I love trains. But of them all, I think I have to say that this one is my favorite. Here it is in a photo I took in Switzerland on a family trip. I mean, honestly, how can you not love a train that's named after you?
By the way, the turn-of-the century train station in Glencoe that I'd leave from in the morning was featured in "Flag of Our Fathers," that Clint Eastwood directed. When the soldiers go on their cross-country tour and are in Chicago, he needed a venue that looked out of the 1940s. The Glencoe station fit the bill.
(The train that Jake Gyllenhaal takes over and over and over in Source Code is one of those other lines -- and it's the train that goes from Glenview, where my dad lives, into Chicago. It ends up at the Union Station, where they filmed, among other things, The Sting, and the shootout in The Untouchables.)
No, this isn't an art museum. It's the Union Train Station.
Eating on a dining car as the train rumbles through the desert, or sitting up in the observation car and watching the stars in the evening sky are about as glorious as travel gets.
Okay, so Sunday is National Train Day. If you don't go to an event, at least you might want to consider renting a train movie. I really love train movies. This isn't a comprehensive list but, in alphabetical order, it's some that I've seen that are generally wonderful --
Around the World in 80 Days
Bridge on the River Kwai
The Darjeeling Limited
The General
The Great Locomotive Chase
The Great Train Robbery
The Lady Vanishes
Murder on the Orient Express
The Narrow Margin
North by Northwest
Northwest Frontier
Night Train to Munich
Polar Express
Runaway Train
Shanghai Express
Silver Streak
Strangers on a Train
The Train
Transsiberian
Twentieth Century
Union Pacific
Unstoppable
Von Ryan’s Express
And finally, there's only one way to end this.
Here's Steve Goodman. And this is how the song is supposed to be sung.