Riding the Rails

If my four-year-old son had a theme song, it would be a tune he doesn’t even know: Robyn Hitchcock’s “I Often Dream of Trains.” Ever since he could form a syllable, he has been infatuated with the things. When he was a toddler, he’d sit on my lap and we’d scroll through the character gallery on the Thomas the Tank Engine site, and he’d soak up the names and bios of dozens upon dozens of characters. I’m not sure he was even two years old when we met with a teacher from a local pre-pre-school program. As part of her evaluation, she asked if I thought he knew fifty words. “Fifty words?” I replied. “He knows more than fifty trains.”

Yesterday, we took him to a local park with a miniature train that the family has ridden many times. Kids sit comfortably in the tiny cars, while adults tuck their knees neatly beneath their chins. For fifty cents a pop, you get two laps around the Kansas City Northern line, complete with railroad crossings and a dark, dark tunnel that provokes roller-coaster-style screams from the pre-pubescent set. As we went around, the click-clack of wheels on rails reminded me of the rhythms that formed the foundation of Johnny Cash’s career. There are songs about cars and planes and the occasional submarine, but no other form of transportation has inspired as many great songs as the railroad. It’s a wonder that Sirius doesn’t have a channel devoted exclusively to train songs. And on the off-chance that they’re thinking of starting one, let’s help create a playlist. I’ll start, you chime in.

“Folsom Prison Blues” and “Rock Island Line,” Johnny Cash
“Mystery Train,” Elvis Presley
“Train in Vain,” The Clash
“Train from Kansas City,” The Shangri-Las/Superchunk/Neko Case
“The Train Kept A-Rollin’,” Johnny Burnette Trio/Yardbirds
“Draw Your Brakes,” Scotty (from The Harder They Come)
“People Get Ready,” Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions
“Downbound Train,” Bruce Springsteen
“Downtown Train,” Tom Waits
“I Hear the Train,” Ike Reilly Assassination
“Down in the Tube Station at Midnight,” The Jam
“The Metro,” Berlin
“Subway Train,” New York Dolls
“City of New Orleans,” Arlo Guthrie
“It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry,” Bob Dylan