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VARIOUS ARTISTS - RAISED BY THE RAILROAD LINE: CLASSIC AMERICAN TRAIN SONGS (REB-7504), 2001

Musicians
Front Porch String Band
Bill Harrell
Kentucky Rose
The Lonesome River Band
The McPeak Brothers
Don Reno & Red Smiley
Ric-o-chet
The Seldom Scene
Larry Sparks
Ralph Stanley
A.L. Wood & The Smokey Ridge Boys

Production Credits
Produced by David Freeman
Mastered David Glasser at Airshow Mastering, Boulder, CO


Raised By The Railroad Line is a wonderfully appropriate title for this collection of train songs. The America we know today probably owes more to railroads for its growth than it does to any other single development. We truly were "raised by the railroad line." Railroads made cities and towns possible in previously inaccessible areas by providing a new and efficient means of obtaining goods and supplies. It was the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 that effectively removed the geographic hurdles that had limited expansion, thereby throwing open the doors to the West. And in the 20th century, it was the railroads that embodied the freewheeling and adventurous spirit of an increasingly industrial America.

To put it simply, the growth of America followed the rails. For the first half of the 20th century, the railroad was king. Passenger service prospered, and had personality to spare, with great names like Chesapeake & Ohio's Fast Flying Virginian, Louisville & Nashville's Pan American and Dixie Flyer, Gulf, Mobile & Ohio's Midnight Special and Norfolk & Western's Powhatan Arrow.

The second half of the century proved to be less kind, however, as bankruptcies, mergers, and the general decline in the use of passenger service conspired to dramatically lessen the railroad's impact on the life of most Americans. but rest assured, our love affair with the "iron horse" is as strong as ever. Watch a child's eyes in the presence of a train and you'll see magic. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find someone who just flat-out doesn't like trains. And practically since the first rail was spiked in this country, American's have been writing and singing songs about trains. Many of these songs have found a home in the repertoire of Bluegrass music and we've gathered together 14 great examples for Raised By The Railroad Line.

The opening cut, City Of New Orleans, is the first of eight songs on the collection that are about actual trains or events. The City of New Orleans was a train on the Illinois Central that traveled from Chicago to...you guessed it, New Orleans. Many people have recorded the song over the years, but this classic version from the Seldom Scene is hard to beat.

The City Of New Orleans still runs, now under the Amtrak banner. Santa Fe Train and The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore are both reflections about railroads that are no longer in operation. In fact, every specific company or train referred this compilation has either been discontinued, or is now part of a different company as a result of the many mergers that have characterized today's railroad industry. In this case, what was the Santa Fe is now part of the Burlington, Northern, Santa Fe system (BNSF), and the Louisville & Nashville was merged into CSX. "Story of the F.F.V." sings of the old C&O's First Families Of Virginia, (later known as the Fast Flying Virginian), while "Wreck of the Old '97" tells the tale of the 1903 wreck of a Southern Railway fast mail train near Danville, VA. The well-known song "Wabash Cannonball" trumpets the merits of the Wabash Cannonball, as does "California Zephyr" of its name-sake. For those of you keeping score at home, the C&O is now part of CSX and the old Wabash line was acquired by Norfolk & Western in the 1960s and N&W went on to merge with Southern to form Norfolk Southern. The California Zephyr, previously run jointly by three railroads, (Burlington, Rio Grande, and Western Pacific), now runs as part of the Amtrak system. "Train 45," here performed as an instrumental, is about Southern Railway's old "Train 45" (also known as the Tennessean0, which ran from Washington D.C., through Roanoke and Bristol, VA and then on into Tennessee.

The rest of the songs wax nostalgic about the adventure and wanderlust that has always been associated with "riding the rails". And they all do a wonderful job of evoking the true spirit of American railroading in all its sublime glory. If you let them, they'll take you back to a time when giant steam engines and streamlined diesels ruled the landscape. That wonderful, bygone era when America was "raised by the railroad line".