Railway termini... are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them alas! we return. In Paddington, all Cornwall is latent and the remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street, the fenlands and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of Euston; Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo.*
- E. M. Forster (1879-1970) (Howard's End, Ch. 3)
A contrary view:
Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates.
- John Ruskin (1819-1900) (The Seven Lamps of Architecture, "The Lamp of Memory," Sct. 20)
A humorous take:
Railroad, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) (The Devil's Dictionary)
An American voice:
Lord, you ought to been uptown
And seen that train come down
You could hear the whistle blow a hundred miles
A hundred miles, a hundred miles
A hundred miles, a hundred miles
You could hear the whistle blow a hundred miles
Oh, I'm walking these ties
With tears in my eyes
I'm trying to read a letter from home
From my home, from my home
From my home, from my home
I'm trying to read a letter from my home
If this train runs right
I'll be home Saturday night
I'm five hundred miles away from my home
Away from home, away from home
Away from home, away from home
I'm five hundred miles away from home
You could hear the whistle blow a hundred miles
- "Hear the Whistle Blow a Hundred Miles" (traditional)
Today is the 187th anniversary of the day in 1825 when the first steam locomotive to pull a passenger train was operated by English railway pioneer George Stephenson (1781-1848).** This epic journey of 21 miles on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in County Durham was the modest beginning of the "railway revolution" that took the world by storm in the next half-dozen decades. Stephenson's locomotive was originally named the Active, later Locomotion No. 1, and the Stockton and Darlington was the first railroad to haul both passengers and freight on a regular basis.
Arlo Guthrie singing City of New Orleans:
One of the classic steam-train photographs by American photographer O. Winston Link (1914-2001):
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