Time for a little cultcha....

The Best Railway Poems Everyone Should Read
https://interestingliterature.com/2017/ ... ould-read/

https://railwaysongs.blogspot.com/2013/05/engine-1174.html

https://railwaysongs.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-firemans-lament.html

Two poems about 1174 (which was re-numbered 5461 in 1924) which helped get her preserved. Successfully worked for many years in preservation but when the poems were written had the reputation as the worst engine on the system!

Here's "The Lay of the Lost Traveller" by Edward J. Phelps, about Essex Junction, Vermont.

http://centralvermontrailway.blogspot.c ... veler.html

In verse one, substitute "elusive" for "delusive"
and in verse 3, substitute "long" for "lone"

Phil Mulligan

The Meet at Summit Siding.

A favorite by Emily Dickinson.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/ ... -miles-383

Travel by Edna St Vincent Milay

Francis Bret Harte. 1839–1902

What the Engines Said

Opening of the Pacific Railroad

WHAT was it the Engines said,
Pilots touching,—head to head
Facing on the single track,
Half a world behind each back?
This is what the Engines said,
Unreported and unread.

With a prefatory screech,
In a florid Western speech,
Said the engine from the West,
"I am from Sierra's crest;
And, if altitude 's a test,
Why, I reckon, it 's confessed,
That I 've done my level best."

Said the Engine from the East,
"They who work best talk the least.
S'pose you whistle down your brakes;
What you 've done is no great shakes,—
Pretty fair,—but let our meeting
Be a different kind of greeting.
Let these folks with champagne stuffing,
Not their Engines, do the puffing.

"Listen! Where Atlantic beats
Shores of snow and summer heats;
Where the Indian autumn skies
Paint the woods with wampum dies,—
I have chased the flying sun,
Seeing all he looked upon,
Blessing all that he has blest,
Nursing in my iron breast
All his vivifying heat,
All his clouds about my crest;
And before my flying feet
Every shadow must retreat."

Said the Western Engine, "Phew!"
And a long, low whistle blew.
"Come, now, really that 's the oddest
Talk for one so very modest.
You brag of your East. You do?
Why, I bring the East to you!
All the Orient, all Cathay,
Find through me the shortest way;
And the sun you follow here
Rises in my hemisphere.
Really,—if one must be rude,—
Length, my friend, ain't longitude."
Said the Union: "Don't reflect, or
I 'll run over some Director."
Said the Central: "I 'm Pacific;
But, when riled, I 'm quite terrific.
Yet to-day we shall not quarrel,
Just to show these folks this moral,
How two Engines—in their vision—
Once have met without collision."

That is what the Engines said,
Unreported and unread;
Spoken slightly through the nose,
With a whistle at the close.

William Wordsworth was part of the Romantic zeitgeist that bemoaned the spoilation of England in the early industrial revolution, of which Blake's line is the archetype: "And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic Mills?"

Wonder what they would say about our contemporary infrastructure?

This is my favorite:

https://www.bmoperators.com/?p=492

About a time long ago when white signal aspects meant what green now means, green aspects meant what yellow now means, and red was the same as now. I believe the colors were changed because at least once the red lens fell out of a signal and the engineman interpreted it as clear, which caused a collision. (A typical example of railroad rules being written in blood).

Here's another poem that was part of an ad by the Falls Hollow stay bolt company. taken from an 1892 copy of Locomotive Engineering.