A train is a form of rail transport consisting of a series of connected vehicles that generally run along a railway track to transport passengers or cargo (also known as “freight” or “goods”). The word train comes from the Old French trahiner, derived from the Latin trahere meaning ‘to pull, to draw’.
“Freight Train” is an American folk song written by Elizabeth Cotton in the early 20th century, and popularized during the American Folk Revival and British skiffle period of the 1950s and 1960s. By Cotten’s own account in the 1985 BBC series Down Home, she composed “Freight Train” as a teenager (sometime between 1906 and 1912), inspired by the sound of the trains rolling in on the tracks near her home in North Carolina.
“The Ballad of Casey Jones“, also known as “Casey Jones, the Brave Engineer” or simply “Casey Jones“, is a traditional American folk song about railroad engineer and his death at the controls of the train he was driving. It tells of how Jones and his fireman Sim Webb raced their locomotive to make up for lost time, but discovered another train ahead of them on the line, and how Jones remained on board to try to stop the train as Webb jumped to safety. It is song number 3247 in the Roud Folk Song Index. it was published and offered for sale in 1909 with the title “Casey Jones, The Brave Engineer”.
“This Train“, also known as “This Train Is Bound for Glory“, is a traditional American gospel song first recorded in 1922. Although its origins are unknown, the song was relatively popular during the 1920s as a religious tune, and it became a gospel hit in the late 1930s for singer-guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe. After switching from acoustic to electric guitar, Tharpe released a more secular version of the song in the early 1950s.
“Take the ‘A’ Train” is a jazz standard by Billy Strayhorn that was the signature tune of the Duke Ellington orchestra. It almost did not happen because as Duke Ellington’s son Mercer recalled he found the composition in a trash can after Strayhorn discarded a draft of it because it sounded too much like a Fletcher Henderson arrangement.The song was first recorded in January 1941 as a standard transcription for radio broadcast. The first (and most famous) commercial recording was made in February 15, 1941. The title refers to the then-new A subway service that runs through New York City, going at that time from eastern Brooklyn opened in 1936, up into Harlem and northern Manhattan.
“Chattanooga Choo Choo” is a 1941 song written by Mack Gordon and composed by Harry Warren. It was originally recorded as a big band tune by Glenn Miller and featured in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade. It was the first song to receive a gold record, presented by RCA Victor in 1942, for sales of 1.2 million copies. The singer describes the train’s route, originating from Pennsylvania Station in New York and running through Baltimore to North Carolina before reaching Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Slow Train” is a song by British duo Flanders and Swann, written in July 1963. It laments the closure of railway stations and lines brought about by the Beeching cuts in the 1960s, and also the passing of a way of life “Slow Train” takes the form of an elegiac list song of railway stations which has been likened to a litany. Its evocation of quiet, rural stations is highly romanticised and uses imagery such as the presence of a station cat or milk churns on a platform to illustrate a “less hurried way of life” that is about to vanish:
