Working on the Railroad

I've been working on the railroad
All the live-long day;
I've been working on the railroad
Just to pass the time away.

Can't you hear the whistle blowing?
Rise up! So early in the morn?
Can't you hear the Captain shoutin...
Dinah, blow your horn!

The words of a folk song that dates back at least to 1906 is one each of us probably learned on the knee of our father or grandfather.

Maybe we learned it on a long car trip to Grandpa and Grandma's house along with "She'll be coming 'round the Mountain" and "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean."

Journal entries about trips across the United States featured horse back, wagon trains, and after the Transcontinental Railroad was finished during the time of the Civil War... train travel.  Presidential candidates made whistle stop tours, speaking to large crowds gathered at tiny wood depots to hear the campaign rhetoric.

In winter, trains can be felt even more than heard.  While the plaintive sound of the whistle bounces through valleys and off homes with aluminum siding during the day and into the night; it's the running steps the train makes that bounce across frozen soil blocks away where the sound is heard in jostled plates and glasses wobbling in china cabinets.

Long winter nights were interrupted many times when we lived in north Wisconsin in the small community of Augusta.  The tracks were a good six to eight blocks from our home, but around 2am the door would start to rattle as the latch punched out a rythmn on the door's lock.

You could feel it as well as hear it.  The freight trains that moved through town were long enough to require two postal codes.  Hauling tank cars full of oil and hoppers (covered or open) filled with coal drove up your sleeping body from toes to the top of the head before burrowing out the ears.

Then it was gone - the silence fading as the echo evaporated into the distance.  The tracks didn't stay that way for long as the other workers on the railroad moved in each day.

 

The workers on the railroad aren't just the engineer and brakeman/woman.  It's the crew replacing ties, spikes, and rails.  It's the dozens in the railyard tracking boxcars and their destination.  All for less cost per gallon than the most efficient diesel truck - America still works on the railroad.

 

It's more difficult to live the romance of the railroad now, but there are places to capture the rythmn of the rails. 

 

If you can't do it on a passenger car; take some time this winter to experience a train even if it's only in passing (by).