A timeless classic from Johnny Cash:
Orange Blossom Special…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhs5j7HN8wM
This guy is pretty good with just the harmonica…
For many years, author Studs Terkel hosted a radio show on Saturday nights in Chicago called The Midnight Special featuring the song as sung by Leadbelly.
Excerpt from Working by Studs Terkel (1972)
[Bill Norworth, retired C&NW engineer]
A diesel’s a lot easier than steam. It’s a lot better job. Diesels can handle more cars, more tonnage. Diesel’ll pull anything. They move, they can run. They don’t take the know-how that you had to have with a steam engine. Steam engine was more of a challenge. Those men weren’t well educated but still had the know-how. They could get more out of an engine than a man that had a college degree. It was all pride.
When they got the diesel and got rid of the firemen, they had to make ‘em engineers overnight almost. They’re savin’ themselves a penny, but it cost 'em, in my imagination, a dollar afterwards. ‘Cause they’ve got men now goin’ over the road that never even worked as a fireman on that territory, that hardly spent any time on the road.
Most of the diesel work, it’s electrical. If it breaks down, they can’t fix it. You’ve gotta send for somebody. In the old days with a steam engine,
Well, first of course I have to post a link to REM’s ‘Driver 8’.
Then Berlin’s Metro
Finally, in regards to the post above concerning Stud Terkel and Diesel is clean, there were at least 2 popular songs around that era with a passing mention of diesels
Cream’s 1968 “White Room”
And Elton John’s 1973 Saturday Night’s All right for Fighting"
Heck, I’m not even including song’s like Tull’s Locomotive Breath or Ozzy’s Crazy Train…
Jason Aldean- Night Train
I think this one might have made it onto the charts at one time - someone put together a video to it which is pretty good, but not as good as the one I remember seeing when the kids were watching Captain Kangaroo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3tlCqqg7lw
In fact, I can’t find the one from the show (which featured UP steam), but this video is all steam!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvJpgn7fVGY
Speaking of the Captain - how many know that the theme for his show was actually about a train? I give you “Puffing Billy”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csorirBIWgw
The song was heard daily, of course, in living rooms across the land.
The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe - Johnny Mercer
Five Little Miles to San Berdoo by the two and only Jane Russell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiAXpxwWiOs
“Last Train to Clarksville” by the Monkees. Don’t know the title, but there was a country song with a line that went “I’d rather be in a pine box on a slow train back to Georgia.”
One of the greatest lyricists among the Great American Songbook crowd.
If he can use Paul Whiteman, then I can use this
Swingabella also has a good version of this, and perhaps unsurprisingly Manhattan Transfer has a version done ‘their way’…
Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy.
+1
Pierre Berton once said to Lightfoot: “You know, Gord, you said as much in that song as I said in my book”, referring to his 1000+ pages of The National Dream and The Last Spike.