Poems of the Week: Trains

When I began this piece, I had thought I would approach the idea of trains through a description of the Industrial Revolution, which began in England and Wales in the early part of the eighteenth century. My idea was that I would show how the evolution of the textile industry from a cottage industry to something that resembled the modern factory led to a need for machines, and from this to the development of the steam engine, beginning with the stationary pumping engines of Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen, through James Watt, and eventually to the appearance of the mobile steam-driven engines of Trevithick and Stephenson, and all the rest. However, before I had got as far as Trevithick, I had already reached a page count of 23, and a file of 38kb, with (as yet) not a single poem. Very interesting it was, I thought, but I also thought that the Editor of The Mediadrome would fire me. So I will keep that document for another place and time, and start at the point when the first railroad appeared.

For well over a hundred years the railway trains, with passenger carriages running on steel rails and pulled by large locomotives based initially on steam engines, then on diesel engines, and nowadays in much of the world on electric motors, have been filled with romance – opening up the world to travel at moderate cost, and allowing a view of the countryside in a relatively leisurely fashion during the journey.

It is this romance that is our subject for this week.

The first steam-driven vehicle appears to have been built by a French military engineer called Nicolas Cugnot (1725–1804) His self propelled three-wheeled vehicle, was developed primarily for towing artillery and was capable of carrying four people. On 23rd October 1769, in the Paris arsenal, Cugnot demonstrated his first steam engine before distinguished government officials. The machine attained an impressive speed of 2mph and ran for 15 minutes. His second engine had its demonstration in the Paris streets before the French public. But there was a minor incident involving the engine and an argument with a brick wall, which resulted in an upside down lump of quality scrap iron. Cugnot was discredited and lack of support prevented his further engine developments. A replica engine is now preserved in the Paris Museum of Technology.

However, it is probable that most people would point to Richard Trevithick (1771 – 1833) as the most significant early contributor in this area. He was a remarkable man. He was born at Illogan, in Cornwall, about a mile from the Dalcoath Mine. He spent his school years at Camborne School where he excelled at sport, while his academic work, apart from an arithmetic aptitude, at this time was not of any great note. His early years were notable for his sporting achievements. He grew to a height of six feet two inches (this was a considerable height for that time) and was renowned for his prowess at Cornish wrestling. He was also known to have been able to toss a sledge hammer over the tops of the engine houses and to have been able to swing by his thumbs from a beam with a half hundredweight hanging from his thumbs. His nickname of the time was ´The Cornish Giant´.

His father was Engineer at the Wheel Treasury Mine, and Richard went to work for him there. It was at this time that he revealed a talent for engineering. By 1792 he was promoted to Chief Engineer at Tincroft, later moving to the Ding Dong Mine in 1796. In his position as engineer he made numerous improvements to the existing steam engine equipment, which was basically a Newcomen design. The main thrust of his experiments in this sphere was to improve the efficiency of the steam engine, thereby cutting down on fuel consumption and increasing output. He did this by increasing the operating pressure. James Watt, who had been largely responsible for the development of the then-current steam engines, had always been aware of the potential dangers of high-pressure steam, and regarded this new development as very risky – he is reported as having said that Trevithick ´deserved to be hung´. However, Trevithick’s early stationery engines were highly successful and they became known as ´Puffers´ on account of the noise they made.

Following on from this success Trevithick began to formulate ideas for building a steam engine that could provide power for its own locomotion and by 1801 he had designed and built the world’s first steam-propelled road locomotive to carry passengers. It was named ´Captain Dick´s Puffer´ and its first run took place in Camborne on Christmas Eve. Trevithick and some friends took the locomotive from Rosewarne to Beacon Hill, the last part of the journey being up Camborne Hill. A successful test was marred by the engine's boiler blowing up while parked outside the hostelry where Trevithick and friends had retired to celebrate; Trevithick had omitted to keep the boiler topped up with water and it had boiled dry! In 2001 the Trevithick Society decided to duplicate the whole thing – they rebuilt the vehicle, and (after some minor bureaucratic problems) drove it up the same route. For more information see this site.

The 1801 event was celebrated in a song, Going up Camborne Hill, Coming Down:

Going up Camborne Hill, coming down,
Going up Camborne Hill, coming down,
The horses stood still,
The wheels went around,
Going up Camborne Hill, coming down.

White stockings, white stockings she wore,
White stockings, white stockings she wore,
White stockings she wore, the same as before,
Going up Camborne Hill, coming down.

I knawed her awld father, awld man,
I knawed her awld father, awld man,
I knawed her awld man, he blawed in the band,
Going up Camborne Hill, coming down.

He aived in the coal, in the steam,
He aived in the coal, in the steam,
He aived in the coal, the steam hit the beam,
Going up Camborne Hill, coming down.

I have no idea who wrote this. There was a poet from Camborne, John Harris (1820 – 1884), a miner who worked underground at the Dalcoath mine from the age of 12. He was born and brought up in Bolenowe, married and lived in Troon for twelve years. He then moved to Falmouth where he lived the rest of his life. His poems give a moving insight into Victorian life in the mining area of Camborne and in the (relatively) cosmopolitan world of Falmouth; a collection that is, I think, now available is Lays from the Mine, the Moor and the Mountain. However, he was not born until well after the event, and did not leave the mine until the last year of Trevithick’s life.

Trevithick’s life was not exactly successful. He developed locomotives, and in 1804 demonstrated the operation of a smooth-wheeled vehicle on a smooth steel track – at the time, many good engineers thought this was impossible. In 1803 he took a new machine to London, called the London Steam Carriage; this operated reasonably well, but had a crash. In 1808 he brought another new machine, called the Catch-Me-Who-Can, to London where he built a circular track in Euston Square, and charged people a shilling to ride his ‘Steam Circus’.

Nevertheless, he had business disaster after disaster, and he died in extreme poverty at the Bull Inn, Dartford, on 22nd April, 1833. As he left no money for his burial, he faced the prospect of a pauper's funeral. However, when a group of local factory workers heard the news, they raised enough money to provide a decent funeral and he was buried in Dartford churchyard, in (I understand) an unmarked grave.

Anthony Burton in an article in 2000, said: “To me, as for many others, the key event in the Trevithick story had always been the successful trials of the steam locomotive at Penydarren in 1804. We now know that there was an earlier test of a Trevithick steam locomotive running on rails at Coalbrookdale, but the Welsh run was the public trial, a triumphant demonstration that what many had declared impossible, a smooth wheeled train being driven over smooth rails, could indeed be done.”

The first actual railroad was built in Durham, England, between the towns of Stockton and Darlington, a distance of about ten miles, as the crow flies. Edward Pease, the son of a wool merchant, was born in Darlington on 31st May, 1767. When Pease reached the age of fifty he retired from the family business and began to concentrate on his idea of starting a public railway. On his travels buying and selling wool, Pease came to the conclusion that there was a great need for a railroad with wagons drawn by horses to carry coal from the collieries of West Durham to the port of Stockton. In 1821 Pease and a group of businessmen from the area formed the Stockton & Darlington Railway company.

On 19th April 1821 an Act of Parliament was passed that authorized the company to build a horse railway that would link the collieries in West Durham, Darlington and the River Tees at Stockton: “An Act for making and maintaining a Railway or Tramroad from the River Tees at Stockton to Witton Park Colliery, with several branches therefrom, all in the County of Durham.” Nicholas Wood, the manager of Killingworth Colliery, and his enginewright, George Stephenson, met Pease and suggested that he should consider building a locomotive railway. Stephenson told Pease that "a horse on an iron road would draw ten tons for one ton on a common road". Stephenson added that the Blucher locomotive that he had built at Killingworth was "worth fifty horses". That summer Pease took up Stephenson's invitation to visit Killingworth Colliery. When he saw the Blucher at work he realised Stephenson was right and offered him the post as the Chief Engineer of the Stockton and Darlington company. It was now necessary for Pease to apply for a further Act of Parliament: the Second Stockton & Darlington Railway Act 1823: “An Act to enable the Stockton & Darlington Railway Company to vary and alter the line of their Railway, and also the line or lines of some of the Branches therefrom, and to make an additional branch therefrom, and for altering and enlarging the powers of the Act passed for making and maintaining the said Railway.” This time a clause was added that stated that Parliament gave permission for the company "to make and erect locomotive or moveable engines".

In 1823 Edward Pease joined with Michael Longdridge, George Stephenson and his son Robert to form a company to make the locomotives. The Robert Stephenson & Company, at Forth Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne became the world's first locomotive builder. Stephenson recruited Timothy Haworth, one of the engineers who had helped William Hedley to produce Puffing Billy, to work for the company. The first railway locomotive, Locomotion, was finished in September 1825.

The Stockton & Darlington Railroad was opened on 27th September, 1825. Edward Pease missed the opening day celebrations as his son Isaac had died the previous night. Large crowds saw George Stephenson at the controls of the Locomotion as it pulled a series of wagons filled with sacks of coal and flour. The train also included a purpose built railway passenger coach called the Experiment. All told, over 500 people traveled in the train that reached speeds of 15 mph. This meant that for the first time in history, a steam locomotive had hauled passengers on a public railway.

One of the sources I consulted has this to say: “Locomotion was not the first steam engine in the world, nor was she reliable or efficient, but these issues pale into insignificance by the mere fact of her place in history as the first locomotive to pull a passenger railway train. Today she stands within the walls of her first railway station at Darlington, a proud memorial to the pioneers who revolutionised passenger transport throughout the world.”

The British newspaper The Observer had this to say, on April 25th, 1830: “…The adaptation of rail-ways to speed was never, we believe, thought of till the opening, in September, 1825, of the celebrated Stockton & Darlington rail-road, work which will for ever reflect honour on its authors, for the new and striking manner in which it practically demonstrated all the advantages of the invention…”.

In 1825 there were only 25 miles of public railroad open in the world. 50 years later this had grown to 160,000 miles and continued at an amazing pace thereafter. In 1825 there were only 2 locomotives available for use on a public railway, by the turn of the century, this had increased to 70,000.The importance, magnitude and impact of the birth of the Stockton & Darlington Railway on the transport systems of the world cannot be measured.

The next railroad was that to run between Liverpool and Manchester, and a competition was held to select a locomotive. The location of this was the village of Rainhill, near Liverpool, and the winner was The Rocket, manufactured by Robert Stephenson & Company. The line opened on September 15th, 1830 with termini at Liverpool Road, Manchester (the station is now part of the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester), and Edge Hill, Liverpool. The festivities of the opening day were marred when William Huskisson, the popular Member of Parliament for Liverpool, misjudged the speed of the approaching locomotive Rocket and was run over, becoming the world's first railway passenger fatality. The somewhat subdued party returned to Liverpool, and the train was pelted by vandals from some bridges. In spite of this early disaster, the line was extremely successful. Within a few weeks of opening the LMR had run its first excursion trains, carried the first mails, and was conveying road-rail containers for Pickfords; by the summer of 1831 the railway was carrying tens of thousands by special trains to Newton Races.

The success of these schemes excited people world wide. The first railroad in the United States to offer commercial transportation of both people and freight was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (the B&O), which was incorporated on February 28th, 1827. When construction began on the B&O in the 1820s railroad engineering was in its infancy. Unsure of exactly which materials would suffice, the B&O erred on the side of sturdiness and built many of its early structures of granite. Even the track bed to which iron strap rail was affixed consisted of the stone.

Though the granite soon proved too unforgiving and expensive for track, most of the B&O's bridges have survived until the present, and many are still in active railroad use by CSX. Baltimore's Carrollton Viaduct, named in honor of Charles Carrol of Carrolton is the world's oldest railroad bridge still in use. The Thomas Viaduct in Relay, Maryland was the longest bridge in the United States upon its completion in 1835, and remains in use as well.

Later, the B&O was incorporated with other railroads, and became the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, C&O. This started to develop lines through the Blue Ridge Mountains, cutting tunnels through the mountains. One particularly important tunnel was the Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia, which was constructed over the period 1870 to 1873. These tunnels were drilled by using teams of two people, who drilled holes some seven or eight feet long using long steel rods with teeth on the end. One person, the shaker, held the rod in the hole, and the other, the driver, hit it with a large hammer. After each blow the shaker would turn the steel before the next blow. Explosives were then packed into the holes, and detonated. There was a considerable amount of competition between the teams, and the most famous song tells the story of John Henry, the Steel Drivin’ Man. It is far from clear as to whether there really was a historical John Henry, but if there was he was probably born a slave; the tunnel drilling dates from shortly after Emancipation Day (January 1, 1863). The story has it that he was six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds; a very big man for the time. A statue of him now stands near the entrance to the Big Bend Tunnel, although the tunnel is no longer in use. There are many versions of the John Henry song, which derive from an oral tradition dating from the 1870’s. Here is a version compiled from a number of sources by W. T. Blankenship, and published in 1909; John Henry, Steel Driving Man:

John Henry was a railroad man,
He worked from six 'till five,
"Raise 'em up bullies and let 'em drop down,
I'll beat you to the bottom or die."

John Henry said to his captain:
"You are nothing but a common man,
Before that steam drill shall beat me down,
I'll die with my hammer in my hand."

John Henry said to the Shakers:
"You must listen to my call,
Before that steam drill shall beat me down,
I'll jar these mountains till they fall."

John Henry's captain said to him:
"I believe these mountains are caving in."
John Henry said to his captain: "Oh, Lord!"
"That's my hammer you hear in the wind."

John Henry he said to his captain:
"Your money is getting mighty slim,
When I hammer through this old mountain,
Oh Captain will you walk in?"

John Henry's captain came to him
With fifty dollars in his hand,
He laid his hand on his shoulder and said:
"This belongs to a steel driving man."

John Henry was hammering on the right side,
The big steam drill on the left,
Before that steam drill could beat him down,
He hammered his fool self to death.

They carried John Henry to the mountains,
From his shoulder his hammer would ring,
She caught on fire by a little blue blaze
I believe these old mountains are caving in.

John Henry was lying on his death bed,
He turned over on his side,
And these were the last words John Henry said
"Bring me a cool drink of water before I die."

John Henry had a little woman,
Her name was Pollie Ann,
He hugged and kissed her just before he died,
Saying, "Pollie, do the very best you can."

John Henry's woman heard he was dead,
She could not rest on her bed,
She got up at midnight, caught that No. 4 train,
"I am going where John Henry fell dead."

They carried John Henry to that new burying ground
His wife all dressed in blue,
She laid her hand on John Henry's cold face,
"John Henry I've been true to you."

Another group of poems are concerned with railroad disasters. One well-known one concerns Kate Shelley, who crawled across the Des Moines River Bridge in 1881 to save a Chicago and North Western passenger train. She was called “The Iowa Heroine”, but her story was largely forgotten until MacKinlay Kantor wrote a poem about the event in 1930. Although Kantor is well-known, both as a poet and a short story writer, the poem is not included in any of his published work. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878 – 1962), an English poet and playwright was given an ‘old typed copy’ by Charles Irwin of the Boone County Historical Society in Boone, Iowa. It is our first poem of this week, The Ballad of Kate Shelley.

Doug Nebbe tells the story of her life after her heroic act. This is a somewhat condensed version: “Long after Kate Shelley crawled across the Des Moines River Bridge in 1881 to save the train, she was employed by the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad as the depot agent at Moingona, Iowa. From October, 1903, until March, 1910, when the illness which preceded her death left her unable to work, she sold tickets and billed out freight, not having to operate a telegraph as it had been relocated to the new High Bridge Line in 1901.

“In April of 1901, after the depot at Moingona burned to the ground, the railroad installed a temporary depot which was still in use when Kate began her duties as agent. Within a month of starting her job, she moved into the newly built Moingona Depot.

“During the period of her employment the only daily trains through Moingona were one eastbound and one westbound local, referred to as "the Stub", running between Ames and Carroll. Freight was shipped only on local demand.

“The Boone County Democrat recorded in 1906 and 1907 various occasions when the railroad ran special excursion trains from Boone, over the High Bridge to Ogden, and then returned to Boone over the Moingona branch so the passengers could visit with Kate Shelley, the local railroad heroine. She had so many requests for her picture, that she had several hundred postcards printed to supply the demand. These she sold at a small margin of profit so that all her friends and admirers could be supplied.

“Kate became very ill in June of 1911 and was admitted to the Carroll Hospital where she survived surgery for appendicitis. After a month in the hospital, Miss Shelley was transported by rail in the railroad superintendent's private car to Boone where she was taken to the home of her brother, John Shelley. By September, it was reported that she was improving slowly. She later returned to her own home near Moingona where she remained in very poor health and was compelled to sit in a chair both day and night. At her home near Moingona, Kate Shelley died of Bright's disease January 21, 1912.

“Kate Shelley's last train was an extra made up in Boone, that backed down to her home to pick up her remains for burial in Boone.”

There was a major train wreck in Scotland at the end of 1879. A train from Edinburgh to Dundee was crossing a bridge over the River Tay in a gale when the bridge collapsed: the train fell into the river and ninety people died. This was the subject of a poem by William Topaz McGonagall, generally regarded as one of the worst poets who ever lived. He will feature in one of our future articles, but here are three stanzas about The Tay Bridge Disaster:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

There have been relatively few major rail disasters. On the 9th of June in 1865 the 2:38 train from Folkestone to London approached the viaduct over the river Beult just before Staplehurst. The train traveling at about fifty miles an hour came upon a flagman with a red flag the driver applied the brakes, but the flagman had not been in the right position to warn the driver. The train fell off the bridge carrying the first 6 first class carriages with it, the 7th carrying the author Charles Dickens (53 at the time), hung by its couplings off the track. Dickens helped the survivors to escape, but it is felt that the shock of this experience shortened his life, as he died 5 years later.

Perhaps the most famous wreck in early American railroad history occurred in 1900. There are all sorts of stories about Casey Jones (1864 – 1900), but the Erie Railroad Magazine, Volume 24 (April 1928), No.2 had a story entitled The True Story of Casey Jones. The author based it on an interview with Casey’s widow, Janie, 28 years after the disaster that took her husband’s life. Here is an extract from that:

“‘My husband's real name was John Luther Jones,’ she told her interviewer. ‘He was a loveable lad - 6 feet 4 1/2 inches in height, darkhaired and gray-eyed. Always he was in good humor and his Irish heart was as big as his body. All the railroaders were fond of Casey, and his wiper, Wallace Saunders, just worshipped the ground he walked on.’

Casey got his nickname from the town where he was born, Cayce, Kentucky: the locals always pronounced it ‘Casey’.

After he had put in several years as freight and passenger engineer between Jackson and Water Valley, Casey was transferred early in 1900 to the Memphis-Canton (Miss.) run as throttle-puller of the Illinois Central's crack "Cannonball" train.

Casey and his fireman, Sim Webb, rolled into Memphis from Canton about 10 o'clock Sunday night, April 29, 1908. They went to the checking-in office and were prepared to go to their homes when Casey heard somebody call out: "Joe Lewis has just been taken with cramps and can't take his train out tonight."

"I'll double back and pull Lewis' old No. 638," Casey volunteered.

At 11 o'clock that rainy Sunday night Casey and Sim Webb clambered aboard the big engine and eased her out of the station and through the South Memphis yards.

Four o'clock of the 30th of April. The little town of Vaughn, Miss. A long winding curve just above the town, and a long sidetrack beginning about where the curve ended.

"There's a freight train on the siding," Casey yelled across to Sim Webb.

Knowing the siding there was a long one, and having passed many other freights on it, Casey figured he would do the same this night.

But there was two separate sections of a very long train on the sidetrack this night. And the rear one was a little too long to get all its length off the main track onto the siding. The freight train crews figured on "sawing by"; that is as soon as the passenger train passed the front part of the first train, it would move forward and the rear freight would move up, thus clearing the main track.

But Casey's speed – about fifty miles an hour-was more than the freight crews bargained for.

But when old 638 was within a hundred feet of the end of the siding the horrified eyes of Casey Jones and Sim Webb beheld through the gloom the looming shape of several boxcars in motion, swinging across from the main line to the side-track. In a flash both knew there way no earthly way of preventing a smashup.

‘Jump, Sim, and save yourself!’ was Casey's last order to his fireman. As for himself, Casey threw his engine in reverse and applied the air-brakes – all any engineer could do, and rode roaring 638 into a holocaust of crashing wood that splintered like match boxes. Sim Webb jumped, fell into some bushes and was not injured.

When they took Casey's body from the wreckage (old 638 had plowed through the cars and caboose and turned over on her side a short distance beyond) they found one hand on the whistle cord, the other on the air-brake lever.

‘I remember,’ Sim Webb told Casey's widow, ‘that as I jumped Casey held down the whistle in a long, piercing scream. I think he must have had in mind to warn the freight conductor in the caboose so he could jump.’

Probably no individual, excepting a member of Casey's family, was more affected by the sad news than Wallace Saunders.

A few days later he was going about singing a song to a melody all his own. The air had a lilt that caught the fancy of every one who heard it. But Wallace, honest old soul, had no idea of doing more than singing it as a sort of tribute to his white friend's memory.

But one day a song writer passed through Jackson and heard the song and the details of Casey's tragic death. He went off and changed the words, but retained the lilting refrain and the name Casey Jones. That was about 1902.”

Janie spent much of her life correcting what she regarded as vulgar references to her husband in the different versions of The Ballad of Casey Jones, and there is a version which she believes is closest to the one that Wallace Saunders wrote. It’s a little long for this week’s piece, but here are a few stanzas:

Come all you rounders if you want to hear
A story 'bout a brave engineer,
Casey Jones was the rounder's name
"Twas on the Illinois Central that he won his fame.

Casey Jones, he loved a locomotive.
Casey Jones, a mighty man was he.
Casey Jones run his final locomotive
With the Cannonball Special on the old I.C.

Casey Jones, mounted the cabin,
Casey Jones, with the orders in his hand.
Casey Jones, he mounted the cabin,
Started on his farewell Journey to the promised land.

They pulled out of Memphis nearly two hours late,
Soon they were speeding at a terrible rate.
And the people knew by the whistle's moan.
That the man at the throttle was Casey Jones.

On April 30, 1900, that rainy morn,
Down in Mississippi near the town of Vaughan,
Sped the Cannonball Special only two minutes late
Traveling 70 miles an hour when they saw a freight.

The caboose number 83 was on the main line,
Casey's last words were "Jump, Sim, while you have the time.
"At 3:52 that morning came the fareful end,
Casey took his farewell trip to the promised land.

Casey Jones, he died at the throttle,
With the whistle in his hand.
Casey Jones, he died at the throttle,
But we'll all see Casey in the promised land.

Another famous wreck that led to a song was ‘The Old 97’. The wreck occurred on a three mile grade approaching Danville on September 27th, 1903; Joseph A. Broady was the driver. The song was the subject of the first major lawsuit involving copyright; the man almost certainly responsible for it (David G. George, a Pittsylvania telegraph operator who was at the accident scene), ending up making no money. Johnny Cash sang it at the famous San Quentin concert.

Well, they handed him his orders in Monroe, Virginia,
Sayin', "Steve, you're way behind time.
This is not 38, it is Old 97
You must put her into Spencer on time."

Well, the engineer he said to his black, greasy fireman
"Shovel on a little more coal,
And when we cross that White Oak Mountain
You can watch Old 97 roll."

It's a mighty hard road from Lynchburg to Danville
A road with a three-mile grade.
It was on that grade that he lost his airbrake,
You can see what a jump she made.

He was goin' down the grade making 90 miles an hour,
When his whistle broke into a scream,
He was found in the wreck with his hand on the throttle,
He was scalded to death by the steam.

Now the telegram came into Washington Station
And this is what it said:
That brave engineer that drove old 97
Is layin' down in Danville, dead.

Now listen, all you ladies, you must all take a warning,
From this story a lesson learn:
Never speak harsh words to your true lovin' husband,
He may leave you and never return.

Don’t really know where the name ‘Steve’ comes from!

The importance of the train in facilitating personal travel and the pleasure of watching the passing scene has been the subject of a number of poems. An early example is in the long poem Sunday at Hampstead (1865) by James Thomson (1834 – 1882). Here are three stanzas from Book X:

As we rush, as we rush in the Train,
The trees and the houses come wheeling back,
But the starry heavens about the plain
Come flying on our track.

All the beautiful stars of the sky,
The silver doves of the forest of Night,
Over the dull earth swarm and fly,
Companions of our flight.

We will rush ever on without fear;
Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet!
For we carry the Heavens with us, Dear,
While the Earth slips from our feet!

And this, from Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894), in A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885):

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
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.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is the tramp who stands and gazes;
And there is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart run away in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill and there a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!

But the journey may not be happy, of course; and no-one who has heard the whistle of a train in the night can be unaware of the mournful qualities of the call. Here is a lyric written by Jimmie Rodgers (1887 – 1933), Waiting for a Train:

All around the water tank, waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
I walked up to a brakeman just to give him a line of talk
He said "If you got money, boy, I'll see that you don't walk
I haven't got a nickel, not a penny can I show
"Get off, get off, you railroad bum" and slammed the boxcar door

He put me off in Texas, a state I dearly love
The wide open spaces all around me, the moon and the stars up above
Nobody seems to want me, or lend me a helping hand
I'm on my way from Frisco, going back to Dixieland
My pocket book is empty and my heart is full of pain
I'm a thousand miles away from home just waiting for a train.

Jimmie Rodgers shares credit for another mournful song with Hank Williams Sr. (1924 – 1953), although it is obvious from these dates that they could not possibly have written it together. It is I Heard That Mournful Whistle Blow, and here are two stanzas:

All alone I bear the shame
I’m a number not a name
I heard that lonesome whistle blow
All I do is sit and cry
When the ev’nin’ train goes by
I heard that lonesome whistle blow.

I’ll be locked here in this cell
Til my body’s just a shell
And my hair turns whiter than snow
I’ll never see that gal of mine
Lord, I’m in Georgia doin’ time
I heard that lonesome whistle blow.

John Lair (1894 – 1985) is another lyricist whose work was often ‘borrowed’ by other musicians. One of his was Freight Train Blues. In an interview in 1973 he said “I just remembered down there in the mountains where I came from that a freight train whistle at night is an awfully lonesome sound. In a quiet country where you don't hear many sounds, if you've ever heard a few trains go through these mountain passes, you never forget them. I wrote this song especially for Red Foley (1910 – 1968). I took Red to Chicago for the first time and introduced him to radio.” That was about 1931. Here are a couple of stanzas and the chorus from the original Lair lyric:

I was born in Dixie in a boomer shack,
Just a little shanty by the railroad track.
The humming of the drivers was my lullaby
And a freight train whistle taught me how to cry.

I got the freight train blues,
Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy,
Got them in the bottom of my ramblin' shoes,
And when the whistle blows, I gotta go.
Oh! Lawdy! Guess I'm never gonna lose
The freight train blues.

My daddy was a fireman and my mammy dear
Was the only daughter of an engineer.
My sweetie is a brakeman, and it ain't no joke,
It's a shame the way she keeps a good man broke.

The identification of the sad tones of the midnight train whistle and jail is not confined to the American West. Here is a section from Alfred Edward Housman (1859 – 1936)’s great work A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896:

On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
      The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
      Fast by the four cross ways.

A careless shepherd once would keep
      The flocks by moonlight there,*
And high amongst the glimmering sheep
      The dead man stood on air.

They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:
      The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
      To men that die at morn.

There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,
      Or wakes, as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
      Than most that sleep outside.

And naked to the hangman's noose
      The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
      Than strangling in a string.

And sharp the link of life will snap,
      And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a chap
      As treads upon the land.

So here I'll watch the night and wait
      To see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
      And not the stroke of nine;

And wish my friend as sound a sleep
      As lads' I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
      A hundred years ago.

* Hanging in chains was called 'keeping sheep by moonlight'.

Then, as now, any new technology had its opponents; and the early days of railroads were no exception. Our second Poem of this Week is by Sam Walter Foss (1858 – 1911), The Railroad Through the Farm.

Sam Walter Foss was born June 19, 1858, in Candia, New Hampshire, and died February 26, 1911, in Somerville, Massachusetts. He was the son of Dyer Foss, a farmer, and Polly Hardy Foss. His mother died when he was only four years old. Foss helped his father on the farm while attending public school. He graduated from Portsmouth High School as the class poet, and went to Brown University, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in 1882. After graduating, he marketed books. Then he and a friend bought the Lynn, Massachusetts Union and changed its name to the Saturday Union. Foss worked as the editor, co-owner and humor columnist until 1887; he was the sole owner from 1884. In order to produce a humor column once every week, Foss became skilled at creating his witty dialect verse on short order. This popular work was soon being published in other magazines as well. On July 13th, 1887 he married Carrie M. Conant, and moved to Boston where he became the editor of the Yankee Blade until 1893, when he resigned.

After this, he wrote a poem a day for syndication for the next year. For the following ten years, he worked as a general writer and editorial writer for the Boston Globe. Then, in 1898, he became librarian at the Somerville Public library, a position that he held for the rest of his life. From 1909, he was also a regular columnist for the Christian Science Monitor. He wrote his last and perhaps his best work, Trumpets, just before his death.

Another poem not entirely pro-railroad was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894). Holmes received a degree from Harvard in 1836, and practiced medicine for ten years. He taught anatomy at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and in 1847 became professor of anatomy and physiology. He was later appointed Dean of the Harvard Medical School. He achieved his greatest public fame, however, as a humorist and poet. He won national acclaim with Old Ironsides, published in 1830, which aroused public sentiment against destruction of the USS Constitution, an American fighting ship from the War of 1812. Beginning in 1857, he contributed a series called his ‘Breakfast-Table Papers’ to The Atlantic Monthly (later published in book form as The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table). One of these articles, under the title Over the Teacups, in Volume 66, issue 394 (August 1890) contained a lengthy poem called The Broomstick Train. The general idea is that a number of witches were released from confinement – the poem begins:

Look out! Look out, boys! Clear the track!
The witches are here! They’ve all come back!
They hanged them high, - no use! No use!
What cares a witch or a hangmans’s noose?

The poem is too long to include, but here are some of the final stanzas when the witches’ boss tells them to run the train:

Now when the Boss of the Beldams found
That without his leave they were ramping round,
He called,--they could hear him twenty miles,
From Chelsea beach to the Misery Isles;
The deafest old granny knew his tone
Without the trick of the telephone.
"Come here, you witches! Come here!" says he,--
"At your games of old, without asking me!
I'll give you a little job to do
That will keep you stirring, you godless crew!"

They came, of course, at their master's call,
The witches, the broomsticks, the cats, and all;
He led the hags to a railway train
The horses were trying to drag in vain.
"Now, then," says he, "you've had your fun,
And here are the cars you've got to run.
The driver may just unhitch his team,
We don't want horses, we don't want steam;
You may keep your old black cats to hug,
But the loaded train you've got to lug."

Since then on many a car you 'll see
A broomstick plain as plain can be;
On every stick there's a witch astride,--
The string you see to her leg is tied.
She will do a mischief if she can,
But the string is held by a careful man,
And whenever the evil-minded witch
Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch.
As for the hag, you can't see her,
But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr,
And now and then, as a car goes by,
You may catch a gleam from her wicked eye.

Often you've looked on a rushing train,
But just what moved it was not so plain.
It couldn't be those wires above,
For they could neither pull nor shove;
Where was the motor that made it go
You couldn't guess, but now you know.

Remember my rhymes when you ride again
On the rattling rail by the broomstick train!

Here is a poem I like that uses the image of a train at a station: it is by Edward Thomas (1878 – 1917). Thomas came to poetry late: he met Robert Frost in 1913 who encouraged him to write poetry, and began to produce increasingly fluent poetry. Two years later he enlisted in the British Army, and in 1917 he was killed in World War I. This poem is an example of his talent, Adlestrop:

Yes, I remember Adlestrop--
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop - only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Here is a short poem by Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967) Limited, from Chicago Poems (1916):

I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains
      of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air
      go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men
      and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall
      pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he
      answers: "Omaha."

As the twentieth century passed its midpoint, the age of the steam train was passing. It seems appropriate to close with a poem from Robert William Service (1874 – 1958), from his last collection, Rhymes for My Rags (1956). The poem is Old Engine Driver:

For five and twenty years I've run
            A famous train;
But now my spell of speed is done,
            No more I'll strain
My sight along the treadless tracks,
            The gleamy rails:
My hand upon the throttle slacks,
            My vision fails.

No more I'll urge my steed of steel
            Through hostile nights;
No more the mastery I'll feel
            Of monster might.
I'll miss the hiss of giant steam,
            The clank, the roar;
The agony of brakes that scream
            I'll hear no more.

Oh I have held within my hand
            A million lives;
And now my son takes command
            And proudly drives;
While from my cottage wistfully
            I watch his train,
And wave and wave and seem to see
            Myself again.

Our last Poem of This Week is by W.H. Auden (1907 – 1973); it is Night Train, which he wrote in July, 1935 as the commentary for a General Post Office film.

So there we are. Almost two centuries of a transformation in transportation, and an opening of the opportunities and breadth of experience for all of humanity. And now it is almost at an end.

In another of these articles, we may get around to thinking about what is already coming next, and think how the poets and singers are already opening our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to the next expansion of our lives.