Since Rick re-posted my original column on trains, I might as well post this follow up:
“Thank God for the model trains. You know? If they didn’t have the model trains, they wouldn’t have gotten the idea for the big trains.”
– Excerpt from the film “The Mighty Wind”
Trains are an integral part of the American lore that is so celebrated in bluegrass, blues and country music. For those of us born in the 20th century, it’s easy to lose track of the importance of trains to American history, and the deep effect it had on the lives of people in the 19th century.
Towns literally exist, in some cases, because of the railroad. Just as towns and cities sprang up in the 18th and early 19th century to occupy stopovers on navigable rivers and seaports, towns were established across America as way stations across the vast plains, and in other points west, south, north and south.
Trains meant work, and commerce. Trains also meant travel – something we take for granted, but think about it: before cars or trains, you had to be pretty intrepid to go more than 20 miles from your home. Trains changed all that, and once people grew accustomed to the noise and power, they must have seemed miraculous.
The fact that a train moving over railroad track has a cadence probably helped folks incorporate them into their music. If life has a rhythm (and it certainly does), the click-clack of the steel wheels on a railroad track was a perfect percussion.
But trains, at least on a personal, people-moving level, because largely replaced by automobiles and planes. Cars can go places trains can’t, and you can pick or choose when and where you go, and how fast you get there. And if a train’s 40+ mph speed transformed life when it arrived on the scene, jet travel at 400+ mph transformed it even more. The country – the world! – grew smaller and smaller.
Here in America, our prosperity and inherent individualism hastened the passenger trains decline. Why should I board a train (or even a bus) with a bunch of strangers when I can hop in my car and get on the highway? Something was gained, to be sure, in terms of flexibility, but something wonderful was lost, or misplaced, too.
I’m so guilty of this – I live within walking distance of a train station but didn’t actually use it for 8 or 9 years. Let me tell you – it rocks! And when I visited the UK, I learned that trains are the way to really get around. It’s not a class thing – the transportation infrastructure assumes that trains are normal for travel beyond 30 or 40 miles. I just recently took a train from Seattle to Portland – what a pleasure! I could have rented a car at a similar rate, but I would not have seen the same things, met the same people, or enjoyed playing music on a ukelele or mandolin en route have I drove.
The power and romance of rail travel is still there – you just have to reach for it!
