Train Quotations

[Anonymous]

What's your favorite quote about trains?

[miniwyo]

Look, Listen, Live

[Anonymous]

The first one that comes to mind and that probably is my favorite is:

There isn't a train I would not take, no matter where it's going.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

I recently purchased a book (A Guide To Trains), which contains quite a few excellent quotes. Here are some of them:

[On the parellels between railways and the Church]. Both had their hayday in the mid-nineteenth century; both own a great deal of Gothic-style architecture, which is expensive to maintain; both are regularily assailed by critics and both are firmly convinced that they are the best means of getting man to his ultimate destination.
-Rev. W. Awdry (Creator of Thomas the Tank Engine.)

Let the country make the railroads and the railroads will make the country.
-Edward Pease

[About the expansion of railways.] Depend on it, they will be joined together one day.
-George Stevenson (Bilder of early locomotives and pioneer of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.)

I will send the locomotive as the great missionary over the world.
-another by George Stevenson

When a train pulls into a station, I am reminded of the closing momwents of an overture.
-Graham Greene

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.
-Henry David Thoreau

They [railway stations] are our gates to the glorious and unknown. Through them we pass into adventure and sunshine.
-E. M. Forester

Getting there firstest with the mostest.
-Attributed to a Civil War general who knew the value of railroads.

I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.
-Paul Theroux

On a train, all things are possible.
-Another by Paul Theroux

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much! Those are great.

[spankybird]

Those are great Sask,

We will add some of the more common ones:

“With all the whistle and bells”

“The real McCoy”

“High ball all the way”


tom

[ndbprr]

My favorite appeared in Trains many years ago. Some guy in Canada ( I think it was Ontario) came around a bend at night and plowed into the side of a freight train that proceeded to drag him in his car for a long distance. I think it could have been as far as forty miles. His comment upon finally getting free unhurt was, "There should have been a sign or something warning people". Definitely understated!

[heavyd]

I laughed when I heard this one - "There's the right way, and then there's the railway!"

[agentatascadero]

I believe David P Morgan's (my all time railfan Hero) favorite quote, can't remember the author, was-"Bless me, this is pleasant, riding the rails." This also qualifies as one of my favorite understataments.