The LNER Encyclopedia

Second only, perhaps, to cars and girls, the subject of trains and railways/railroads must be the most commonly-addressed theme for songs (good ones, at any rate). Here's my suggested Greatest Hits:

Smokestack Lightning - Howlin' Wolf
Riding on the L&N - various, but including Dr.Feelgood
Freight Train Blues - Bob Dylan
Johnny B.Goode - Chuck Berry
Rock Island Line - various, but including Johnny Cash
Wreck of the Old '97 - as above
Down in the Tube Station at Midnight - The Jam
Version City Junction - The Clash
Last Watch on the Midland - Marilyn Middleton-Pollock
Chicken Town - John Cooper Clarke
Working on the Railroad - various, but including Newcastle's legendary Junco Partners
Trans-Europa Express - Kraftwerk
Poor Paddy - The Pogues
Homeward Bound - Simon & Garfunkel
The Passenger - Iggy Pop (OK, that one's a bit tenuous, but it's such a good song I couldn't leave it out)

What would you add? Young readers - is anyone recording decent music these days, or does this say it all?

Yes, older US 'roots' music has a lot of train stuff. iirc Casey Jones was immortalised in a number of songs.

Even the classical world can add pieces of railway music, although they're not songs.

Eg. Honeggar's "Pacific 2-3-1" (possibly the only piece of music that gives a wheel arrangement in the title?)
but Vivian Ellis' "Coronation Scot" is probably better known in the UK.

I've always thought Holst's "Jupiter" would make good express passenger music - accompanying something like an A4 or a Duchess. Starting with the busy-bodying at the station. Then you have the strong beat as the engine gets going, and then the main theme for graceful speed through the English countryside?


Richard

Excuse the deep linking, but here's some rather different railway music:

http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/ivor/ivor.ra




Richard

Once you put those "Apocalypse Now" scenes out of your mind, I always think Wagner's "Die Walkure" ("Ride of the Valkyries") conjures up pictures of night-time expresses speeding through wayside stations.

I thought of a couple more songs for my list:

Train, Train - various (I think), but covered very nicely by Billy Bragg
Police on My Back - Eddie Grant, but best covered by The Clash, with "loco whistle" effect

Who could forget the TV theme tunes
'Oh Dr Beatching' for example

guns `n' roses have a song called Night Train? or is that my imagination.

White room by Cream. Theres a line about platform tickets of all things and restless diesels.

Up the junction by Squeeze

One way ticket to hell and back by the Darkness has a steam loco on the cover

Didnt the travelling Wilburies go around by train and Queen did a video on the Nene Valley.

Oasis - Supersonic. Rather tenuous but Elsa breaks the world speed record whilke sniffing Alca Selza. I want to know how she stopped within the existing signalling system and didnt overun the platforms.

Railway music could have a double meaning Id call the beat of a Greley pacific music and Warship fans have this thing called Mayback music but the sound of an A4 is just better

61650GTFC wrote:Oasis - Supersonic. Rather tenuous but Elsa breaks the world speed record whilke sniffing Alca Selza. I want to know how she stopped within the existing signalling system and didnt overun the platforms.

I always thought Noel and Liam had train spotters' haircuts.

I have seen them in anoraks too.

How about the Locomotion by Kylie amongst others. I guess we can thank her in part for some of the locos that have been restored. Thank you Mr Waterman.

Locomotion as originally done by Lulu was a classic sixties hit.

On a more esoteric "note" here's a few tunes written for the Great Highland bagpipes, all of them with a railway theme.

"The Train Journey North" composed by T. Anderson and inspired by the rythmic sound of the carriage bogies crossing the rail joints (before welded rail became the rage) on the journey north from Dublin to Belfast.
The tune is a masterful representation of the hypnotic sound affect so evocative of trains belting along the tracks, it is a cracking good tune.

"Mons Meg" a Strathspey by Pipe Major George S. McLennan named after the famous canon at Edinburgh Castle, also the name of a Thompson A2/2 Pacific (BR no. 60504) presumably named after the same cannon.

"Kiss The Train Goodbye" a reel composed by Pipe Major Robert Mathieson of the runners up band in the grade one World Pipe Band Championships in 2005

Not railway-related at all (although a ferry gets a brief mention - let's assume it was a train ferry!), but Dick Gaughan's version of "The 51st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily" is outrageously beautiful - the song was written by Hamish Henderson to the tune "Farewell To The Creeks", composed by Pipe-Major James Robertson.

Others for the list are "Mystery Train", which I assume to be a traditional song, covered perhaps most famously by Elvis Presley. And of course "Long Train Running", by the Doobie Brothers.

John: Mons Meg was originally a P2 - they kept their names after the Thompson rebuild. Yes it was named after the cannon - all of the P2s had names related to the area surrounging the Edinburgh-Aberdeen route. Eg. Earl of Marischal, the Wolf of Badenoch, etc.
Some of us prefer to think of them in their imperfect but stylish Mikado form

Richard
(almost midnight local time after a long day including packing up and returning from the Bush library - full report later when I get the pictures off the camera)

Tom Quayle wrote:Railway music could have a double meaning Id call the beat of a Greley pacific music and Warship fans have this thing called Mayback music but the sound of an A4 is just better

Can't beat a bitta Stanier Music!

Bullhead,

Dick Gaughan's version of "The 51st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily" is outrageously beautiful - the song was written by Hamish Henderson to the tune "Farewell To The Creeks", composed by Pipe-Major James Robertson.

Great folk singer that Dick Gaughan. There is a 4/4 pipe tune "The 51st Highland Division" by Pipe Major Donald Macleod - a tune I have played for the last 38 years and another 2/4 "The 51st Highland Division at Wadi Akarit" by W. MacDonald also (Waaaaait for it my bonnie lad) a 3/4 "Major General D. N. Wimberley's Farewell to the 51st Highland Division" by the late and very great, Pipe Major Angus MacDonald.

Pipe Major James Robertson's 6/8 "Farewell to the Creeks" is one of the best 6/8 marches around and another tune I have played for many years.

As the pipe tunes pound rythmically away in my mind I cannot help but think of the good old 10.00am from Kings Cross pounding it's way north. )I hope that will suffice as an appropriate segue to get this thread back on the tracks )

Richard, I have a drawing somewhere of "Cock O' the North", if memory serves me correctly it too was a P2, n'cest pa? They were beautiful looking engines and would be a good "New build" project, though the smaller heritage railways would understandably have to miss out due to the limited RA of these engines. What would your preference be for an original shape build or the A4 style front end?