When I was in my late teens, I had this fascination taking photos of anything relating to trains, mostly scenic images of train-tracks running off somewhere. Like the one I took inset at Timbertown, a popular tourist attraction at Wauchope on the mid north coast of New South Wales, Australia.

Where I live now, the sole train-track in Bogota, Colombia passes just a few blocks from my house. I hear the train’s mighty air-horn at least twice daily. Often, I have to pass the ‘level crossing’ and a gulf of traffic to get to where I am going. I often look down the track and hope I can just make out a train in the distance, but of course I never do otherwise the gates would have come down and a siren blaring.
Now that’s a ‘moment’ at a level crossing, when you have to wait for a train to pass and watch the big machine roll by just a few feet away. It gets me giddy just thinking about it.

This nostalgic fascination for Trains or train – tracks is not uncommon and it leads us nicely to today’s song Long Train Runnin’ by the Doobie Brothers. It’s strange that two of their songs appear here in quick succession, just like one train after the other I suppose. Their previous entry Listen to the Music made me reminisce the classic line in Romancing the Stone – ‘Dammit man, the Doobie Brothers broke up! Sh*t! When did that happen‘? Today’s track threw me onto them train – tracks.

[Verse 1]
Down around the corner
Half a mile from here
You see them long trains runnin’
And you watch ’em disappear

[Chorus]
Without love
Where would you be now?
Without love

[Verse 2]
You know I saw Miss Lucy
Down along the tracks
She lost her home and her family
And she won’t be coming back

Long Train Runnin was included on the band’s 1973 album The Captain and Me and was released as a single, becoming a hit and peaking at No. 8 on the US Charts. The tune evolved from an untitled and mostly ad-libbed jam that the Doobies developed onstage years before it was finally recorded. Its working title, according to Johnston, was “Rosie Pig Moseley” and later “Osborn“. “I didn’t want to cut it” Johnston later confessed. “…I just considered it a bar song without a lot of merit“. Record Producer Teddy Templeman convinced Tom Johnston (founder and lead guitarist and vocalist of the Doobie Brothers) to write words to the song.

Below the original studio recording of Long Train Runnin’, I have presented a scene from one of my favourite ‘coming of age’ movies Stand By Me. As the 4 boys trek by a train track to search the body of a who has been missing for several days they decide to cross a railway bridge, but there is nothing but a deep ravine below. Anyone fascinated by all the aforementioned yearning of trains and what – not will find few other scenes in movie history that encapsulate that fervor more acutely.

Reference:
1. Long Train Runnin’ – Wikipedia