves. And no, I haven't forgotten that I've written about this incident previously. And yes, I know I'm repeating myself. In fact, here's the link to that 2020 blog post: Trains 2.

And then, of course, there's my original article about trains posted in 2013, titled Trains. I've blogged about trains and boats but I don't think you'll find a post on this blog about the romance of riding jet airplanes. No, passenger planes are a "get on—sit crowded with strangers for hours—get off " affair. There's no romance, no fond memories, of flying. Except for that John Denver song: Leaving on a Jet Plane. But I've always felt that was an anti-Vietnam war song, so even that song is less than romantic and more of a political message.

The clock approaches midnight and the electrical storm is long gone. I'm going to take a shower and go to bed. As a friend used to say to me, "See you when I see you."