Jumping (Off) Someone Else's Train

There aren't enough songs about trains.

Sure, I bet there's hundreds or thousands of songs about trains, but still, I don't think there are enough. The metaphor of the train as it pertains to music is at once too compelling, too fitting, too satisfying. Toot.

A train takes us from one place to another, the way a song carries us from one emotion to another, or circumnavigates the brim of a feeling.

Garibaldi, on the Oregon coast, is home, or graveyard, to a great-looking train. With a nice caboose (though it wasn't the only one).

Erin and I love westerns, especially one with trains and folks jumping on or off them. Like this:

Train songs are often sad. Folks leave on the train. Take "Train Song" by Tom Waits:

It was a train that took me away from here
but a train can't bring me home

Yet there's the cheery train song as well. Crosby, Stills & Nash are having a helluva time on the "Marrakesh Express," and Sheena Easton can hardly wait for her's to arrive:

My baby takes the morning train / He works from nine till five and then
He takes another home again / To find me waitin' for him

Apparently, John Peel was a big fan of that one.

My favorite train song might be "Dixie Flyer" by Randy Newman. A most evocative outro.

Erin and I don't only jump on and off trains -- we also delicately alight. Erin, in Tinkerbell fashion...

and I, sort of, like Magneto.

Choo, choo, baby!

For more songs about trains, visit here or here.