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Best Railroad Songs Locked

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Posted by tree68 on Wednesday, August 9, 2017 9:18 PM

And for those of you who thought it was just a TV theme song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtGUaScpSbg

Written in 1952.

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Posted by Firelock76 on Wednesday, August 9, 2017 9:25 PM

Captain Kangaroo's theme!  I remember it well! So that's what it's called!

Thanks, Tree68!

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Posted by Miningman on Wednesday, August 9, 2017 11:34 PM

Just to show steam's appeal has no borders, here's Andre Rieu performing Eduard Strauss'  "Bahn Frei."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv-Z7z3YXQs

Terrific stuff Firelock76...what a find.

Now then, for all you Diesel aficionados, of which there are many on this forum, I challenge you to come up with a symphony orchestra and an audience who can instantly recognize and show enthusiasm for a Diesel locomotive. The "burbling Baldwin", "the opposed piston wheeze", "the 567th movement Dillworth lament" and I'm sure, the ever popular "F7 Covered Wagon Blockbuster".

...And of course don't forget to add in the extra's like Diesel exhaust fumes, oil spillage, and a horn somewhere between flatulance and the road runner.  

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Posted by Deggesty on Thursday, August 10, 2017 7:56 AM

Miningman

Just to show steam's appeal has no borders, here's Andre Rieu performing Eduard Strauss'  "Bahn Frei."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv-Z7z3YXQs

Terrific stuff Firelock76...what a find.

Now then, for all you Diesel aficionados, of which there are many on this forum, I challenge you to come up with a symphony orchestra and an audience who can instantly recognize and show enthusiasm for a Diesel locomotive. The "burbling Baldwin", "the opposed piston wheeze", "the 567th movement Dillworth lament" and I'm sure, the ever popular "F7 Covered Wagon Blockbuster".

...And of course don't forget to add in the extra's like Diesel exhaust fumes, oil spillage, and a horn somewhere between flatulance and the road runner.  

 

Didn't P.D.Q. Bach write something on that order?

Johnny

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Posted by Paul of Covington on Thursday, August 10, 2017 11:04 AM

Firelock76

Hey, let's kick this up a few notches above C&W and Rock into the Classical sphere...

Just to show steam's appeal has no borders, here's Andre Rieu performing Eduard Strauss'  "Bahn Frei."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv-Z7z3YXQs

Es lebe Dampf!

 

   Thanks, Firelock.   I remember hearing it on the New Year's concert from Vienna, and had been thinking about looking for it, but procrastination won out in the end.  

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Posted by Firelock76 on Thursday, August 10, 2017 5:01 PM

Thanks all for the appreciation!

P.D.Q. Bach!  Holy smoke, I haven't thought about him (Peter Schikele) in years!  We went to a P.D.Q. Bach concert when we were in college, more years ago than I care to think about.  What a riot!

PS:  Andre's got some smashing-looking women in his orchestra, doesn't he?

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Posted by Miningman on Thursday, August 10, 2017 5:26 PM

Well I have thrown the glove down in a challenge .., I'm thinking RME and CSSHEGEWISCH and several others... when the day comes that a symphony orchestra does tribute by mimicking a Diesel Locomotive along with special effects then that's the day I win the lotto. 

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Posted by Deggesty on Thursday, August 10, 2017 7:35 PM

For the benefit of you who do not know who P.D.Q Bach was, he was the only forgotten son of Johann Sebastian Bach. One of his compositions was "The Bicycle"--complete with a card secured to a fender strut. I am sure that he could have composed the "Diesel Locomotive" as it has been described in a previous post.

I hope I still have his definitive biography. My daughter, who has just moved from where we shared a house (I had the step-father apartment downstairs and she had the main floor; we shared the laundry room) has not yet unpacked all of my books.

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Posted by mrbbq on Friday, August 11, 2017 8:45 AM

What the hell? Any of you ever heard of BOX CAR WILLIE? His song, "I love the sound of a whistle" is a classic! I was VERY disappointed that he was not include in the railroad song article in the latest issue of TRAINS. Bad research by the writer. A VERY incomplete listing. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYzHeuhZfuM

What about Merle Haggard's many train songs? Geez.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJUDxFOH0Pc&list=PLb_MG9S35Q-D1dJZFHSt_W2OfNOgCyw5I 

 

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Posted by NKP guy on Friday, August 11, 2017 9:25 AM

Deggesty
For the benefit of you who do not know who P.D.Q Bach was, he was the only forgotten son of Johann Sebastian Bach. One of his compositions was "The Bicycle"--complete with a card secured to a fender strut. I am sure that he could have composed the "Diesel Locomotive" as it has been described in a previous post.

I think my favorite P.D.Q. Bach composition is his Iphigenia in Brooklyn.  What great phun Herr Bach bequeathed to us!

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Posted by RME on Friday, August 11, 2017 9:50 AM

Miningman
Well I have thrown the glove down in a challenge .., I'm thinking RME and CSSHEGEWISCH and several others... when the day comes that a symphony orchestra does tribute by mimicking a Diesel Locomotive along with special effects then that's the day I win the lotto.

Just remember that I'm holding you to funding the balance of the T1 Trust expense, including the buildings and the test and support vehicles, when (not if) this comes to pass.

I am not familiar with most Soviet Realist music (cf. the "Dnieper River Power Station") but I would not be surprised to find something that has railroads in it, and if written after the mid-Fifties this would 'officially' support dieselization in furtherance of explicit Party policies...

Perhaps ominously for the prospective payoff:  there is a bluegrass band that did a song with a name like "Evening Train" which ends with a fiddle chord of the notes in a K5LA -- it sounds so exactly like it that I couldn't tell a significant difference.  Expect something like this to work nicely if Gershwin could put flatulent Parisian taxi horns into a piece of classical music and be credited for it.  Same for diesel growl, even if we lose that ol' familiar "clickety-clack" to CWR and maintenance profile grinding.

Note that the effect of diesel power can just as easily be evoked by the ABSENCE of chugging rhythms a la Pacific 2-3-1 (which is, according to Honegger (who may however have been fibbing a bit to a select audience of longhairs, a study in rhythms/tempi getting slower, rather than faster, to express intensity ... or quicker speed).  There are a number of interesting compositional tropes that could be explored both in the rest of railroad sounds (listen to any good version of Gerry Mulligan's "K-4 Pacific" (sic) for some interesting takes on them).

All this not to say that the least steam engine runs rings around the best diesel for romance and variety.  It's that I don't disparage diesels when I can't have steam, and I'm perfectly happy to see and have either -- or both, if it come to it -- at a given moment...

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Posted by BaltACD on Friday, August 11, 2017 4:44 PM

In honor of EHH

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

RME
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Posted by RME on Friday, August 11, 2017 5:35 PM

BaltACD
In honor of EHH ...

What we need to do is write appropriate lyrics to go with the old song "Oh they built the ship Titanic" -- I'll start it:

"Oh Mantle Ridge hired Hunter, investors for to screw,

And he thought he had precision that would make the cars go through,

But 'twas shortly that his play

Made the trains all stop and stay

It was sad when the great trick went down ... "

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Posted by Miningman on Friday, August 11, 2017 9:26 PM

Not bad RME. Lets hope husbands and wives, little children lost their lives does not happen. 

So little respect or wishing to succeed for EHH on any of these threads. 

Maybe Schlimm and Ulrich, that's it. Certainly would appear he has gummed up the works. A great unraveling and untangling will need to  ensue.

If this truly is a smash and grab, pump and dump that leaves CSX a mess then that will be a shameful legacy and he will get zero sympathy from anyone, from the White House on down. Those kind of plays are far more easily exposed these days and there are repercussions.

Still a head-scratcher as to why a multi multi millionaire with lousy health and a beautiful horse farm and wife just cannot forget about it all. Build a model railroad, fund the T1 Trust, anything, enjoy life. 

As to holding me to account for the T1 Project and assorted goodies to go along...well I'm like Harry Oakes, the hero of Kirkland Lake,  with relentless resolve to find the gold.....simple projections on the back of a napkin, a Brunton compass, maybe a Stereonet and some onion paper.

You just need to believe. Gold pretty steady bouncing slowly between $1200 to $1300 an ounce for some time now. 

Steady as she goes.

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Posted by sigengr on Monday, August 14, 2017 10:44 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJn39Tt8EJo

Warren Zevon - Night Time in the Switching Yard

 

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Posted by warnold on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 1:17 AM

I'm glad somebody mentioned Panama Limited. It's always been a favorite song of mine, and I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the article. However, despite that omission, I really enjoyed the story.

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Posted by FM56 on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 10:19 AM

Johnny McCollum:  Sante Fe All The Way

RME
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Posted by RME on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 4:39 PM

Miningman
Lets hope husbands and wives, little children lost their lives does not happen.

It won't.  The 'little children' line is changed to reflect on the result of Huntriasis on the prognosis for the Children's Fund ...

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Posted by Sunnyland on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 5:24 PM

I'd have to say City of New Orleans by Arlo Guthrie.  That song came out a few months before Dad died and he bought the .45 for us.  We played it often and when I finally got to ride that train last summer, I thought of him and Mom riding along with me. We'd rode to NOLA years ago on IC but because of Dad's pass, we were not allowed on that train, but we still got there and the route was familiar to us. 

 

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Posted by schlimm on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 5:55 PM

Miningman
So little respect or wishing to succeed for EHH on any of these threads.  Maybe Schlimm and Ulrich, that's it.

I've always said he's no friend of rail workers but a sharp operator for ownership, which is the major function of a CEO.

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Posted by zugmann on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 6:05 PM

Miningman
So little respect or wishing to succeed for EHH on any of these threads.

 

Most of us got sick of the EHH worshipping that lead up to the current situation.

It's been fun.  But it isn't much fun anymore.   Signing off for now. 


  

The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 6:38 PM

Why does every thread have to turn into a discussion about you-know-who or the other you-know-who?Dead

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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Posted by schlimm on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 6:43 PM

Murphy Siding

Why does every thread have to turn into a discussion about you-know-who or the other you-know-who?Dead

 

Someone with time on their hands could do a count, but looks like a large number of posts are related in some way to those two guys or to GCC/AGW. Take those out and mostly you've got watching paint schemes dry and songs/cartoons.

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 8:22 PM

schlimm

 

 
Murphy Siding

Why does every thread have to turn into a discussion about you-know-who or the other you-know-who?Dead

 

 

Someone with time on their hands could do a count, but looks like a large number of posts are related in some way to those two guys or to GCC/AGW. Take those out and mostly you've got watching paint schemes dry and songs/cartoons.

 

Does that mean that interest in trains and railroading is at low tide?

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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Posted by schlimm on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 11:02 PM

Murphy Siding
Does that mean that interest in trains and railroading is at low tide?

And after low tide comes Blondie and High Tide

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Posted by Firelock76 on Wednesday, August 16, 2017 7:19 PM

Thanks for the Blondie video Schlimm, reminded me of something...

As far as train themes go, how could we have forgotten this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgoRD5Ua_7Y

And let me point out this "train" is pulled by a steam locomotive!

Please, no "EHH" stuff on this thread.  This should be a happy place.

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Posted by Firelock76 on Thursday, August 17, 2017 7:25 PM

Found something else interesting, while not strictly a train song it uses railroad imagery to get its point across.

From the Hutchinson Family Singers in 1844 came this, "Get Off The Track!  A Song For Emancipation."  Probably one of the earliest railroad themed songs in this country.  If the melody sounds familiar, it's "Old Dan Tucker."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyoC-JccYcc

 

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Posted by schlimm on Thursday, August 17, 2017 8:14 PM

LNER  Hercule Poirot

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Posted by Miningman on Thursday, August 17, 2017 8:19 PM

Firelock76- That is one heck of a find. Terrific. 

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Posted by Firelock76 on Thursday, August 17, 2017 8:27 PM

Thanks Miningman!

Schlimm, that "Poirot" opening is an Art Deco delight!

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